The design and evaluation of an eyes-free touchscreen interface

The eyes-free touchscreen interface is a category of interfaces for controlling devices with minimal visual attention. We apply a design framework for the generation of imaginary interface layouts and propose a series of eyes-free input interfaces for menu selection, arrow control, and data entry. These are oriented around U-shaped and diagonal layouts for optimized one-handed thumb interaction. The experiments test the participants’ cognitive performance toward the specified layouts. In addition to examining the input accuracy of eyes-free interfaces for discrete and serial tasks, interviews are conducted for more qualitative feedback on user perception. The results demonstrate that the new formats are viable for eyes-free interaction and are in line with the previous design practices of the eyes-free interface. Spatial layouts in the straight alignment (1D) placed closely to object reference frames within the functional thumb area enhance eyes-free performance accuracy.