Touch Interface Gesture Control for Structured Document Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional user interfaces for portable electronic devices, such as those with small touch screens, are inflexible and cumbersome for navigating and viewing structured electronic documents and multimedia content, leading to user frustration due to complex key sequences and menu hierarchies.
Innovation Solution
A portable multifunction device with a touch-sensitive display and a graphical user interface that allows users to interact through finger gestures, enabling the enlargement and centering of content boxes within structured documents, thereby simplifying navigation and content viewing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional user interfaces with physical pushbuttons are used in portable devices, then device functionality can be accessed, but the interface becomes inflexible and requires complex key sequences and menu hierarchies that are difficult to operate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces physical pushbuttons with a touch-sensitive display that responds to finger gestures. This substitution eliminates the mechanical constraints of physical buttons, allowing the interface to be dynamically reconfigured and providing direct manipulation of content without complex menu hierarchies. The touch-sensitive display detects finger contact and performs actions directly at the contact location, making the interface both flexible and easy to operate.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the number of functions in portable devices is increased, then device capability is improved, but the user interface becomes more complex and difficult to navigate
Solution Approach 1:
The touch-sensitive display serves multiple functions: it displays content, detects user input, and directly manipulates content based on finger gestures. This universal interface handles navigation, content viewing, and interaction through a single unified mechanism rather than separate controls for each function, reducing interface structural complexity while maintaining high device functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The interface allows direct manipulation of content at the location of finger contact without requiring users to navigate through menu hierarchies or learn complex key sequences. The system automatically understands user intent based on gesture location and type, making the interface intuitive and easy to operate regardless of the number of functions available.
3Volume of moving object
If screen size of portable devices is reduced for portability, then device compactness is improved, but viewing and navigating structured electronic documents becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the navigation complexity from the interface design and replaces it with direct finger gesture manipulation. Instead of requiring users to navigate through layered menus or remember key sequences, the system responds directly to gestures at the content location, making document navigation intuitive on small screens while maintaining device compactness.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable electronic device with a touch screen display, comprises displaying at least a portion of a structured electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the structured electronic document comprises a plurality of boxes of content, and detecting a first gesture at a location on the displayed portion of the structured electronic document. A first box in the plurality of boxes at the location of the first gesture is determined. The first box on the touch screen display is enlarged and substantially centered.