Area gestures for a laptop computer enabled by a hover-tracking touchpad

Abstract

A touchpad has been the most popular pointing device for laptop computers. As large, multi-touch sensing touchpads are now common, we came to think about extending its input vocabulary by adding area gestures. In order to explore this possibility, we constructed a laptop-like mockup with an optical, proximity sensing touchpad, and implemented a few area gestures that may be useful in such an environment. We conducted a user test and ran a task walkthrough with a realistic scenario in order to verify the feasibility of the area gestures in a laptop environment.