Recognizers: $1  •  $N  •  $P  •  $P+  •  $Q  •  Impact of $-family
Tools: GECKo  •  GREAT  •  GHoST  •  AGATe

Impact of $-family

Gesture recognition was once difficult, arcane, and specialized. Then in 2007 came the $1 recognizer and the $-family that followed, making stroke gestures easy to add to any user interface.

The $-family recognizers, of which $1, $N, $P, and $Q are canonical members, along with core enhancements Protractor and $P+, have had significant impact on the use of gestures in interactive prototypes. The $1 paper, published at UIST 2007, is that conference's 4th most-cited paper. Google Scholar shows the $1 paper being cited over 1000 times. Beyond citations, $1 has been implemented in hundreds of projects. Its use has gone beyond its initial intent for stroke-gesture recognition to things like hand-pose recognition.

The $1 paper and its siblings led to numerous follow-ons by other researchers, leading to the "extended $-family" of technologies. All adopt the same philosophy espoused in the original $1 paper: to take what are typically complex, arcane technologies understood only by specialists and make them easy to convey, implement, and deploy on any platform for non-specialists whose objective is quickly enhancing interactivity. Accordingly, the $1 paper began a trend, followed by other $-family publications, of putting their entire pseudocode necessary for implementation directly in their papers.

Some of the core $-family publications were recognized, including:

Beyond academic impact, $1 and the $-family have been rapidly absorbed into industry projects. For example:

The extended $-family

$1 and the other canonical $-family recognizers inspired other researchers to develop follow-ons that share the $-family motivation. We and their authors consider the following to be the "extended family" of the $-family recognizers. They are listed in chronological order:

Some examples of the $-family in industry prototypes and projects:

The $-family recognizers have been used in industry prototypes and projects:

Some examples of the $-family in others' published research projects:

Many published research projects have used the $-family recognizers, especially $1:

$-family implementations by others

Over the years, many developers have sent in their own implementations of our $-family recognizers in various programming languages. We make no representations as to the correctness or completeness of these implementations, but offer them here "as is." (We also don't check these links very often, so some may have gone stale.) (Have one to add? Email wobbrock@uw.edu.)

$1

$N

$P

$Q


Copyright © 2018-2022 Jacob O. Wobbrock. All rights reserved.
Last updated August 8, 2022.