A Dictionary of Gestures for Multitouch-Based Interactive Geometry Software

Interactive Geometry software (IGS) are tools that help students to explore geometry concepts using computers. Most of IGS interfaces developed to date are heavily based on the desktop model of user interaction where the user input comes from the selection of icons and drop-down menus with the help of a mouse and a keyboard. Nevertheless, with the widespread adoption of smartphones, tablets and other devices with multitouch screens the tradition interfaces of IGS became inadequate. Thus, this study presents the development of a dictionary of gestures for interacting with IGS. It completely removes the need of icons and drop-down menus to create and manipulate geometric objects. To evaluate these gestures we implement them in an IGS for mobile device called Geotouch. Then, we conducted a usability study with five experts to compare Geotouch with other three IGS currently available. The results indicate that Geotouch has less usability problems and enable to build geometric objects faster and with fewer errors.