We explore the chair as a referential frame for facilitating hand gesture input to control interactive systems. First, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review on the topic of interactions supported by chairs, and uncover little research on harnessing everyday chairs for input, limited to chair rotation and tilting movements. Subsequently, to understand end users’ preferences for gestures performed on the chair’s surface (i.e., on-chair gestures) and in the space around the chair (i.e., from-chair gestures), we conduct an elicitation study involving 54 participants, 3 widespread chair variations—armchair, office-chair, and stool,—and 15 referents encompassing common actions, digital content types, and navigation commands for interactive systems. Our findings reveal a preference for unimanual gestures implemented with strokes, hand poses, and touch input, with specific nuances and kinematic profiles according to the chair type. Based on our findings, we propose a range of implications for interactive systems leveraging on-chair and from-chair gestures.

We introduce ChairMX, on-chair input technology for novel interactive media consumption experiences through the chair. ChairMX is the end result of an elaborate four-stage research and development process involving a systematic literature review of the extent in which chairs have been used in interactive systems, involvement of potential end users to elicit their preferences for on-chair input, engineering on-chair gesture input recognition technology with wearables, and exploration of application opportunities. By leveraging a ring-like form factor wearable, ChairMX is a readily deployable technology, working for uninstrumented chairs everywhere and enabling a variety of use case scenarios involving interactive media consumption, from the living room to public environments.