c  The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Computer Society. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/iwc/iwv024 ShifTable: A Natural Remote Target-Selection Technique on Large Displays Kibum Kim 1,2 , Xiangshi Ren 1∗ and Yang Gao 1 1 Kochi University of Technology, 185 Miyanokuchi, Tosayamada-cho, Kami City, Kochi 782-8502, Japan 2 Chuncheon National University of Education, Gongji Ro 126, Chuncheon 200-703, Gangwon-Do, Republic of Korea ∗ Corresponding author: xsren@acm.org To simplify the selection of remote targets on large displays, a novel technique called ShifTable is presented in this paper. With ShifTable, users move a finger or a pen towards a desired target, and the whole screen carrying the target shifts faster in the opposite direction, towards the finger or pen. We conducted two experiments to compare ShifTable with unaided direct selection (baseline), Gesture Select and Pan. The results show that ShifTable was significantly faster than unaided direct selection and Gesture Select in selection time, and outperformed Gesture Select in error rate. In addition, elderly participants were able to copy-and-paste targets significantly faster with ShifTable than with Pan. Although ShifTable’s simple operation allows users to easily and naturally select remote targets on a large display, we also found usability issues that need to be addressed for this intuitive technique to be more widely accepted by the elderly users. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Presents natural and simple remote target-selection interfaces for large vertical and horizontal displays. • Describes user studies with elderly people who have no experience on large multi-touch displays. • Articulates the features of ShifTable for the elderly users and presents an analysis of differences between ShifTable and other interfaces. Keywords: interaction paradigms; pointing; gestural input; pen computing; tables and interactive surfaces; elderly/seniors Received 30 December 2014; Revised 19 June 2015; Accepted 22 June 2015 1. INTRODUCTION Large displays are becoming increasingly popular as commer- cial products. Researchers have paid a lot of attention to large screen interaction, focusing on issues like large-scale scientific data visualization (Ni et al., 2006) and mid-air pan-and-zoom techniques (Nancel et al., 2013). It is true that large displays can be operated from a distance by a mouse or a keyboard; however, there are many situations where users need to or prefer to manipulate icons at close range such as on large multi-touch tablets. Unlike interacting with desktop devices where all the objects are within the users’ reach, users have to walk to select distant targets when working with large dis- plays. Such inconvenience not only causes physical tiredness but also interrupts the users’ workflow. To solve this problem, researchers have proposed two kinds of technique. One is interaction from a distance with an intermediate device (e.g. Aliakseyeu et al., 2006; Antle et al., 2011; Iannacci et al., 2011; Parker et al., 2005; Shoemaker et al., 2007). The other is interaction from a distance with no intermediate devices, as for example where targets are selected by using a ray-casting model, e.g. Banerjee et al. (2011) and Vogel and Balakrishnan (2005), while others select remote targets by bringing tar- gets near to them, e.g. Baudisch et al. (2003), Bezerianos and Balakrishnan (2005) and Bragdon and Ko (2011). However, these techniques ignored two important features in practice; (i) selection with devices or gestures can be difficult to operate, Interacting with Computers, 2015 Interacting with Computers Advance Access published July 24, 2015 by guest on November 9, 2015 http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from