An enhanced user interface design with auto-adjusting icon placement on foldable devices

Abstract

Flexible electronics appear in the consumer, medical, and military sectors. Thanks to the development of flexible electronics, flexible touchscreens have been widely carried on in various devices, such as mobile phones, wearable devices and hand-held tablets. Flexible touchscreens not only bring the technique of displays to next generation, but also significantly alter the interactive behaviors of users and devices. On the flexible touchscreens, when the displays are folded, some touch area around the folded line is not touchable in users' operation, and this is a critical research problem for the flexible touch screens. However, to our knowledge, little or no user interface research has solved this problem. To resolve this critical problem, in this study, we design a novel user interface, called the Auto- Adjusting Placement, which can dynamically adjust objects, such as icons, texts and pictures, on the flexible touch screens to avoid the area around the folded line and to keep the high availability/readability of the objects. Our demonstrations show that the Auto-Adjusting Placement is well performed on flexible touchscreens and therefore users have a consistent interface to use. We also filed a patent for this Auto-Adjusting Placement.