Measuring the effect of public vs private context on the kinematics of smartphone motion gestures

In this paper, the effect of social exposure on smartphone motion gestures is investigated. A within-subject repeated measures experiment was conducted where participants performed sets of motion gestures on a smartphone in both private and public locations. Using data from the smartphoneu0027s accelerometer, we found that the location had a significant effect on both the duration and intensity of the participantsu0027 gestures. As a result, we argue that it may not be sufficient for gesture input systems to be designed and calibrated purely in private lab settings. Instead, motion gesture input systems for smartphones may need to be aware of the changing context of the device and to account for this in algorithms that interpret gestural input.