Tilt-Responsive Techniques for Digital Drawing Boards

Hugo Romat, Nathalie Henry Riche, Michel Pahud, Christopher Collins, Christian Holz, Adam Riddle, William Buxton, and Ken Hinckley. Proceedings of ACM UIST 2020.
Abstract

Drawing boards offer a self-stable work surface that is continuously adjustable. On digital displays, such as the Microsoft Surface Studio, these properties open up a class of techniques that sense and respond to tilt adjustments. Each display posture—whether angled high, low, or somewhere in-between—affords some activities, but not others. Because what is appropriate also depends on the application and task, we explore a range of app-specific transitions between reading vs. writing (annotation), public vs. personal, shared person-space vs. task-space, and other nuances of input and feedback, contingent on display angle. Continuous responses provide interactive transitions tailored to each use-case. We show how a variety of knowledge work scenarios can use sensed display adjustments to drive context-appropriate transitions, as well as technical software details of how to best realize these concepts. A preliminary remote user study suggests that techniques must balance effort required to adjust tilt, versus the potential benefits of a sensed transition.