Snap! snap! SNAP! Acoustic Finger Snapping Ability for Interaction
GI 2025
University of Waterloo
Abstract
We investigate the human ability to perform finger snaps when considering sound amplitude and repetitions. A survey examines previous experience with finger snapping and ability to perform different variations of finger snaps. Results show respondents can consistently perform three levels of snaps in terms of sound amplitude with the most common thumb-middle finger snaps. A controlled experiment confirms performance findings in a clean recording setting, and further explores variations of snaps combining factors such as active finger, wrist orientation, and hand movement. Results show finger snapping has potential as a general purpose input method, and we describe how snaps can be used to control smart home devices, or interact with wearable devices.
ACM Citation Format
Yen-Ting Yeh and Daniel Vogel. 2025. Snap! snap! SNAP! Acoustic Finger Snapping Ability for Interaction . In Graphics Interface (GI ’25), May 26–29, 2025, Kelowna, BC, Canada. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages.