Pen-Based Gestures: An Approach to Reducing Screen Clutter in Mobile Computing

Mobile computing is an area of high growth despite having some serious design issues. It is difficult to increase the size of the screen because of the device’s physical constraints. Consequently, as mobile applications have incorporated more functionality, screen clutter has increased. One method of reducing clutter is to remove visual controls and use pen-based gestures instead. We describe a cinema listing application for a Palm OS device that implements pen-based gestures as the main input method. Two methods are used to communicate the options available on each screen: audio cues and small visual prompts. Preliminary results suggest that buttons can be removed from the screen without detriment to task accuracy or user performance.