Sliding feet gestures

This project was developed for the MOSIG M2 course "Human Centered Interaction" from Céline Coutrix and Francois Berard. The topic was to find a new, novel way of Human Computer Interaction. For enhancing and augmenting the interaction the feet were considered. From existing work on feet in HCI the bottlenecks of accuracy, fatigue and learnability are known. These have been addressed with big, very easy to hit targets, and feet in a natural position only sliding over the floor. The feet stand in the tool, and the sides of the frame consist of 6 buttons. These buttons trigger functions of classical keyboard shortcuts. This was realized with an Arduino Leonardo. A small user study could show that the acceptability of the tool is good, and that the tool is understood and can be controlled very fast. For further development a shorter and slimmer design should be considered. It is not yet clear how likely the user will trigger the buttons by accident. Also the material of cardboard and open cables are way too unstable. Still though, the buttons react fast, the participants were surprised in a positive way how easy and fast the functions were called.