SME Meeting: Dr. Min-Hyung Choi

Dr. Choi is a busy man. Currently the Director of the Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments Laboratory, he’s also the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Future Game Technology. No one can doubt that he is an excellent subject matter expert in HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and specifically in the subject I’m interested in, full-arm gestures.

Being as I have just come to terms with being ABSOLUTELY WRONG in my initial thesis, I was relieved that Dr. Choi started the meeting by saying that while these sorts of gesture interfaces were very pretty for media and entertaining at trade shows, natural gesture interfaces are not at all viable as an interface generally. There may be edge-cases – like use in an operating room – or gaming applications where requirements are more concentrated on satisfying ‘experience’, but full-arm gestures aren’t a viable candidate for replacing current UIs.  Or as Dr. Choi put it: “People find it interesting, but is it really effective enough to replace our conventional modes?”

(My money is now on NO, sir. Don’t ask me what I thought last week.)

He mentioned that the pinch-and-zoom gesture on the trackpad, by the way, isn’t a ‘gesture’. It’s 2D to 2D mapping – my hand moves in a 2d plane and the cursor moves in a 2d plane. There is great difficulty right now because when we see something on computer which is 3d it’s actually 2d (being, as it is, on a computer screen!) and it’s hard enough for our brains to ‘map’ that 2d object onto a 3d visual and then bring it out and map out movements onto a 2d mouse-movement – A 3d interface isn’t better but more cumbersome, requiring 3d interface to 2d mind map to 2d on the screen to 3d virtual object. “Especially,” Dr Choi adds, “with the current natural-gesture recognition success rate.” We went on to talk about the glitchy nature of gesture detection and that even in games the gesture isn’t well recognized or processed.

TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.

So though he did admit that as the technology gets better there may be some gestures that make their way into the mainstream, Dr. Choi believes that full-arm gestures are not a viable user interface for everyday workings.

I got the whole 30 minute interview on my little flip-cam video. I know I know – I’m a digital design major and I’m recording video on an RCA Small Wonder from, like, the 80s.

I’m old school, yo. Give me 6 months and I’ll be hip again.