Occlusion-aware Menu at Media Interaction Lab

Occlusion-aware Menu for Digital Tabletops

Researchers:	Peter Brandl, Thomas Seifried, Jakob Leitner, Michael Haller, Bernard Doray, Paul To
Partners:	Nortel Networks
State:	completed
Links:	NiCE, FLUX

Motivation

Hand Occlusion Interaction with large direct input surfaces is strongly influenced by physical restrictions. Reachability of items or occlusions through the user’s body require novel design considerations for appropriate interfaces. Traditional menus are not very well adapted to direct pen interaction. Menus that appear on the location where they are activated seem to be a better choice for large interactive surfaces, where the input is normally done with a pen or a direct finger touch. Addtionally, the handedness of users need to be considered to place a menu at a convenient location.

Video

Occlusions

In order to be able to design a menu that avoids occlusions, we invited 18 participants and observed differences of occlusions for left and right-handed users on horizontal surfaces (3 left-handed,15 right-handed).

The results showed that about 11 segments out of 16 where not occluded in average. Furthermore the arrangement of the occluded segments seem to be mirrored for left and right handed users.

Menu Design

Based on the study we designed a menu designed for tabletop displays with direct pen input.

Occlusion-aware

In this circular shaped menu, menu-items are only placed in areas that are not occluded. An addtional gesture area in the center of the menu facilitates quick control of an application. In contrast to the menu-item this area can be occluded by the users hand because feedback is not so important.

Adaptive Placement

Orientation is a major issue on Tabletop Displays. Occlusions depend on the location of the user at the table. Therefore we propose a automatic menu placement and orientation. The touch-tracking of our Tabletop Display FLUX provides the touch-point of the hands wrist. In combination of the input from the Anoto pen the orientation and position of the menu is automatically modified. This solution also supports detection of left- and right-handed users.

Publications

P. Brandl, T. Seifried, J. Leitner, M. Haller, B. Doray, and P. To, 2009.
“Occlusion-Aware Menu Design for Digital Tabletops,” in ACM CHI Interactivity, 2009.