How Would Do that? An Agile Elicitation Technique to Explore Users’ Spontaneous Gestural Commands

Hand gestures are an essential component of our behavior and are often considered a valuable way for Ambient Assisted Living solutions. Gestural commands are particularly helpful in hectic home environments, like the kitchen, where we often have greasy hands. Yet, gestures can be challenging to learn and recall especially for non-tech savvy users. The adoption of a user-centered approach to select the gestural commands typically allows to generate postures and moves that are easier to perform and remember. Following this approach, we report on an agile and cost-effective elicitation study based on a virtual prototype that was conducted to design a set of gestural commands to operate the lighting system embedded into an extraction hood. Spontaneous gestures by 30 participants were video recorded and categorized through computer-supported structured video analysis. Our findings indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach with able-bodied users and open to the involvement of physically and cognitively challenged individuals.