A Dartmouth-led team has come up with a solution by developing WristWhirl— a smartwatch prototype that uses the wrist wearing the watch as an always-available joystick to perform common touch screen gestures with one-handed continuous input.
Four usage scenarios for WristWhirl using off-the-shelf games and Google Map were tested: 1) a gesture shortcuts app was created, which allowed users to access shortcuts by drawing gestures; 2) a music player app was created, which allowed users to scroll through songs through wrist-swipes and play a selected song by double tapping the thumb and index fingers; 3) a map app was implemented for which 2D maps could be panned and zoomed depending on where the watch was held in relation to one’s body; and 4) game input, which often requires continuous input was tested, for which Tetris was played using a combination of wrist swipes, wrist extension and wrist flexion.
More information at Dartmouth University web page
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