EMBODIED INTERACTION ON CONSTRAINED INTERFACES OF WEARABLE COMPUTING

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis Defence


Title: "EMBODIED INTERACTION ON CONSTRAINED INTERFACES OF WEARABLE 
COMPUTING"

By

Mr. Lik Hang LEE


Abstract

Wearable computers have seen a recent resurgence in interest and 
popularity in which smartglasses and smart watches are poised to impact 
the way we play and work. Today, consumer applications of these wearable 
computers are focused on fitness tracking, message notifications, gaming 
and entertainment. Under several key constraints on wearable computers 
such as miniature-sized touch interface, small-sized screen real estate, 
user mobility, low computational resource and limited battery life, 
existing input techniques designed for desktop computers and smartphones 
are obsolete and incompatible with the mobile scenarios. The cumbersome 
and difficult interaction with the wearable computers has become a hurdle 
to their wider application as we have seen in nowadays smartphones. 
Therefore, there is an unmet demand for interaction techniques 
particularly designed for wearable computers.

In this thesis, we present several embodied interaction techniques to 
enhance object manipulation and text entry in the constrained environment. 
These techniques are devised in a way that leverage on advantageous 
features of human body and experiences such as the dexterity of fingertip, 
lexicographical order ingrained in our memory, proprioception, as well as 
opposable thumbs. We thoroughly consider the key constraints on wearable 
computers and explore different modalities whether the users have 
accepted, as follows. Our first study proposes a pointing technique for 
manipulation of digital objects in computing resource constrained 
augmented reality smartglasses, which improves the user operations by 46%. 
In the next study, we investigate two text entry interfaces on AR headset, 
knowing that the small-scale screen real estate should be reserved for 
user interaction with digital objects overlaying on physical surroundings. 
An 1-line invisibly layout is proposed, and remarkably only occupies 
13.14% of the screen real estate at the edge region, which is 62.80% 
smaller than the default keyboard layout. Next, we contribute to a 
force-assisted text entry technique for the constrain-sized touchscreen on 
smart watches. By leveraging the force augmentation on the touchscreen, we 
propose a trimetric optimized ambiguous keyboard as small as a one cent 
USD (19.5mm2) and explore the force disambiguation technique on smart 
watches. Finally, we design a one-handed thumb-to-finger text entry 
interface and implement a quadmetric optimized 12-keypad layout on a 
prototypical glove. The glove enables the users to accomplish text entry 
task through the unnoticeable thumb movements within the finger space of 
one hand, while another hand is reserved for user mobile scenarios, 
including carrying a briefcase, shaking hands, or handling other daily 
tasks.


Date:			Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Time:			10:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:			Room 3494
 			Lifts 25/26

Chairman:		Prof. Man-Sun Chan (ECE)

Committee Members:	Prof. Pan Hui (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Gary Chan
 			Prof. Huamin Qu
 			Prof. Can Yang (MATH)
 			Prof. Michael Lyu (CUHK)


**** ALL are Welcome ****