LinearDragger: a linear selector for one-finger target acquisition

Touch input is increasingly popular nowadays. The human finger has considerably large fingertip size and finger input is imprecise. Acquiring small targets on a touch screen is still a challenging task. In this extended abstract, we present the LinearDragger, a new and integrated one-finger target acquisition technique for small and clustered targets. It allows users to select targets in dense clustered groups easily with a single touch-drag-release operation and maps the 2D selection problem into a more precise 1D selection problem, which is independent of the target distribution. Besides, it also avoids finger occlusion and does not create visual distraction. LinearDragger is particularly suitable for applications with dense targets and rich visual elements.