Animated Visual Feedback for Touch Obstruction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Touch-based interactions on computing devices often obscure parts of the touchscreen display, preventing users from seeing visual feedback during gestures due to the user's hand or finger covering the screen.
Innovation Solution
The computing device determines the region likely to be obscured by the user's hand and initiates animated visual feedback from a coordinate outside this obscured area, ensuring the user receives confirmation of touch gestures despite the obstruction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the user touches the touchscreen to activate a user interface control, then the control responds to the touch gesture, but the user's hand or finger blocks the view of the touchscreen display during the interaction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dimensionality change by transitioning the visual feedback from the traditional 2D touchscreen plane to a 3D spatial dimension. The feedback animation is rendered at a depth position behind the touchscreen surface, allowing it to be visible to the user without being blocked by their hand or finger. This spatial relocation resolves the contradiction by maintaining touch activation functionality while eliminating the visibility obstruction problem through three-dimensional space utilization.
2Reliability
If the user's hand covers the touchscreen during interaction, then touch input is registered, but visual feedback cannot be seen by the user
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary element - the three-dimensional feedback animation - that mediates between the touch input and the user's visual perception. Instead of directly displaying feedback on the touchscreen surface (which would be blocked by the hand), the system creates an intermediate visual representation in 3D space that can be perceived by the user without requiring line-of-sight to the touchscreen surface. This intermediary resolves the information loss by delivering visual feedback through an alternative transmission path that circumvents the hand obstruction.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are described for providing animated visual feedback in a manner that increases the likelihood that the feedback will be seen. When a touch-based interaction with a user interface element is detected, a position, orientation, and/or size of the gesturing user's hand and/or digit are determined by assessing factors such as the size and shape of the touched region on the touchscreen, the position of the user interface element relative to the edges of the touchscreen, the orientation of the touchscreen device, and other criteria. An eclipsed region of the touchscreen may be determined, and a starting coordinate for the animated visual feedback may be determined based on the eclipsed region. The animated feedback may be drawn for a determined duration, and may be reversed or erased if the touch-based interaction ceases before the duration is completed.