Shamanic Interfaces for computers and gaming platforms

Abstract. Natural user interfaces are becoming widespread as a focus of research in human-computer interaction. Gestural interaction is an important part of this field, but generally done by mimicry. This raises concerns such as the necessity of creating abstractions for non-imitable commands and the difficulty of finding gestures that are meaningful for a worldwide audience. Cultural backgrounds impart different meanings to gestures. In this research, we explore the concept of allowing individuals to inter-act with computer systems using gesture from the individual’s own cul-ture, focusing on a software engineering approach to support this idea. The aim is to leverage the rich semantics of non-mimicry cultural gestures to expand gestural interaction to support abstract commands for instruc-tions that do not have a matching gestural imitation. This approach also holds the potential to support the learning of gestural commands, by linking them to the cultural background of each user. The proposed software engineering approach demonstrates the feasibility of planning applications with commands in mind, not specific gestures, separating concerns between gestural identification (which can include cultural background elements) and actual commands