Paper Reading #8: Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

References
Yang Li.  "Gesture search: a tool for fast mobile data access". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios
Yang Li received his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley. Li helped found the Design Use Build community while a professor at the University of Washington. He is now a Senior Research Scientist at Google.

Summary 

• Hypothesis -Yang Li theorized that some methods of phone input are inappropriate for some situations; for example, voice commands in a quiet environment is generally frowned upon. Also in some situations, touch-based typing is difficult to accomplish. The hypothesis is that Gesture Search is a better alternative to access mobile data.
• Method/Content - He developed an Android app that he made publicly available to the company (Google). The application logged user data and after a certain period was used to analyze performance. Users were not required to use it at any time and could stop using it when they wanted. However, when choosing which data to analyze, he required that the user used it at least once per week. Yang then set up a study in which he asked for users to perform certain actions on a mobile device using standard GUI interfaces. They were not told what the study was about so as to create a natural environment. 
• Results - After comparing the two types of mobile interactions, they hypothesis was supported in certain situations. Users typically used the Gesture Search for contacts, occasionally for apps, and very rarely for web pages. The majority of searches were found quickly, in under 3 seconds. The average rating for the app was 4/5 stars, with few outliers. Most users were happy with the app due to the ability to find information without going through a hierarchy of menus. 
• Content -  Yang Li developed an Android application that utilized gesture input to search through a smart phone for contacts, music, and other such information. He solves several problems of ambiguity by using a time-out method to decide whether a stroke is still the same letter. Also, he gives search results weights; when something is selected, its weight increases. With time, weights fade and they don't show at the top of the search results any longer. After developing the application, he studies people's usage of the application and compares it to GUI based operation.

 Discussion
I actually downloaded the app and used it for a while myself. It was useful occasionally, but mostly only when I was holding something in one hand. However, the biggest thing I didn't like about it was that it didn't search through files. That was the one thing I wanted it to do; finding a contact for me takes about 5 seconds anyway. However, going into a file manager, navigating through folders and scrolling through files can take a good bit of time, especially when there are many small files in the same folder. It seems to me that it would not take a huge amount of effort to extend this application to search through the phone's memory, so I was disappointed to find that it did not support this functionality.