Micro interactions and Multi dimensional Graphical User Interfaces in the Design of Wrist Worn Wearables

Abstract

Advances in technology in the past decades, including miniaturized components, flexible materials and novel sensors, fostered advances in Wearable Computing. With many different form factors available and diverse potential features, wearable computers have been successfully applied in various domains. Despite the large potential and versatility of wearable devices, and wrist worn computers in particular, it is still a major challenge to design efficiently their user interfaces and interactive solutions. The design of efficient interaction solutions is complex due to the dynamic constraints and requirements of the contexts of use where the user interaction takes place and also due to inherent limitations of wearable devices, which involve processing, power, and interactive surfaces. This paper presents the main challenges in the design of interaction and interfaces for wrist worn wearables, and to address a major requirement in this domain, of quick interactions through small displays, it also discusses two interaction paradigms in a design approach for wrist worn devices, integrating micro interactions and multi dimensional graphical user interfaces.