BendAide: A Deformable Interface to Augment Touchscreen Mobile Devices

Abstract

The uses of handheld mobile devices are diverse, yet interaction is not; touchscreens are the singular primary interface on most mobiles. Touch interaction has usability issues(e.g., the “fat fingers problem”) which impair the fine control of small interface elements, such as when working with text. Beyond text entry, this includes tasks like placing the in-text cursor (caret), text selection, and copy/paste. Current solutions for touch usability issues do not address complex uses like working with text. We propose deformable interaction, specifically bend, added alongside touch to support working with text on mobile. We explore this through a study of BendAide, a novel deformable 3D printed case for mobiles that adds bend interaction to the device. We found that people perceive different advantages between bend and touch and that they will alternate between these inputs based on task demands and their personal abilities. Adding alternate input options to mobile could reduce the complexity of on-display interfaces and interactions and give people more choice in how they use their devices.

Reflection

This is a cool project that I was fortunate to be part of. The idea is quite neat where the deformable interaction happens at the edges of the device, both allowing the user to still see the screen and removing the need to make the whole device bendable (which could happen but probably won’t in the near future).

Besides adding to the knowledge of deformable interaction, this work also demonstrates how we can use modern prototying tools such as 3D printing and bend sensors to create testable prototypes that are not readily available in stores yet.

Recommended citation: A. E. Eady, A. Guerrero, V. Cheung, D. Thue, A. Girouard. 2024. "BendAide: A Deformable Interface to Augment Touchscreen Mobile Devices". In Proceedings of Graphics Interaces (GI'24). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1234567890
Download Paper