Once all the data reduction was completed, one of the primary questions we had was, what gestures did participants create the most frequently?
To find out the answer to this question, we first sorted the data from most frequent to least frequent. This resulted in a data table that shows the gestures created, the number of people in each country that created that gesture, the number of experts and novices who created that gesture, and the total number of participants overall who created that gesture, all sorted from most frequent to least frequent.
When looking at the data, we wanted to know, statistically, which gesture(s) were created the most often (which we termed the “winner”) and which gestures were created the least often (which we termed the “tail”).
To identify the statistical winners, we ran a chi square test and compared the top gesture to the next top gesture and if there was no statistical difference between them, we grouped them together in the winner group. We then compared the top gesture to the third-top gesture and if there was no statistical difference between them, we added the third-top gesture to the winner group. We continued in this way until we found a statistical difference and then we stopped. Figure 1 describes this process.
Figure 1. Chi-Square Testing
To identify the tail, we did the same thing only we used a Fisher’s exact test (due to the low number of observations) and compared the lowest gesture to the next lowest gesture. If there was no statistical difference, we grouped them together into the “tail.” We then compared the lowest gesture to the third-lowest gesture and again if there was no statistical difference, we added the third-lowest gesture to the tail. We continued in this way until we found a statistical difference and then we stopped. Figure 2 shows this process:
Figure 2. Fisher Exact Testing
Below are all the results for all 30 actions, with the winners at the top and tail at the bottom in gray. The top winners are highlighted in yellow.
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Dan is the Director of Human Factors & Research at HumanCentric in the United States. Dan received his Ph.D. in Human Factors in 1994 and has been designing and evaluating user interfaces for a variety of companies since then. When Dan is not studying gestures for work, he is the receipient of them from his 2 children. 