Child-display interaction: exploring avatar-based touchless gestural interfaces

During the last decade, touchless gestural interfaces have been widely studied as one of the most promising interaction paradigms in the context of pervasive displays. In particular, avatars and silhouettes have been proved to be effective in communicating the touchless gestural interactivity supported by displays. In the paper, we take a child-display interaction perspective by exploring avatar-based touchless gestural interfaces. We believe that large displays offer an opportunity to stimulate child experience and engagement, for instance when learning about art, as well as bringing a number of challenges. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) identifying the relevant aspects of children's interactions with a large display based on a touchless avatar-based interface, and 2) understanding the impact on recalling the content that arises from the interaction. We engaged 107 children over a period of five days during a public event at the university premises. Collected data were analyzed, and the outcomes transformed into three lessons learnt for informing the future design.