Expressive Input

SonarSelect (CHI 25)


Posted on March 9, 2025, 8:54 p.m.


Cross, Dwell, or Pinch: Designing and Evaluating Around-Device Selection Methods for Unmodified Smartwatches.


Jiwan Kim, Jiwan Son, and Ian Oakley
CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing systems.
DOI: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714308
Open Source: https://github.com/witlab-kaist/SonarSelect
Session: Interaction Techniques


Abstract

Smartwatches offer powerful features, but their small touchscreens limit the expressiveness of the input that can be achieved. To address this issue, we present, and open-source, the first sonar-based around-device input on an unmodified consumer smartwatch. We achieve this using a fine-grained, one-dimensional sonar-based finger-tracking system. In addition, we use this system to investigate the fundamental issue of how to trigger selections during around-device smartwatch input through two studies. The first examines the methods of double-crossing, dwell, and finger tap in a binary task, while the second considers a subset of these designs in a multi-target task and in the presence and absence of haptic feedback. Results showed double-crossing was optimal for binary tasks, while dwell excelled in multi-target scenarios, and haptic feedback enhanced comfort but not performance. These findings offer design insights for future around-device smartwatch interfaces that can be directly deployed on today's consumer hardware.


Short Summary Video


BibTex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3706598.3714308,
author = {Kim, Jiwan and Son, Jiwan and Oakley, Ian},
title = {Cross, Dwell, or Pinch: Designing and Evaluating Around-Device Selection Methods for Unmodified Smartwatches},
year = {2025},
isbn = {9798400713941},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714308},
doi = {10.1145/3706598.3714308},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
articleno = {604},
numpages = {11},
keywords = {Around-device sensing, Selection method, Smartwatch, Sonar},
location = {
},
series = {CHI '25}
}