Unifone: designing for auxiliary finger input in one-handed mobile interactions

We present Unifone, a prototype mobile device that explores the use of auxiliary finger input in one-handed mobile interaction. Using force-distributed pressure sensing along the side of device, we examine how squeeze-based gestures impact four common mobile interactions: scrolling, map navigating, text formatting, and application switching. We evaluated the use of Unifone in these tasks using one-handed interactions by the non-dominant hand. Our user study shows that one-handed isometric gestures perform best when they augment rather than restrict or alter the primary pointing action of the thumb and, generally, are suitable for coarse isometric pressure input.