The comparison between fine motor skills traditional activities and multi-touch gestures screen design: expert reviews

Nor Azah Abdul Aziz

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to acquire expert reviews regarding a comparison between fine motor skills traditional activities with multi-touch gestures screen design. The multi-touch gestures enables children to perform multiple finger gestures such as free rotate, pinch and spread on touch screen design. The gestures are often selected because it is similar to reallife movements. Furthermore, it can enhance the interaction between users and virtual objects. Free rotate gesture enables children to rotate the objects on screen. Pinch gesture enables children to focus on the objects on screen by moving two fingers toward each other. Spread gesture enables children to make the objects look bigger on screen by moving two fingers away from each other. As these gestures involved small muscle movements, it was believed to be related to fine motor skills development. Therefore, this study aimed to get expert reviews about the pre-school children’s fine motor skills development by comparing the fine motor skills traditional activities with multi-touch gestures screen design. The research methodology for this research was qualitative. Interview sessions were been conducted to one domain expert and two teachers from National Children Development Research Centre (NCDRC). The interview consisted of twelve questions and divided into three sections referred on three gestures: free rotate, pinch and spread. The findings showed that the multitouch gestures was related to the fine motor skills development but in small scale. As for conclusion, the multitouch gestures especially free rotate, pinch and spread is an important factor that should be be taken into consideration when designing mobile apps for pre-school children.

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