Multi-touch Gesture Scrolling via Partial Outer Ring Interface
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Solution Overview
Problem
The small size of electronic devices makes traditional user interfaces like keyboards and touchpads impractical, leading to cumbersome navigation through large amounts of content on touch screen displays, where users struggle to efficiently locate desired information.
Innovation Solution
A graphical user interface featuring a partial outer ring on a touch screen display that revolves a list of objects based on touch gestures, with scroll rates dependent on the number of touch points, allowing for fast or slow scrolling to facilitate browsing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional keyboard or touchpad interfaces are used, then precise input and navigation are achieved, but device size increases making them impractical for portable devices
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the display surface and input surface into a single touch-sensitive display, eliminating the need for separate physical input devices like keyboards or touchpads. The display screen itself detects and responds to user touches, merging two previously separate functions into one integrated component, thereby maintaining compact device size while enabling precise input through multi-touch gesture recognition
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from single-point input to multi-point input by recognizing patterns across multiple touch points on the display surface. This dimensional expansion from 1D linear input to 2D spatial pattern recognition enables sophisticated navigation gestures (swiping, pinching, rotating) that provide precision comparable to traditional interfaces while maintaining the compact form factor
2Volume of moving object
If all content is displayed on a small touch screen, then device portability is maintained, but content becomes difficult to locate and scrolling becomes time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic scrolling behavior where the scroll rate adjusts based on the number of simultaneous touch points. A single touch point produces slow, precise scrolling for careful navigation, while multiple touch points trigger fast scrolling for quickly traversing large content sets. This dynamic adaptation allows users to efficiently locate content without excessive scrolling time while maintaining the compact display size
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the scroll rate parameter in response to varying touch gesture parameters. When detecting multi-touch gestures, the system increases the scroll rate parameter to enable faster content traversal; when detecting single-touch gestures, it decreases the scroll rate for precise positioning. This parameter adaptation optimizes content search efficiency without requiring a larger display area
3Productivity
If fast scrolling is used to quickly browse content, then time efficiency improves, but precision in locating specific items deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs periodic switching between fast and slow scroll modes based on user interaction patterns. During fast scrolling with multiple touch points, the system periodically allows transition to slow scrolling with fewer touch points when the user desires to examine or select specific items. This periodic modulation between speed and precision modes enables both efficient content browsing and accurate item selection within the same interface
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are described for generating a graphical user interface for presenting a list of objects. The graphical user interface can include a selection zone encompassed by a partial outer ring that is configured to present a portion of the list of objects. Rotational touch gestures detected in the selection zone can cause the list of objects to scroll around the partial outer ring. The scroll rate of the objects can depend on the number of touch inputs detected as part of the touch gesture.