TouchRoller: A Touch-sensitive Cylindrical Input Device for GUI Manipulation of Interactive TVs

Abstract

The two main tasks of a smart TV GUI are menu navigation and free pointing. Traditional remotes with directional keys are suitable for menu navigation but may not be so for free pointing. More recent remotes with a two-dimensional (2D) pointing device are suitable for free pointing but may not be so for menu navigation. To support both types of tasks well, we devised a new input device called TouchRoller. We expect that it can support both types of tasks well because it has a separable control structure and a continuous input property. A comparative user study showed that the performance of TouchRoller is comparable to that of directional keys for menu navigation and 2D pointing devices for free pointing. In addition, it was most favored by the participants, and NASA TLX test results showed that TouchRoller demands the lowest task load.