Gestures Around the Ear

Kyle Polich (0:05)

Welcome to Data Skeptic Human-Computer Interaction. Today, we're going to get into head-based wearables and gesture design. I speak to Shimon, a PhD candidate at the Sharenton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo. We do a quick tour of head-based wearables, what kind of options are out there, and what the state of the art is.

Then we focus quite a bit on his flagship work, a gesture-sensing earbud that reads swipes and taps beside your face.

If you've ever done any VR, you can imagine how useful that could be. And if you haven't, we'll elaborate more on that idea.

Shimon (0:46)

My name is Sheik Shaan Arifin Shimon and I go by Shimon. I'm a doctoral candidate and a PhD researcher at David Sheraton School of Computer Science at University of Waterloo.

And I focus on human-computer interaction in my research area. More specifically, I focus on how users can design new gestures for head-based wearables. So that's like the overarching area that I'm focusing on.

Kyle Polich (1:19)

So I think head-based wearables, they're not necessarily new, but when you think about the history of this area, where does it begin in your mind?

Shimon (1:27)

Well, I'd say the most common two references that we'd like to use is, one, the ear-based wearables, because people have been using earbuds for a very, very long time. Earbuds is nothing new. You've been using this since like, Walkman's like when they're in the mid-80s. And as we are talking, we're using these headphones, like the big ones that cover our ears.

Recently, in the last couple of years, we've been looking into VR glasses and like, you know, Metas augmented reality glasses that superimpose these informational texts onto the real world. Or you can have your own reality and virtual reality. But beyond that, you also have stuff like smart jewelries. People wear like, you know, can wear smart jewelries on their ears or on their head. Head-based wearables, the most important would be the glasses, and the ones that are on your ear. And ones that are on your ear can be your headphones, your earbuds, or like regular audio devices for people who have trouble hearing. So medicinal purposes and like regular devices. So those are the most common things that you see. And if you want to go into deeper on which is the most common one that you see around these days, I'd say that would be your in-ear earables, Apple earpods.

So that's one of the key areas that I focus on my research.

Kyle Polich (3:01)

Would you say, and I guess this is a hypothetical question because it's about the future, but I'm curious if you have an opinion on where we are in the way in which the form is going to evolve. A while ago, all of our earbuds had wired. They were all connected. Now we've lost the wires and the wires probably aren't coming back. But also our ears are one shape. Our ears don't change. And it seems like maybe this technology would evolve into a perfect form or something like that, and then we'll just have it. Do you think that's the case or is there more evolution to be done with the way in which these devices are defined and built?

Shimon (3:37)

That's a really good question. There are current focuses that are looking to the perfect form factors, but there are focuses on how ear-based variables can fit into your ear perfectly. So there's the size of the device and how it fits into your ear canal. And I believe that companies like Apple and Bose are looking to how these devices themselves can fit perfectly to the mold of your ear. So people are right now focusing on two things. One, the form factor itself and how it touches head and can a more perfect molding be done to individual shapes.

So on the topic of if the overarching form factor is going to change, I don't think that the shape is going to change that much or the connectivity. We have moved more on to the wireless form, but I think the next evolution in the form factor would be to molding to individual needs. Because although we have a common ear shape, different people's ear canals can have different shapes and like the in-ear buds that we use, it can be made into a more perfect molding. It can happen that you can go into the Apple Store, they do a scan of your ear canal and they give you that perfect earbuds that can fit into it.

Kyle Polich (5:08)

So I think earbuds are pretty ubiquitous. I have a pair that I wear more during the day than I don't, I think. But I don't want to take for granted that every listener knows the experience, or maybe they have some knockoff ones or something like that. Could you describe what you think is the state of the art in terms of what these devices can do besides playing audio?