Abstract

During the last decade, touchless gestural interfaces have been widely studied as one of the most promising interaction paradigms in the context of pervasive displays. In particular, avatars and silhouettes have proved to be effective in making the touchless capacity of displays self-evident. In this paper, we focus on a child–display interaction approach to avatar-based touchless gestural interfaces. We believe that large displays offer an opportunity to stimulate children’s experiences and engagement; for instance, learning about art is very engaging for children but can bring a number of challenges. Our study aims to contribute to the literature on both pervasive displays and child–computer interaction by reporting the results of a study involving 107 children aged 2 to 10 years. The main purposes of this study were to discover: (1) whether an avatar (movable or immovable) provides interactions that are intuitive for children and therefore help to overcome so-called “affordance blindness”; (2) whether an avatar-based touchless interface makes children’s experiences engaging and enjoyable therefore improving recall of content provided through the interaction (learning about art). The study unveiled relevant outcomes in terms of affordance blindness and two-handed interactions. We provide evidence indicating that chronological age influences the style of child–avatar interaction. Finally, it is suggested that avatars could facilitate the development of new effective educational technologies for young children.

Highlights

  • Touchless gestural interaction has been widely studied during the last decade, as one of the most promising solutions for allowing interaction with displays of various sizes [3]

  • In our research we investigate the multiple facets of child–display touchless gestural interaction mediated by an avatar-based interface

  • The main purposes of this exploratory study are: – To study whether an avatar provides interactions that are intuitive for children and help to overcome affordance blindness – To study whether an avatar-based touchless interface makes children’s experiences engaging and enjoyable improving recall of content provided through the interaction

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Summary

Introduction

Touchless gestural interaction has been widely studied during the last decade, as one of the most promising solutions for allowing interaction with displays of various sizes [3]. Many prior works have suggested the use of avatar-based interfaces, where a predominant human-shaped entity continuously reproduces user movements [19, 26, 39, 40] These studies revealed the effectiveness of silhouettes, mirrored images, or avatars in communicating the supported interactivity and its touchless nature. Prior work showed how touchless gestural interfaces may facilitate learning in children [1, 29], and it is not a case that such interfaces have been widely adopted in serious games [5, 14] For these reasons, in our research we investigate the multiple facets of child–display touchless gestural interaction mediated by an avatar-based interface

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