Empirical Grounding for the Interpretations of Natural User Interface: A Case Study on Smartpen

Alabdulwahab, Baraa; Lai-Chong Law, Effie

Abstract

The emergence of Natural User Interface (NUI) approximately two decades ago promised to support intuitive and multimodal interactions by leveraging human sensorimotor skills such as touching, speaking, and gazing. Despite the development and introduction of commercial NUI hardware, traditional user interfaces (e.g., GUIs) continue to dominate in many sectors, prompting inquiry into the claims of 'naturalness'. To examine this phenomenon, we investigated empirically two interpretations of naturalness: innateness and intuitiveness. The study involved asking 56 participants to complete learning tasks with a smartpen system and a laptop system representing innateness and intuitiveness, respectively. A mixed-method design was implemented to collect participants' perception and performance while using both interfaces. Results indicated that, despite the smartpen system was highly learnable, the perception of naturalness was significantly linked to participants' prior experiences rather than to innate abilities. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Citation

Alabdulwahab, B., & Lai-Chong Law, E. (2023). Empirical Grounding for the Interpretations of Natural User Interface: A Case Study on Smartpen. In Proceedings of 19th International Conference of Technical Committee 13 (Human- Computer Interaction) of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) (350-371). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42283-6_20

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: INTERACT 2023: 19th International Conference of Technical Committee 13 (Human- Computer Interaction) of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing)
• Start Date: Aug 28, 2023
• End Date: Sep 1, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Jun 19, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Aug 25, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 2, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 26, 2024
• Publisher: Springer
• Volume: 14143
• Pages: 350-371
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Series ISSN: 0302-9743
• Book Title: Proceedings of 19th International Conference of Technical Committee 13 (Human- Computer Interaction) of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing)
• ISBN: 9783031422829
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42283-6_20
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1709991
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/conference/interact