Towards Interaction Design for Mobile Devices in Collocated Mixed-Focus Collaboration

In collocated collaboration, applied methods and technologies to support the collaboration process mainly comprise either analog paper and pen methods, large display applications or the usage of several laptops. Whereas paper and pen are easy to use, they impair the digital documentation and further editing. Large displays are expensive, stationary, and depend on speci_c environments. Furthermore, laptops build physical barriers between people, which impedes face-to-face communication. This leads to the fact that direct digitization is still not often performed in collocated collaborative scenarios, although it would be useful for further processing or permanent storing of created content.To address advantages of analog media, especially small size and high ubiquity, and eliminate the disadvantages, namely the lack of direct digitization, we aim at applying mobile devices to collocated collaboration. To contribute to the development of future collaboration tools, we derive and propose concrete design goals for applying mobile devices in collocated mixed-focus collaboration

Investigating Mobile Device-Based Interaction Techniques for Collocated Merging

In mixed-focus collaboration, group members create content both individually as a kind of groundwork for discussion and further processing as well as directly together in group work sessions. In case of individual creation, separate documents and contents need to be merged to receive an overall solution. In our work, we focus on mixed-focus collaboration using mobile devices, especially smartphones, to create and merge content. Instead of using emails or messenger services to share content within a group, we describe three different mobile device-based interaction techniques for merging that use built-in sensors to enable ad-hoc collaboration and that are easy and eyes-free to perform. We conducted a user study to investigate these merging interactions. Overall, 21 participants tested the interactions and evaluated task load and User Experience (UX) of the proposed device-based interactions. Furthermore, they compared the interactions with a common way to share content, namely writing an email to send attached content. Participants gave valuable user feedback and stated that our merging interaction techniques were much easier to perform. Furthermore, we found that they were much faster, less demanding, and had a greater UX than email

Turn it, Pour it, Twist it: A Model for Designing Mobile Device-Based Interactions

Interaction designers for mobile phones mainly focus on displays but have only little knowledge about sensor characteristics. Beside multitouch input, mobile devices provide versatile possibilities to interact in a physical, device-based manner due to their built-in hardware. Even though such interactions may provide many advantages in everyday life, they have limited visibility in interaction design. Interaction designers are seldom experts in gesture and pattern recognition and even prototypical implementations of simple mobile-based interactions need advanced technical knowledge. Hence, the potential for designing mobile device-based interactions is often not fully exploited. To contribute to a common knowledge of mobile device-based interactions, this paper proposes Mobile Spaces. This model aims at supporting designers of mobile applications to broaden their view on interaction possibilities with one or more collocated devices which go beyond the screen. We discuss the applicability of Mobile Spaces by means of several examples from research

User strategies for mobile device-based interactions to prevent shoulder surfing

Shoulder surfing, also known as visual hacking, is the activity of obtaining information from or about others by observing visual content of displays that actually should be kept secret, such as PINs, passwords, or private text messages. Approaches that address shoulder surfing on mobile devices mainly focus on ways to recognize observers or to complicate visual presentations for them from the system's perspective. However, users also have developed their own strategies to keep their input secret. With this work, we contribute an investigation of strategies to prevent shoulder surfing from the users' perspective. We performed a user study and observed 32 participants while interacting with smartphones using different kinds of eyes-free device-based interaction techniques. We identified several strategies that users had to prevent shoulder surfing. These strategies help us to develop effective ways to design useful interactions that overcome shoulder surfing issues

Introducing Mobile Device-Based Interactions to Users

Various built-in sensors enable interacting with mobile devices beyond the screen. So-called mobile device-based interaction techniques are characterized by movements and positions in real space, e.g. twisting the device to switch between front and rear camera or pouring photos from one device into another for sharing. Although interactions should be as intuitive as possible, it is often necessary to introduce them, especially if they are complex or new to the user. Applications have to present interactions appropriately so that users can understand and use them easily. We conducted a user study to investigate the suitability of onboarding tutorials for mobile device-based interaction techniques. Results show that these types of tutorials are insu_cient for communicating mobile device-based interactions, mainly because of their spatial and tangible characteristics but also their collaborative and representative interdependencies. Based on this, we propose suggestions for improving the design of tutorials for device-based interactions with mobile phones

Vote-for-It: Investigating Mobile Device-Based Interaction Techniques for Collocated Anonymous Voting and Rating

During discussions in collocated work it is necessary to vote for results or to rate them to reach an agreement and continue working. To ensure impartiality and to avoid social embarrassment, the assessment should then be performed anonymously in so far as other groups members should not see directly how a person votes or rates. With a growing number of digital devices in collaboration, this requirement also concerns such kinds of equipment. Our approach of ensuring anonymity of individual votes and ratings submitted on personal mobile phones is to avoid shoulder surfing activities. For this purpose, we designed four device-based interactions that aim at being easy to use and eyes-free to perform to stay in touch with the environment and potential shoulder surfers. We conducted a user study to investigate these interaction techniques and observed seven groups with four participants each while testing the interactions. Participants evaluated usability and User Experience (UX) aspects as well as unobtrusiveness of the four device-based interactions. Furthermore, participants gave valuable user feedback and stated that our proposed interactions help to avoid shoulder surfing

MilkyWay: A Toolbox for Prototyping Collaborative Mobile-Based Interaction Techniques

Beside traditional multitouch input, mobile devices provide various possibilities to interact in a physical, device-based manner due to their built-in hardware. Applying such interaction techniques allows for sharing content easily, e.g. by literally pouring content from one device into another, or accessing device functions quickly, e.g. by facing down the device to mute incoming calls. So-called mobile-based interaction techniques are characterized by movements and concrete positions in real spaces. Even though such interactions may provide many advantages in everyday life, they have limited visibility in interaction design due to the complexity of sensor processing. Hence, mobile-based interactions are often integrated, if any, at late design stages. To support testing interactive ideas in early design stages, we propose MilkyWay, a toolbox for prototyping collocated collaborative mobile-based interaction techniques. MilkyWay includes an API and a mobile application. It enables easily building up mobile interactive spaces between multiple collocated devices as well as prototyping interactions based on device sensors by a programming-by-demonstration approach. Appropriate sensors are selected and combined automatically to increase tool support. We demonstrate our approach using a proof of concept implementation of a collaborative Business Model Canvas (BMC) application