Cross-Device Taxonomy:Survey, Opportunities and Challenges of Interactions Spanning Across Multiple Devices

Designing interfaces or applications that move beyond the bounds of a single device screen enables new ways to engage with digital content. Research addressing the opportunities and challenges of interactions with multiple devices in concert is of continued focus in HCI research. To inform the future research agenda of this field, we contribute an analysis and taxonomy of a corpus of 510 papers in the cross- device computing domain. For both new and experienced researchers in the field we provide: an overview, historic trends and unified terminology of cross-device research; discussion of major and under-explored application areas; mapping of enabling technologies; synthesis of key interaction techniques spanning across multiple devices; and review of common evaluation strategies. We close with a discussion of open issues. Our taxonomy aims to create a unified terminology and common understanding for researchers in order to facilitate and stimulate future cross-device research

Guiding the design and implementation of interactive public displays in educational settings

Interactive Public Displays (IPD) enable new ways of interaction as well as communication channels, extending online communities into physical places and supporting a culture of participation. While educational environments have seen how new digital technologies can enhance learning activities beyond the traditional classroom context, the use of IPDs is still an area insufficiently explored. This paper proposes a set of design goals for the implementation and deployment of engaging interactive public display applications in educational settings. Based on findings from a series of design workshops and two deployment studies in authentic settings, seven design goals were identified and defined. The design goals provide clear guidelines for the design of IPDs for schools by making design teams and stakeholders focus on factors fostering user adoption, social interactions and collaboration. The design goals also opened up paths for further explorations regarding display awareness, level of commitment in interactions, the displays’ integration into structured activities, and display management at the educational institutions

SurfaceCast: Ubiquitous, Cross-Device Surface Sharing

Real-time online interaction is the norm today. Tabletops and other dedicated interactive surface devices with direct input and tangible interaction can enhance remote collaboration, and open up new interaction scenarios based on mixed physical/virtual components. However, they are only available to a small subset of users, as they usually require identical bespoke hardware for every participant, are complex to setup, and need custom scenario-specific applications. We present SurfaceCast, a software toolkit designed to merge multiple distributed, heterogeneous end-user devices into a single, shared mixed-reality surface. Supported devices include regular desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and mixed-reality headsets, as well as projector-camera setups and dedicated interactive tabletop systems. This device-agnostic approach provides a fundamental building block for exploration of a far wider range of usage scenarios than previously feasible, including future clients using our provided API. In this paper, we discuss the software architecture of SurfaceCast, present a formative user study and a quantitative performance analysis of our framework, and introduce five example application scenarios which we enhance through the multi-user and multi-device features of the framework. Our results show that the hardware- and content-agnostic architecture of SurfaceCast can run on a wide variety of devices with sufficient performance and fidelity for real-time interaction

Designing for Cross-Device Interactions

Driven by technological advancements, we now own and operate an ever-growing number of digital devices, leading to an increased amount of digital data we produce, use, and maintain. However, while there is a substantial increase in computing power and availability of devices and data, many tasks we conduct with our devices are not well connected across multiple devices. We conduct our tasks sequentially instead of in parallel, while collaborative work across multiple devices is cumbersome to set up or simply not possible. To address these limitations, this thesis is concerned with cross-device computing. In particular it aims to conceptualise, prototype, and study interactions in cross-device computing. This thesis contributes to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)—and more specifically to the area of cross-device computing—in three ways: first, this work conceptualises previous work through a taxonomy of cross-device computing resulting in an in-depth understanding of the field, that identifies underexplored research areas, enabling the transfer of key insights into the design of interaction techniques. Second, three case studies were conducted that show how cross-device interactions can support curation work as well as augment users’ existing devices for individual and collaborative work. These case studies incorporate novel interaction techniques for supporting cross-device work. Third, through studying cross-device interactions and group collaboration, this thesis provides insights into how researchers can understand and evaluate multi- and cross-device interactions for individual and collaborative work. We provide a visualization and querying tool that facilitates interaction analysis of spatial measures and video recordings to facilitate such evaluations of cross-device work. Overall, the work in this thesis advances the field of cross-device computing with its taxonomy guiding research directions, novel interaction techniques and case studies demonstrating cross-device interactions for curation, and insights into and tools for effective evaluation of cross-device systems

Behavioral patterns of individuals and groups during co-located collaboration on large, high-resolution displays

