Guided touch screen: enhanced eyes-free interaction

Touch screen based interfaces are pervading into areas such as car and industrial machinery control systems, where more tangible, physical interfaces have historically been used. This often results in a reduction in the possibility to operate the interface without the need to continuously look at the display. We present a novel approach aiming to increase the performance of eyes-free interaction with a touch screen User Interface (UI). A layer of transparent Perspex with cut-outs corresponding to the tracks of slider components in the visual UI is attached to the touch screen, guiding the interaction. A prototype system, where the user operated a remote visual task via a touch screen was evaluated in a user test with both unguided and guided conditions. The results illustrate the potential for adding a guidance layer to touch screens in applications where the output of the interaction is disconnected from the touch screen based input.