The Design and Implementation of a Cloth-Based Computing Interface, with Applications

Abstract

We present an interactive graphical user interface for textile displays. While electronic displays are emerging in a variety of domains their interfaces have not kept pace with their use. Our work has resulted in an intuitive interface on cloth, a common surface present in numerous user settings, including a wide variety of medical settings. In addition to using cloth as a display mechanism, our interface allows interaction with the interface, by direct manipulation of the cloth. Interaction gestures flow from the cloth metaphor, and include natural actions such as pinching and stretching the cloth surface, as well as more traditional interactions such as touch. We discuss the design and development process behind creating our prototype interface, and treat in significant detail the development of our gestured interactions. We go on to describe applications for our system, which include applications for every-day users, as well as expert users in the medical domain. Finally we include user feedback on our interface, and with this feedback we discuss our conclusions and examine areas for future work.