Collaboration among multiple users on large screens leads to complicated behavior patterns and group dynamics. To gain a deeper understanding of collaboration on vertical, large, high-resolution screens, this dissertation builds on previous research and gains novel insights through new observational studies. Among other things, the collected results reveal new patterns of collaborative coupling, suggest that territorial behavior is less critical than shown in previous research, and demonstrate that workspace awareness can also negatively affect the effectiveness of individual users

Supporting collaborative work using interactive tabletop

PhD ThesisCollaborative working is a key of success for organisations. People work together around tables at work, home, school, and coffee shops. With the explosion of the internet and computer systems, there are a variety of tools to support collaboration in groups, such as groupware, and tools that support online meetings. However, in the case of co-located meetings and face-to-face situations, facial expressions, body language, and the verbal communications have significant influence on the group decision making process. Often people have a natural preference for traditional pen-and-paper-based decision support solutions in such situations. Thus, it is a challenge to implement tools that rely advanced technological interfaces, such as interactive multi-touch tabletops, to support collaborative work. This thesis proposes a novel tabletop application to support group work and investigates the effectiveness and usability of the proposed system. The requirements for the developed system are based on a review of previous literature and also on requirements elicited from potential users. The innovative aspect of our system is that it allows the use of personal devices that allow some level of privacy for the participants in the group work. We expect that the personal devices may contribute to the effectiveness of the use of tabletops to support collaborative work. We chose for the purpose of evaluation experiment the collaborative development of mind maps by groups, which has been investigated earlier as a representative form of collaborative work. Two controlled laboratory experiments were designed to examine the usability features and associated emotional attitudes for the tabletop mind map application in comparison with the conventional pen-and-paper approach in the context of collaborative work. The evaluation clearly indicates that the combination of the tabletop and personal devices support and encourage multiple people working collaboratively. The comparison of the associated emotional attitudes indicates that the interactive tabletop facilitates the active involvement of participants in the group decision making significantly more than the use of the pen-and-paper conditions. The work reported here contributes significantly to our understanding of the usability and effectiveness of interactive tabletop applications in the context of supporting of collaborative work.The Royal Thai governmen

Distributed IT for integration and communication of engineering information for collaborative building design

In recent years, the rapid development of new information technologies has significantly impacted on the product development process as strategic means to gain competitive advantage in a global market. In the engineering domain, powerful computer-based tools such as Computer Aided Design systems enable engineers to perform various design tasks and realise product concepts in the early phase of the product development process. However, the increasing complexity of modern products as well as the globalization of product development further necessitate distributed and collaborative design environments. This is where different computer systems and dispersed specialists in similar or different disciplines need to collaboratively be involved in shared design activities. Therefore, the integration and communication of engineering information are two of the most key technical factors in ensuring successful collaboration. The current application of information technology in supporting collaboration during the design process is limited to either a document-based or a common format-based exchange level. These methods provide relatively simple forms of collaboration compared with desired distributed and collaborative design environments that can deliver more effective ways of collaboration. The work detailed in this research investigates the advantages of using modern distributed information technologies alongside a suitable framework and a product model to support multi-disciplinary collaborative design. The work also involves exploring other important issues related to real-time collaborative design environments. These are design transaction management, access control, communication, and version management. The research work employs modern technology and distributed computing to enhance the processes of collaborative building design. The research proposes a framework and a product model to extend the functionalities of stand-alone and single-user design systems to facilitate synchronous collaborative design where distributed designers can work concurrently on a centralised shared model and carry out all necessary communication and data exchanges electronically. The implemented framework proposes a data transaction management approach that ensures efficient concurrent access to the model data and maintains data consistency. The framework also employs software agents to automatically access and operate on the information exchanged among the collaborators. The proposed product model in this work extends an adopted model to support access right control and version management. The work is implemented in an experimental software as a client-server model. .Net technology is used for implementing the framework and the product model and virtual reality technology is used to allow for intuitive interaction with the system. The research concludes that the utilisation of the modern distributed technologies can effectively induce change in the design process toward a more collaborative and concurrent design. As demonstrated within this work, these technologies with a suitable system design can meet the main requirements of a real-time collaborative building design system

Toward a General Conceptualization of Multi-Display Environments

[EN] Combining multiple displays in the same environment enables more immersive and rich experiences in which visualization and interaction can be improved. Although much research has been done in the field of multi-display environments (MDEs) and previous studies have provided taxonomies to define them, these have usually consisted of partial descriptions. In this paper, we propose a general taxonomy that combines these partial descriptions and complements them with new evidences extracted from current practice. The main contribution of this paper is the summarization of the key dimensions that conform MDEs and a classification of previous studies to illustrate them.This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi + d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and SportGarcía Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Nácher-Soler, VE. (2016). Toward a General Conceptualization of Multi-Display Environments. Frontiers in ICT. 3:20.1-20.15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fict.2016.00020S20.120.15

