EAGER: Interaction Can Hurt - Exploring a Gesture-Based Design Paradigm for Chronic Pain Sufferers

Baylor University, Waco TX

Investigators

Abstract

One of the most common human experiences is pain. It is essential to warn when something is not right, and to alert when action needs to be taken. But when pain persists for longer than 3 months it is called chronic and it can rob those who suffer from it of their productivity, their mental well-being, and potentially even their lives. As the general population ages the number of people suffering from chronic pain induced by conditions such as Fibromyalgia and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome who require computer interaction will increase. Meanwhile, fueled by the deployment of new commodity technologies such as the Microsoft Kinect, there is a growing reliance in a variety of mainstream applications on touchless mid-air gesture-based interaction as an alternative to the mouse/keyboard paradigm for non-expect users. As this trend accelerates and becomes more widespread, people with chronic pain-related diseases (CPD) will be among those most negatively affected. The PI's goal in this exploratory research is to alleviate this problem by developing a design paradigm and best practices for gestural interaction for users with CPD. Not only will project outcomes profoundly change everyday life for members of the target user community, but by more generally advancing the state-of-the art in gesture-based interaction techniques they will also lessen the chance of other users developing future physical ailments. To these ends, the PI will build upon his "personal space" approach to gestural interaction, which allows the user to define the area of interaction as well as to rest their elbow during the interaction. He will consider separately gestural pointing (the use of a user's body to control interaction location and direction), and gestural manipulation (gestures used to hold, release, or select items within an interaction system), seeking for each problem space to discover which alterations to common touchless gesture interaction have a positive impact on users' fatigue, accuracy, and throughput. Using natural and intuitive gestures from the literature for operations such as grab, pinch and grasp as a starting point, experiments will be conducted to answer questions such as what are the various favored types of input, and which muscle groups are most affected during use. Other input options, including whether to use static vs. dynamic gestures, support for hand switching, and speech based input will also be evaluated. The findings will be combined to create a design paradigm to help shape a complete gesture-based interaction and best practices for users with CPD.