We decided to focus on [HoloLens] and came up with ideas about the input system of the device.

Topic candidates

We suggested four candidates and got feedbacks from professor.

1. Combining thimble with a joystick

Inspired from IBM’s TrackPoint (the red one), we thought of putting a control sensor on a thimble-looking device so it isn’t too obtrusive but intuitive for the user to move the cursor.

2. Coming up with new gestures

We found out that there were only two types of gestures in using HoloLens, so we wanted to make and evaluate gestures.

This is probably not a good idea. There is a lot of gesture work out there already and most of the work for gesture interfaces is highly technical.

3. Implementing a trackpad

We thought that having a trackpad on the palm might be useful because the control interface is fixed and therefore makes it easier for the user to move the cursor.

There’s also lots of work on the hand/palm as an input surface. This is a potentially good topic, but you will need read about this area a bit first. Maybe start from this paper and see if other interesting papers cite it (or are cited by it). On body input can be a technically hard topic to work on.

4. Using smartphones (similar to #3)

We believe that people would have smartphones everywhere just like they do now for the next few years, and it would be nice if smartphones could be used as a trackpad.

Probably not that interesting. Some AR glasses already ship with trackpads. Many VR headsets (e.g. daydream, gear VR) also ship with small trackpads.