When I first used HoloLens almost two years ago I was taught the air tap. I looked a lot like the picture above. It worked for me and I was content.
A few months ago, I got my own device and started sharing how cool the device was. So then I had to teach people how to air tap.
Finger straight up in the air, then bend and the main joint to the hand.
I soon noticed a lot of people found this hard. No matter how many times i showed or demoed they would have trouble. A lot of them would bend at the wrong joint .
This type of motion doesn’t get picked up. They’d get frustrated and in a lot of cases would move on to a grabbing motion.
So hatting to my fellow MVPs who also love HoloLens I quickly discovered it isn’t just my bad teaching and that a lot of people had seen the same thing. Someone (sorry guys I can’t remember which of you mentioned this first) said try using a C and making them close it like a pinch. I tried this myself a few times and it seemed to be detected just aswell as the traditional air tap.
So at my Ignite presentation I taught half the room the official way and half the room the other. So 2nd half of the room I got them to make a C, then close
I thought that was the end of the story. The next day of of the people who went to my talk came to find me. He’d done a HoloLens experience the day before and had spent 20 mins doing air tap. He said the taught way left him with a really sore hand and that he had gone back again today and used the C I taught him the eventing before and had no issues.
So….teach people a few different ways to do a gesture to see what works for them. I’m finding the C is a great alternative so far.