Challenges in mobile multi-device ecosystems

BACKGROUND Coordinated multi-display environments from the desktop, second-screen to gigapixel display walls are increasingly common. Personal and intimate mobile and wearable devices such as head-mounted displays, smartwatches, smartphones and tablets are rarely part of such multi-device ecosystems. METHODS We conducted a literature research and an expert survey to identify challenges in mobile multi-device ecosystems. RESULTS We present grounded challenges relevant for the design, development and use of mobile multi-device environments as well as opportunities for future research. While our surveys indicated that a large number of challenges have been identified, there seems to be little agreement among experts on the importance of individual challenges. CONCLUSION By presenting the identified challenges, we contribute to a better understanding about factors that impede the creation and use of mobile multi-device ecosystems and hope to contribute to shaping the research agenda on interacting with those systems.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Cross-device media: a review of second screening and multi-device television

Television viewers interacting with second screens has become a common sight in the modern living room. Such activities are a mixture of related, semi-related, and non-related browsing of content. This growing trend is revolutionising the way that broadcasters think about their content. Through the envisioned connected home, driven by end-to-end IP connected networks, television content creators and app developers are now considering the design space for multi-device, interactive experiences. In this review paper, we consider the pre-digital beginnings of such scenarios, and progress to discuss how the introduction of mobile devices has affected the TV viewing experience. We discuss dual-screen usage over a variety of contexts in the connected home, with a focus on ‘designed’ dual-screen experiences such as companion applications. We conclude with reflections on the future of this area so that app developers, broadcasters, and academics may push further the space and improve future dual- and multi-screen experiences

Understanding and Designing Attention for Dual-Screen Media

Recently there has been a transformative shift towards engaging with mobile devices while watching television. Content creators, therefore, wish to create applications to support these behaviours to provide more engaging multi-device TV. Currently, their designs do not reflect the subtle variations in viewer attention, our physiological capabilities, or the additional mental effort such scenarios imply. We investigate this in two primary ways: by further understanding the current issues faced by users when dual-screening, and by designing a series of technological interventions for managing cross-device attention. First, we conduct two studies to better understand the user experience of second screening. Through a large-scale online questionnaire and a series of interviews we document the problems faced by users when second screening and how they compensate and mitigate for missing content when engaging with mobile devices. We then conduct an investigation to explore the effect of dual-screen visual complexity in terms of objective and subjective experience of participants when exposed to content of varying complexity across two screens.For our technological interventions, we first investigate how visual complexity on a mobile device may be varied to account for the perceived complexity of TV material by loading textual material at varying levels of complexity. We explore the tradeoff of user autonomy and content creator control by contrasting the effects of users adjusting the complexity themselves, and automatic adjustment around heuristics. Then, we consider how different audio-visual stimuli may be used to direct a user’s attention between screens at key moments. Finally, we explore how we can support users to reduce the switching costs and cognitive effort associated with engaging with cross-device media mirroring unattended visual information in the experience on an attended screen. Throughout the thesis we show that many of our interventions are a beneficial state of the art and form a series of guidelines for each. The thesis concludes by offering an outline of our contributions and a framework for others to extend our work

Second Screen Applications: A Multi-Platform Software Development Kit and Optimization of Human-Computer Interaction in Distributed Systems

This dissertation addresses various aspects of the term second screen and the challenges involved in the development of this type of application. The term and its characteristics have been clearly delineate by the means of a structured review of literature of 65 publications and an analysis of 19 currently available commercial applications. Furthermore, a content and technical classification were created to facilitate communication and the positing of future research activity in this area. The development of second screen applications is currently associated with a high effort, caused by the redundant implementation of multiple software platforms on both first and second screen side. In order to counteract this double multi-platform problem, an SDK was developed that facilitates the connection and communication process between the different application parts. The functionality of this 2ndS SDK was evaluated as reliable and performant and proven in several functional prototypes, which also served the purpose to examine existing and new forms of second screen interaction. In addition to addressing the technical challenges involved in the development of second screen applications, this work presents several results regarding the optimization of human-computer interaction in this type of application. These include a collection of 55 application components raised and validated in a mixed-method approach and insights into the attention behavior in such scenarios with corresponding recommendations derived from two eye-tracking studies. Furthermore, were concrete design guidelines from existing sources abstracted and evaluated with the help of a user study, and heuristics derived for the domain second screen and extended to a checklist for the efficient identification of problems. The results presented in this work are intended to be used in a usercentered design process and aim to ease the development of second screen applications with optimized interaction, and thereby contribute to their awareness and further distribution

Relações entre meios de comunicação : televisão na era da convergência

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Comunicação, Programa de Pós-graduação em Comunicação, 2018.Na era da convergência, interessa estudar as relações entre os meios de comunicação. A proposta desta pesquisa é estudar o atual ecossistema mediático, marcado pela digitalização e pela abundância de meios e dispositivos técnicos, a partir das relações que a televisão estabelece com os demais meios. Sendo assim, com o surgimento de novas tecnologias e a convergência mediática, que relações os meios estabelecem entre si e como analisá-las? No que toca especificamente à TV, qual o conceito de televisão hoje e como ela se relaciona com os demais meios? Questiona-se ainda se a televisão sofre mudanças com o digital e que mudanças são essas; que novas formas de telespectação surgem; que relações a televisão estabelece com os demais meios, em especial com a internet; se novos meios podem surgir da relação entre TV e internet; o que é segunda tela e quais as suas peculiaridades; entre outras questões relevantes para essa discussão. A fim de analisar essas relações, propõe-se um modelo teóricometodológico baseado em cinco categorias: conteúdo, técnica/uso, dispositivo, tipo de meio e tempo de utilização.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).In the age of convergence, it is important to study the relations between the media. The proposal of this project is to study the present media ecosystem, characterized by digitalization and plenty media and devices, from the relations that television establishes with the other media. Thus, with the emergence of new technologies and media convergence, what relations do the media establish among themselves and how to analyse them? With regard to TV specifically, what is the concept of television today and how does it relate to other media? We also question if the television changes with digital and what changes are these; that new forms of television viewing emerge; what relations television establishes with the other media, especially with the internet; if new media can arise from the relationship between TV and the internet; what is second screen and what are its peculiarities; among other issues relevant to this discussion. In order to analyse these relations, we propose a theoretical and methodological model based in five categories: content, technique/use, device, type of medium and time of use