Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children

•Gestures in commercial multi-touch applications for pre-kindergarteners are limited.•Pre-kindergarteners are able to perform relatively complex gestures.•Cognitive and precision issues must be handled in the design of future applications.•Gender and age differences are not significant in interaction success rates.

The direct manipulation interaction style of multi-touch technology makes it the ideal mechanism for learning activities from pre-kindergarteners to adolescents. However, most commercial pre-kindergarten applications only support tap and drag operations. This paper investigates pre-kindergarteners׳ (2–3 years of age) ability to perform other gestures on multi-touch surfaces. We found that these infants could effectively perform additional gestures, such as one-finger rotation and two-finger scale up and down, just as well as basic gestures, despite gender and age differences. We also identified cognitive and precision issues that may have an impact on the performance and feasibility of several types of interaction (double tap, long press, scale down and two-finger rotation) and propose a set of design guidelines to mitigate the associated problems and help designers envision effective interaction mechanisms for this challenging age range.