Controlling widgets with one power-up button

Abstract

The Power-up Button is a physical button that combines pressure and proximity sensing to enable gestural interaction with one thumb. Combined with a gesture recognizer that takes the hand's anatomy into account, the Power-up Button can recognize six different mid-air gestures performed on the side of a mobile device. This gives it, for instance, enough expressive power to provide full one-handed control of interface widgets displayed on screen. This technology can complement touch input, and can be particularly useful when interacting eyes-free. It also opens up a larger design space for widget organization on screen: the button enables a more compact layout of interface components than what touch input alone would allow. This can be useful when, e.g., filling the numerous fields of a long Web form, or for very small devices.