Understanding 3D Mid-Air Hand Gestures with Interactive Surfaces and Displays: A Systematic Literature Review

3D gesture based systems are becoming ubiquitous and there are many mid-air hand gestures that exist for interacting with digital surfaces and displays. There is no well defined gesture set for 3D mid-air hand gestures which makes it difficult to develop applications that have consistent gestures. To understand what gestures exist we conducted the first comprehensive systematic literature review on mid-air hand gestures following existing research methods. The results of the review identified 65 papers where the mid-air hand gestures supported tasks for selection, navigation, and manipulation. We also classified the gestures according to a gesture classification scheme and identified how these gestures have been empirically evaluated. The results of the review provide a richer understanding of what mid-air hand gestures have been designed, implemented, and evaluated in the literature which can help developers design better user experiences for digital interactive surfaces and displays.