UI gestures for Kinect, Kinect-type devices

Question

On touch screen devices, there appears to have evolved a standard set of gestures, e.g.

• pinch and spread with two fingers for zoom in and zoom out
• swipe with one finger to scroll a document

We're developing a (we'd like to think) minority-report style user interface using the kinect.

What UI gestures could possibly be used be used for a kinect-like device?

For example, to accomplish a click, we have considered the following:

• elbow joint flexion angle delta: extension=>mouseDown flexion=>mouseUp
• distance of hand from camera: closer=>mouseDown further=>mouseUp
• hand size: handInFist=>mouseDown handOpen=>mouseUp

Completely brand new/ off-the-beaten-track/ innovative suggestions are welcome!!

Answer 1

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox had an article about first impressions of Kinect gestural UI. One could observe a few different implementations and ideologies for gestures there, varying by the application. The article is about game UIs, so it might not suit as such to your case but gives good tips, anyhow.

Some thoughts about gesture UIs:

• Pros
  • no need for a controlling device
  • multi-user possibilities
• Cons
  • users have to memorize gestures (if they are not shown on screen)
  • no universal gestures (yet)
  • no (haptic) feedback
  • possible accidental activation of gestures