Swipe Gesture Video Playback Control on Small Touchscreens
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Solution Overview
Problem
Controlling video playback on touchscreen devices, particularly mobile devices, is cumbersome due to size limitations and difficulty in precisely locating and moving UI elements like scrubbers with fingers, making it hard to navigate through videos efficiently.
Innovation Solution
Implementing swipe gestures on touchscreen devices to control video playback, where a swipe right advances the video by a predetermined time, swipe left rewinds it, and gestures on the edge navigate to next or previous videos, simplifying interaction and navigation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional scrubber-based controls are used on touchscreen devices, then video playback control functionality is provided, but ease of operation deteriorates due to size limitations and difficulty in precisely locating and moving UI elements with fingers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the scrubber UI element from the interface and replaces it with direct touch gesture controls on the video player itself. Users can swipe left or right directly on the video area to rewind or fast-forward, eliminating the need to locate and manipulate separate scrubber elements. This extraction principle resolves the contradiction by removing the complex UI elements that were difficult to operate on small screens while preserving full video playback control functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements multi-functional touch gestures that serve multiple purposes: swiping left rewinds video, swiping right fast-forwards, and different swipe positions can navigate to different portions of the video. This universal gesture system replaces multiple specialized UI elements (scrubbers, skip buttons, seek bars) with a single versatile interaction paradigm, improving ease of operation while reducing overall interface complexity.
2Productivity
If traditional scrubber-based controls are used on touchscreen devices, then video playback control functionality is provided, but productivity deteriorates due to cumbersome interaction and difficulty in navigating through videos efficiently
Solution Approach 1:
The patent substitutes the mechanical interaction model of dragging and dropping scrubbers with the more natural and efficient swiping gesture. The swipe gesture leverages the inherent physics of finger motion on touchscreens, allowing users to quickly gesture through video content without the precision requirements of traditional scrubber manipulation. This mechanical substitution dramatically improves both ease of operation and productivity in video navigation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary action by allowing users to swipe on different portions of the video player to pre-position the playback head at desired locations. A swipe in the upper portion can jump to the beginning of a scene, while a swipe in the lower portion can advance further, enabling users to efficiently navigate to specific video sections without incremental scrubbing. This preliminary positioning capability enhances navigation efficiency while maintaining simple gesture-based operation.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of touch gesture control of video playback is discloses. The method includes providing a video item for playback. The method also receives an indication of a touch gesture made by a user of mobile user device. The method further determines whether the touch gesture is a swipe gesture within a portion of a user interface (UI) including a media player to play the video item. The method also moves the playback of the video item from a first point in time to a second point in time by a predetermined amount of time in response to determining the touch gesture is the swipe gesture within the portion of the UI comprising the media player.