Tool Support for Rapid Prototyping of 3D-Gesture Interaction

The ProGesture project aims to create an innovative software tool for rapid prototyping of 3D gesture interaction. It is intended to strengthen the participation of users in early development phases and to support the validation of gestures according to various quality criteria, such as ergonomics or user experience/UX.

"3D gestures" (short: gestures) refer to non-contact body poses and movements performed by the user in space. They are used to interact with an interactive system.

The projected ProGesture tool is intended to support the central work steps of gesture development, interaction design and evaluation . The three functional areas of the ProGesture tool are derived from this: The integration of gesture editor, interaction editor and test environment will allow a new kind of close interaction between the functional areas: It makes it possible to switch back and forth between them during development - in the different phases of the development process and with different approaches. All in all, this creates - to our knowledge for the first time - a coherent tool for the flexible development of 3D gesture interactions that takes early user participation into account.

The target group are developers, i.e. employees of companies, such as software developers, interaction designers, ergonomists, etc., who develop and/or test 3D gesture interactions.

After the end of the project, the pre-competitive version of the ProGesture tool created will be commercially and scientifically exploited. Fulda University of Applied Sciences is planning further development to product maturity and licensing to interested companies. The development partner Pidoco GmbH will co-distribute ProGesture with its own software, which has been expanded in the project, and the application partners EDAG Production Solutions GmbH & Co KG and SYZYGY Deutschland GmbH will use their newly acquired competences to offer gesture interaction to their customers.