Touchless gestural interaction with small displays

Touchless gestural interaction enables users to interact with digital devices using body movements and gestures, and without the burden of a physical contact with technology (e.g., data gloves, body markers, or remote controllers). Most gesture-based touchless applications are designed for interaction with medium or, more often, large displays. Our research instead explores touchless gestural interaction "in-the-small", where the user interacts with small displays, of the size, for example, of a smart phone screen. Our work applies this to the domain of household appliances. We describe the design and evaluation of MOTIC (MOtion-based Touchless Interactive Cooking system), and highlight the complexity of employing touchless gestures to interact with visual interfaces constrained in size. This case study shows how existing design guidelines, mostly conceived for touchless gestural interaction "in the large", can be adapted and applied for gestural interaction in-the-small, and high-lights that touchless gestures have the potential of forming a valuable addition to our repertoire of interaction techniques with small displays.