Augmenting bend gestures with pressure zones on flexible displays

Abstract

Flexible displays have paved the road for a new generation of interaction styles that allow users to bend and twist their devices. We hypothesize that bend gestures can be augmented with "hot-key" like pressure areas. This would allow single corner bends to have multiple functions. We created three pressure and bend interaction styles and compared them to bend-only gestures on two deformable prototypes. Users preferred the bend only prototype but still appreciated the pressure & bend prototype, particularly when it came to the lock/unlock application. We found that pressure interaction is a poor replacement for touch interaction, and present design suggestions to improve its performance.