Interaction Techniques for Mobile Devices

Enhancing input and output capabilities of mobile devices

Phones with mobile projectors can add focus and context areas on a shared display. In (a) the mobile projector provides context, while in (b) it provides focus -- i.e. more detail. The projections and shared display automatically adjusts to the needed size and level of detail.
Phones with mobile projectors can add focus and context areas on a shared display. In (a) the mobile projector provides context, while in (b) it provides focus -- i.e. more detail. The projections and shared display automatically adjusts to the needed size and level of detail.

Although the computing power in mobile devices now far exceeds that which sent man to the moon, the ways in which we interact with these devices is limited by their physical form factor. For instance, before touch screens became cheap and widespread, we were limited to a 12-digit entry on most phones. Today, many of our smallest devices (e.g. a FitBit or a worn sensor) lack meaningful screens for output and/or do not have a meaningful way to input information or data. In this project, we explore how we can extend the input and output capabilities of mobile devices by: leveraging on-board sensor capabilities in novel ways (Seyed, Rodrigues, Maurer, & Tang, 2014; Chen, Marquardt, Tang, Boring, & Greenberg, 2012; Boring, Ledo, Chen, Marquardt, Tang, & Greenberg, 2012; Boring, Ledo, Chen, Marquardt, Tang, & Greenberg, 2012), augmenting the output capabilities with in-world projection (Weigel, Boring, Steimle, Marquardt, Greenberg, & Tang, 2013; Weigel, Boring, Marquardt, Steimle, Greenberg, & Tang, 2013), or by reconsidering how information is tagged in the world (Miyaoku, Tang, & Fels, 2007; Miyaoku, Tang, & Fels, 2007). For instance, in the FatThumb work (Boring, Ledo, Chen, Marquardt, Tang, & Greenberg, 2012; Boring, Ledo, Chen, Marquardt, Tang, & Greenberg, 2012), touch screen devices make use of contact size (e.g. using the tip of your thumb vs. your whole thumb) to reinterpret input.

Publications

  1. Teddy Seyed, Francisco Marinho Rodrigues, Frank Maurer, and Anthony Tang. (2014). Exploring 3D volumetric medical data using mobile devices. In 3DUI 2014: 2014 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces, IEEE, 173–174. (poster).
  2. Martin Weigel, Sebastian Boring, Nicolai Marquardt, Juergen Steimle, Saul Greenberg, and Anthony Tang. (2013). From Focus to Context and Back: Combining Mobile Projectors and Stationary Displays. In GRAND 2013: RNote Proceedings of the GRAND NCE 2013 Meeting. (inproceedings).
    Notes: Honourable mention.
  3. Martin Weigel, Sebastian Boring, Jürgen Steimle, Nicolai Marquardt, Saul Greenberg, and Anthony Tang. (2013). ProjectorKit: easing rapid prototyping of interactive applications for mobile projectors. In MobileHCI ’13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, ACM, 247–250. (conference).
    Acceptance: 22% - 53/238.
  4. Sebastian Boring, David Ledo, Xiang ’Anthony’ Chen, Nicolai Marquardt, Anthony Tang, and Saul Greenberg. (2012). The Fat Thumb: Using the Thumb’s Contact Size for Single-handed Mobile Interaction. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, ACM, 39–48. (conference).
    Acceptance: 25% - 54/212.
  5. Sebastian Boring, David Ledo, Xiang ’Anthony’ Chen, Nicolai Marquardt, Anthony Tang, and Saul Greenberg. (2012). The Fat Thumb: Using the Thumb’s Contact Size for Single-handed Mobile Interaction. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Companion, ACM, 207–208. (demo).
  6. Xiang ’Anthony’ Chen, Nicolai Marquardt, Anthony Tang, Sebastian Boring, and Saul Greenberg. (2012). Extending a mobile device’s interaction space through body-centric interaction. In MobileHCI ’12: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, ACM, 151–160. (conference).
    Acceptance: 25% - 54/212.
  7. Kento Miyaoku, Anthony Tang, and Sidney Fels. (2007). C-band: a flexible ring tag system for camera-based user interface. In ICVR’07: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual reality, Springer-Verlag, 320–328. (conference).
  8. Kento Miyaoku, Anthony Tang, and Sidney Fels. (2007). C-Band: A Ring Tag System Using A Color Pattern Code. Information Processing Society of Japan Journal 48, 3: 1361–1371. (journal).