Studying the Visual Representation of Microgestures

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The representations of microgestures are essentials for researchers presenting their results through academic papers and system designers proposing tutorials to novice users. However, those representations remain disparate and inconsistent. As a first attempt to investigate how to best graphically represent microgestures, we created 21 designs, each depicting static and dynamic versions of 4 commonly used microgestures (tap, swipe, flex and hold). We first studied these designs in a quantitative online experiment with 45 participants. We then conducted a qualitative laboratory experiment in Augmented Reality with 16 participants. Based on the results, we provide design guidelines on which elements of a microgesture should be represented and how. In particular, it is recommended to represent the actuator and the trajectory of a microgesture. Also, although preferred by users, dynamic representations are not considered better than their static counterparts for depicting a microgesture and do not necessarily result in a better user recognition.