Touch Sensitive Bezel for Precise Selection on Small Screens
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Solution Overview
Problem
Small touch-screen devices, such as smart watches, face challenges in user interface control due to their small screen size, where touching the screen obscures a significant portion and requires high accuracy, leading to difficulties in precise selection and potential accidental choices.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a touch sensitive bezel with sensors that detect horizontal and vertical positions on the bezel, allowing users to control crosshairs on the screen for precise selection without obscuring the view, and enabling remote proportional selection on other devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a user touches the screen to select items, then selection can be made, but the screen is obscured and accuracy is difficult to achieve
Solution Approach 1:
The bezel acts as an intermediary input device between the user and the screen. Users interact with the bezel (which has tactile feedback and is easier to target) rather than directly touching the screen, thereby improving selection accuracy while avoiding screen obscuration. The bezel translates physical touches into corresponding screen location selections.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention adds a dimensional shift by using the bezel (surrounding the screen) as the input interface instead of the screen surface itself. This spatial relocation of the input mechanism allows users to select items without obscuring the display, as the interaction occurs at the periphery rather than on the display surface.
2Volume of moving object
If the screen size is made small for portable devices, then portability is improved, but user interface control becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The bezel serves as an intermediary that provides a larger, more manageable interaction surface than the small screen. Users can easily target and manipulate controls on the bezel without needing to precisely touch the small screen, thereby maintaining portability while improving interface control ease.
Solution Approach 2:
The bezel is segmented into multiple functional zones (horizontal selection area, vertical selection area, confirmation area) that correspond to different screen regions. This segmentation allows users to control different aspects of the interface through discrete bezel interactions, making the small-screen interface more manageable.
3Ease of operation
If touch targets on the screen are made larger, then ease of selection is improved, but the display area is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The bezel acts as an intermediary that provides enlarged tactile targets for selection. Users interact with larger bezel surfaces to select items that appear on the screen, thereby improving selection ease without reducing the display area. The bezel targets are physically larger and easier to target than on-screen elements.
Data Source
AI summary
Approaches presented herein provide for user interface selection through a touch sensitive bezel. More specifically, a touch sensitive bezel, in a device having a display at least partially surrounded by the touch sensitive bezel, has a set of sensors that detect a presence of a finger of a user on the touch sensitive bezel. The touch sensitive bezel senses a touch of a user finger to the bezel indicating a section of the display. A position on the display associated with the indicated section is determined. A confirming action by the user can also be sensed and a selection of an item at the position on the display is registered in response to sensing the confirming action.