Usability evaluation of touch gestures for Mobile Augmented Reality applications

In recent years, mobile-device apps have become the most common platform for augmented reality contents. The following work aims to identify the best touch-gestures for the interaction with virtual objects in augmented reality apps. An experimental study has been carried out on 80 people aged from 15 to 23 years-old. Three tasks have been evaluated: translation, rescaling and rotation of a 3D object. The considered gestures are: 1-finger tap, 1-finger pan, 2-finger pan, 2-finger rotation, Pinch-to-zoom and the Hold-and-move, which has been designed specifically for augmented reality apps. The goal is to find the best gesture to perform each task, from the point of view of the usability. Both objective and subjective measurements have been performed, to ensure an exhaustive evaluation of the usability. This analysis can help mobile app developers deciding the gestures to use to implement frequent tasks in 3D object’s manipulation.