User-Centered Gestures for Mobile Phones: Exploring a Method to Evaluate User Gestures for UX Designers

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to explore how users react to certain gestures (e.g., swipe, scroll, or tap) for certain use cases. More specifically, the goal is to explore and suggest guidelines to user experience (UX) designers when choosing gestures for specific use cases on a smartphone application. Building on the Task-technology fit theory, we are specifically interested in the degree of alignment between gestures and each mobile use case. We hypothesize that some gestures are better aligned with certain use cases because they require less cognitive effort than others. In other words, certain gestures are likely to become so natural for users that they do not have to consciously invest effort to accomplish these gestures. Likewise, we hypothesize that the emotional valence of gestures will be affected by the use case. To attain this objective, a lab-experiment was conducted with 20 participants, where cognitive load and emotional valence were measured. Results suggest that the combination of gestures and use cases have an impact on the user cognitive load and valence. These findings contribute to human-computer interaction (HCI) research by providing insights to help user experience (UX) designers select appropriate gestures.