Implementation and Evaluation of Peripheral Light Feedback for Mid-Air Gesture Interaction in the Car

Mid-air gesture interaction has been identified as a promising input modality in smart environments such as modern cars. Unlike touch input, users usually have little experience with gesture interaction. In combination with a lack of haptic feedback they often struggle to execute gestures correctly. To compensate this, users require adequate feedback that supports them already during the execution of a gesture. We conducted a user study with 21 participants in a driving simulator that examined the benefit of additional light feedback for gestures with different complexity while driving. Although we found no benefit of peripheral light feedback for simple confirmation gestures, there was a significant increase of accuracy for more complex pointing gestures. Our results imply that the value of peripheral light feedback increases along with the complexity of the gesture at the cost of increased attention drawn by the feedback.