Transferable Microgestures Across Hand Posture and Location Constraints: Leveraging the Middle, Ring, and Pinky Fingers

Microgestures can enable auxiliary input when the hands are occupied. Although prior work has evaluated the comfort of microgestures performed by the index finger and thumb, these gestures cannot be performed while the fingers are constrained by specific hand locations or postures. As the hand can be freely positioned with no primary posture, partially constrained while forming a pose, or highly constrained while grasping an object at a specific location, we leverage the middle, ring, and pinky fingers to provide additional opportunities for auxiliary input across varying levels of hand constraints. A design space and applications demonstrate how such microgestures can transfer across hand location and posture constraints. An online study evaluated their comfort and effort and a lab study evaluated their use for task-specific microinteractions. The results revealed that many middle finger microgestures were comfortable, and microgestures performed while forming a pose were preferred over baseline techniques.