Analysis of postures for handwriting on touch screens without using tools

Sara Marullo,Maria Pozzi,Domenico Prattichizzo,Monica Malvezzi

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-04367-5

Abstract

The act of handwriting affected the evolutionary development of humans and still impacts the motor cognition of individuals. However, the ubiquitous use of digital technologies has drastically decreased the number of times we really need to pick a pen up and write on paper. Nonetheless, the positive cognitive impact of handwriting is widely recognized, and a possible way to merge the benefits of handwriting and digital writing is to use suitable tools to write over touchscreens or graphics tablets. In this manuscript, we focus on the possibility of using the hand itself as a writing tool. A novel hand posture named FingerPen is introduced, and can be seen as a grasp performed by the hand on the index finger. A comparison with the most common posture that people tend to assume (i.e. index finger-only exploitation) is carried out by means of a biomechanical model. A conducted user study shows that the FingerPen is appreciated by users and leads to accurate writing traits.

Highlights

The act of handwriting affected the evolutionary development of humans and still impacts the motor cognition of individuals
In the FingerPen posture, the index finger is constrained by the hand in such a way that it becomes a writing tool (Fig. 1) characterized by the fact that “tool and gesture merge into a single organ”, to what the anthropologist Leroi-Gourhan observed in a nimals[10], leading to an intrinsic embodiment of the tool[11,12]
Since tablets are quite spread in all the age groups, some applications of the FingerPen can be proposed for elders, to keep practicing hand-eye coordination and contrast visual-spatial deficit and memory loss, which are amplified by the lack of e xercise[14]

Summary

Introduction

The act of handwriting affected the evolutionary development of humans and still impacts the motor cognition of individuals. The positive cognitive impact of handwriting is widely recognized, and a possible way to merge the benefits of handwriting and digital writing is to use suitable tools to write over touchscreens or graphics tablets. De Kerckhove investigated the effects on the human mind, and defined a psychotechnology as “any technology that emulates, extends, or amplifies sensory-motor, psychological or cognitive functions of the mind”[8] Inspired by these concepts, we propose the FingerPen: a posture of the hand thought to exploit smartphones and tablets to keep people used to practise the “language by hand”[9]. Recent studies show that memory benefits from the act of drawing, both in younger and in older a dults[18,19]

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion