Understanding user gestures for manipulating 3D objects from touchscreen inputs

Multi-touch interfaces have emerged with the widespread use of smartphones. Although a lot of people interact with 2D applications through touchscreens, interaction with 3D applications remains little explored. Most of 3D object manipulation techniques have been created by designers and users are generally put aside from the design creation process. We conducted a user study to better understand how non-technical users interact with a 3D object from touchscreen inputs. The experiment has been conducted while users manipulated a 3D cube with three points of view for rotations, scaling and translations (RST). Sixteen users participated and 432 gestures were analyzed. To classify data, we introduce a taxonomy for 3D manipulation gestures with touchscreens. Then, we identify a set of strategies employed by users to realize the proposed cube transformations. Our findings suggest that each participant uses several strategies with a predominant one. Finally, we propose some guidelines to help designers in the creation of more user friendly tools.