Shape-change for zoomable TUIs: Opportunities and limits of a resizable slider

Abstract

Tangible sliders are successfully used as they do not need visual attention. However, users need to balance between opposite concerns: size and precision of the slider. We propose a resizable tangible slider to balance between these concerns. Users can resize the on-screen representation of the slider by resizing the tangible slider. Our aim is to benefit from both tangibility and flexible control, and balance between precision and minimum size. We measured the pointing performance of our prototype. We also assess the potential drawback (additional articulatory task for deformation) by evaluating the impact on precision of the additional articulatory task for deformation: for pursuing a target, we show that our resizable prototype supports better precision than its small counterpart as long as users do not need to resize it more often than around every 9 s.