Approachability: How People Interpret Automatic Door Movement as Gesture

Automatic doors exemplify the challenges of designing emotionally welcoming interactive systems. We attempt to broaden the automatic door’s repertoire of signals by examining how people respond to a variety of “door gestures” designed to offer different levels of approachability. In a pilot study, participants (N=48) who walked past a physical gesturing door were asked to fill out a questionnaire about that experience. In our follow-up study, participants (N=51) viewed 12 video clips depicting a person walking toward and past an automatic door that moved with different speeds and trajectories. In both studies, our Likert-scale measures and open-ended responses indicate that participants viewing the door behavior prototypes show significant uniformity in the interpretation of the door’s behavior, and that they attribute these motions as gestures with human-like characteristics such as cognition and intent.