User-Centered Evaluation of Different Configurations of a Touchless Gestural Interface for Interactive Displays

Approaches for improving the user experience when interacting with touchless displays have been proposed, such as using activation gestures and representing users as avatars in real-time. However, the novelty of such approaches may hinder users’ natural interaction behavior bringing challenges such as ease of use. In this paper, we investigate how the presence of avatars and their configurations, the usage of activation gestures, and the arrangement of interactive tiles in a touchless visual interface impact users’ experience, usability and task performance. We also compare users’ willingness to promote the interaction setup, perceived task difficulty, and time consumed to perform four different tasks in each configuration. We found that using a squared arrangement of elements, adopting activation gestures to trigger actions, and showing a moving avatar, resulted in the highest perceived usability and user experience, also reducing errors, task completion time, and perceived task difficulty. Our findings support the design of interactive displays to ensure high usability and user experience.