The study of a novel gesture technique based on “Pen+touch” in multi-touch interfaces

In this paper, we present a novel gesture technique that couples both touch and pen inputs together for multi-touch and pen-enabled interfaces. This gesture design can fuse the advantages of both inputs from fingers and pens, which can alleviate the “fat finger” problem by introducing the accuracy input from pen-tips. The gesture design includes six types of hybrid gestures that carefully consider the inherent properties of both touch and pens. A user study was designed and conducted. The experimental results show that our proposed gesture technique is more effective and give users intuitive and natural performances. We also reveal design principles for designing gesture-based techniques in touch-based interfaces by demonstrating our technique and its applicable scenarios.