taxonomy of ui gestures

For our last stretch of the semester we are looking at gestural interfaces in conjunction with our database. I thought about how the seven colors of health (my database) inform the way that people eat and shop, so looked in those contexts for naturally occurring gestures. These grand gestures that make up my taxonomy include: scanning an object at checkout, getting an item off the shelf, eating food with different types of cutlery, &c.

I found it challenging to try and utilize these specific gestures in an interface—even though their use in context was similar to it's use within the database—because it instantly became vaguely symbolic. The gesture used to interact with the information had to be a learned behavior that challenged existing conventions. While challenging conventions is awesome, I found it to be particularly cumbersome and exhaustive in this case. In one iteration, with a fridge interaction, my user looked like a genie in front of this appliance silently commanding recipe shopping at will. (enjoy below)

I ended up taking a slightly different route for my final project, where it became less about the gesture and it's meaning within the system, and more about the visual feedback during interaction.

And yes, this all happens in the future...haha