Nacera Latreche, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Bert Schiettecatte, Noisetron LLC, USA
Nuwan T. Attygalle, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Jean Vanderdonckt, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Summary
Cubes are increasingly used in tangible interaction, particularly when arranged in a topology on a surface such as a tabletop. To better understand how end users manipulate cubes as gestural input for tangible interaction on a surface, we report empirical findings from a family of three experiments conducted with AudioCubes, a set of tangible cubes containing wireless computers with built-in sound and signal-generating and processing capabilities that sense their topology for four action types on a surface: positioning, moving, rotating, and arranging. The first two experiments investigate the usability of AudioCubes through a controlled study with and without active training, inside and outside a laboratory. The third experiment determines which gestures are spontaneously produced by end users in an uncontrolled study and how they articulate these gestures by fingers.
Tangible cubes offer a usable and intuitive medium for gestural interaction. Participants consistently favored face-based interactions over edges and corners, simpler one-to-one mappings over complex multi-object procedures, and physically stable arrangements over precision-dependent gestures. Usable cube interfaces should prioritize grasping, pushing, rotating, and aligning through cube faces, while minimizing reliance on corner-based or highly constrained actions. The actual composition of cubes covers only 32\% of the theoretical space of 169 spatial compositions. Some practical implications for designing gestural input with tangible cubes on a surface, such as a tabletop, are offered.
Keywords: Hardware → Sensors and actuators; Tactile and hand-based interfaces; Human-centered computing → Interaction devices; Laboratory experiments; Graphical user interfaces; Gestural input.