Mobile Touch and Gesture Interaction for Children (MTAGIC)

Mobile Touch and Gesture Interaction for Children (MTAGIC)

We have been investigating differences in the ways that children use touch and gesture interactions compared to adults, especially on mobile devices. In lab studies, we have found evidence that children have more difficulty successfully acquiring touch targets and making consistent gestures than adults do. These differences can lead to poorer performance of the interface for children, and we plan to explore ways to adapt interfaces to work better with children in the real world given these differences. We have been working with Quincy Brown at Bowie State University.

Check out the full project website!

The Team

Dr. Lisa Anthony
Alex Shaw
Ziyang Chen
Julia Woodward (Former Member)
Juthika Das (Former Member)
Phillip Hall (Former Member)
Akshay Holla (Former Member)
Sagar Parmar (Former Member)
Qingchuan Zhao “Bruce” (Former Member)

MTAGIC Publications

Journal Articles

1. Anthony, Lisa. 2019. Physical dimensions of children’s touchscreen interactions: Lessons from five years of study on the MTAGIC project, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 128, 2019, 16 pp, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.02.005. [PDF]
2. Anthony, L., Brown, Q., Nias, J. and Tate, B. 2015. Children (and Adults) Benefit From Visual Feedback during Gesture Interaction on Mobile Touchscreen Devices. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, Volume 6, December 2015, pages 17-27. [PDF]
3. Anthony, L., Brown, Q., Tate, B., Nias, J., Brewer, R., and Irwin, G. 2014. Designing Smarter Touch-Based Interfaces for Educational Contexts. Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing: Special Issue on Educational Interfaces, Software, and Technology, Volume 18, Issue 6, pages 1471-1483. [PDF]

Refereed Conference Papers

1. Woodward, J., McFadden, Z., Shiver, N., Ben-hayon, A., Yip, J.C., and Anthony, L. 2018. Using Co-Design to Examine How Children Conceptualize Intelligent Interfaces. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’2018), Montreal, Canada, April 21-26, 2018, pages 575. [PDF]
2. Woodward, J., Esmaeili, S., Jain, A., Bell, J., Ruiz, J., and Anthony, L. 2018. Investigating Separation of Territories and Activity Roles in Children’s Collaboration around Tabletops. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’18), Article 185, Jersey City, NY, November 9-12, 2018.[PDF]
3. Woodward, J., Shaw, A., Aloba, A., Jain, A., Ruiz, J., and Anthony, L. 2017. Tablets, tabletops, and smartphones: cross-platform comparisons of children’s touchscreen interactions. Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI’2017), Glasgow, UK, November 13-17, 2017, pages 5-14. [PDF]
4. Shaw, A., Ruiz, J., and Anthony, L. 2017. Comparing human and machine recognition of children’s touchscreen stroke gestures. Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI’2017), Glasgow, UK, November 13-17, 2017, pages 32-40. [PDF]
5. Woodward, J., Shaw, A., Luc, A., Craig, B., Das, J., Hall Jr, P., Holla, A., Irwin, G., Sikich, D., Brown, Q., Anthony, L. 2016. Characterizing How Interface Complexity Affects Children’s Touchscreen Interactions. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI’2016), San Jose, CA, May 7-12, pages 1921-1933. [PDF]
6. Brewer, R., Anthony, L., Brown, Q., Irwin, G., Nias, J., and Tate, B. 2013. Using Gamification to Motivate Children to Complete Empirical Studies in Lab Environments. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC’2013), New York, NY, Jun 24-27, pages 388-391. [Pdf] [Poster]
7. Anthony, L., Brown, Q., Nias, J., Tate, B., and Mohan, S. 2012. Interaction and Recognition Challenges in Interpreting Children’s Touch and Gesture Input on Mobile Devices. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS’2012), Cambridge, MA, November 11-14, pages 225-234. [PDF]

Refereed Workshop Papers

1. Anthony, L. and Brown, Q. 2015. Designing Touchscreen Interfaces that Don’t Interfere with Learning. Paper for “Innovations in Interaction Design and Learning” workshop, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC’2015), Boston, MA, 21 June 2015. [PDF]
2. Anthony, L. and Brown, Q. 2013. Learning from HCI: Understanding Children’s Input Behaviors on Mobile Touchscreen Devices. Paper for “Human-Computer Interaction and the Learning Sciences” workshop, International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL’2013), Madison, WI, 15 June 2013. [PDF]
3. Brown, Q., Anthony, L., Nias, J., Tate, B., Brewer, R., and Irwin, G. 2013. Towards Designing Adaptive Touch-Based Interfaces. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI 2013 Third Mobile Accessibility Workshop (MOBACC’2013), Paris, France, 28 Apr 2013, 4pp. [PDF]
4. Brown, Q., Anthony, L., Brewer, R., Irwin, G., Nias, J., and Tate, B. 2013. Challenges of Replicating Empirical Studies with Children in HCI. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI 2013 RepliCHI Workshop (RepliCHI’2013), Paris, France, 27-28 Apr 2013, pages 54-58. [PDF]
5. Brown, Q. and Anthony, L. 2012. Toward Comparing the Touchscreen Interaction Patterns of Kids and Adults. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Workshop on Educational Software, Interfaces and Technology (EIST’2012), Austin, TX, 05-06 May 2012. [PDF]

Funding

This work is partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant Awards #IIS-1218395 / IIS-1433228 and IIS-1218664. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect these agencies’ views.

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