Index finger and thumb kinematics and performance measurements for common touchscreen gestures

Abstract This study aimed to quantify differences in 7 touchscreen gestures. Eighteen participants performed index finger tapping, sliding in 4 orthogonal directions, and index finger and thumb pinch and stretch gestures on a touchscreen tablet computer. We hypothesized that two finger gestures would require longer task completion time and greater finger joint excursions than sliding gestures using only the index finger. We measured task completion times and finger joint kinematics. Tapping showed the fastest average (±SD) task completion time, 567(190) ms, of all gestures (p