Users tend to position themselves in front of interactive public displays in such a way as to best perceive its content. Currently, this sweet spot is implicitly defined by display properties, content, the input modality, as well as space constraints in front of the display. We present GravitySpot – an approach that makes sweet spots flexible by actively guiding users to arbitrary target positions in front of displays using visual cues.
Such guidance is beneficial, for example, if a particular input technology only works at a specific distance or if users should be guided towards a non-crowded area of a large display. In two controlled lab studies (n=29) we evaluate different visual cues based on color, shape, and motion, as well as position-to-cue mapping functions. We show that both the visual cues and mapping functions allow for fine-grained control over positioning
speed and accuracy. Findings are complemented by observations from a 3-month real-world deployment.

Publication

alt2015uist.jpg Florian Alt, Andreas Bulling, Gino Gravanis und Daniel Buschek. GravitySpot: Guiding Users in Front of Public Displays Using On-Screen Visual Cues. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology. UIST '15. ACM, New York, NY, USA. [Download Bibtex]