Distributed IT for integration and communication of engineering information for collaborative building design

In recent years, the rapid development of new information technologies has significantly impacted on the product development process as strategic means to gain competitive advantage in a global market. In the engineering domain, powerful computer-based tools such as Computer Aided Design systems enable engineers to perform various design tasks and realise product concepts in the early phase of the product development process. However, the increasing complexity of modern products as well as the globalization of product development further necessitate distributed and collaborative design environments. This is where different computer systems and dispersed specialists in similar or different disciplines need to collaboratively be involved in shared design activities. Therefore, the integration and communication of engineering information are two of the most key technical factors in ensuring successful collaboration. The current application of information technology in supporting collaboration during the design process is limited to either a document-based or a common format-based exchange level. These methods provide relatively simple forms of collaboration compared with desired distributed and collaborative design environments that can deliver more effective ways of collaboration. The work detailed in this research investigates the advantages of using modern distributed information technologies alongside a suitable framework and a product model to support multi-disciplinary collaborative design. The work also involves exploring other important issues related to real-time collaborative design environments. These are design transaction management, access control, communication, and version management. The research work employs modern technology and distributed computing to enhance the processes of collaborative building design. The research proposes a framework and a product model to extend the functionalities of stand-alone and single-user design systems to facilitate synchronous collaborative design where distributed designers can work concurrently on a centralised shared model and carry out all necessary communication and data exchanges electronically. The implemented framework proposes a data transaction management approach that ensures efficient concurrent access to the model data and maintains data consistency. The framework also employs software agents to automatically access and operate on the information exchanged among the collaborators. The proposed product model in this work extends an adopted model to support access right control and version management. The work is implemented in an experimental software as a client-server model. .Net technology is used for implementing the framework and the product model and virtual reality technology is used to allow for intuitive interaction with the system. The research concludes that the utilisation of the modern distributed technologies can effectively induce change in the design process toward a more collaborative and concurrent design. As demonstrated within this work, these technologies with a suitable system design can meet the main requirements of a real-time collaborative building design system

Limited Copies and Leased References for Distributed Persistent Objects

As businesses become global organisations and as e-commerce opens up markets to customers across the Internet, demand grows for increasingly ambitious distributed software applications and platforms. Where these applications run over potentially huge collections of data, sophisticated management of data storage and communication is required. There is a need for well-integrated persistence and distribution support that considers the implications for long-term maintenance of valuable persistent data. Orthogonal persistence is intended to ease the programmer's job by providing support for data management that is integrated with a programming language. The simplicity of the orthogonal persistence model argues for its use in distributed systems, in order to make life simpler for the application programmer. PJRMI is an implementation of Java RMI for the orthogonally-persistent PJama platform. This dissertation addresses two problem areas raised by combining orthogonal persistence with support for distributed applications. These problem areas are illustrated by PJRMI. The first problem is raised as a consequence of attempting to provide the illusion of a persistent connection between stores. Distribution-related errors easily break this illusion. In an open system, it can be difficult to determine when an object should become persistent by remote reachability. In the long term, persistent references to remote objects threaten the maintainability of the persistent stores involved. A solution has been implemented to address the problems raised by maintaining persistent references between distributed stores. Greater autonomy of individual stores is achieved by limiting remote access to objects to a duration of time associated with a specific distributed application's lifetime. Within the application's lifetime, the benefits are retained of persistence of inter-store references for resilience. The second problem is encountered when copying object graphs between stores. Large object graphs tend to build up in persistent stores over time. Copying such large object graphs can be prohibitively expensive in terms of resources and performance. A programmer may assume that the size of graph they are copying is acceptable, based on their knowledge of a system in its infancy. However, the problem is that, in a long-lived system, their assumptions may be challenged, since the size of an object graph and the context in which it is used are more likely to change during a persistent object graph's lifetime. The combination of a typically statically-defined policy for passing objects to remote sites and programmer assumptions that fail to take into account the lifetime of an object can also result in other problems. These problems include failure to support different requirements on remote use of the same object graph by different applications during that object graph's lifetime. A solution has been implemented to address the problems raised by remote copying of large object graphs. Flexibility of control over such copying is achieved. Separation of policy from object definition ensures flexibility. Choice of object-copying policy for a specific distributed application's lifetime provides control, while ensuring it is adaptable to changes in size of persistent object graphs over their lifetime and to changes in the context in which these graphs are used