Augmenting Mobile Phone Interaction with Face-Engaged Gestures

The movement of a user's face, easily detected by a smartphone's front camera, is an underexploited input modality for mobile interactions. We introduce three sets of face-engaged interaction techniques for augmenting the traditional mobile inputs, which leverages the combination of the head movements with touch gestures and device motions, all sensed via the phone's built-in sensors. We systematically present the space of design considerations for mobile interactions using one or more of the three input modalities (i.e., touch, motion, and head). The additional affordances of the proposed techniques expand the mobile interaction vocabulary, and can facilitate unique usage scenarios such as one-hand or touch-free interaction. An initial evaluation was conducted and users had positive reactions to the new techniques, indicating the promise of an intuitive and convenient user experience.