Paper Reading #10: PhoneTouch: A Technique for Direct Phone Interaction on Surfaces

Commentary

See what I have to say about ___'s and ___'s work.

References

Schmidt, D., et al. (2010). PhoneTouch: A technique for direct phone interaction on surfaces. Proceeding of the Acm conference on user interface software and technology. New York: http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2010/.

Article Summary

This group of researchers presented a novel interaction scheme utilizing a mobile phone as a stylus in conjunction with a finger, with interaction-dependent responses based on whither a phone or a finger was used. The interface was a tabletop touchscreen that connected to a phone or several phones via Bluetooth and discriminated between phone and finger touches via impact size and accelerometer data that was sent by a device attached to the phone. The image below depicts this setup:

Image courtesy of the above-cited article.

The idea behind this design is that interaction with the interfaces changes context when a phone is used over a finger. For example, a user can open up their photo album, touch the interface with their phone, and have the photos displayed on the interface. They can then move images around, examine them, and separate them into groups, and then transfer those images to another phone by tapping on the group with the phone. In general, the results coincide with what the researchers were hoping to achieve.

Discussion

This is an interesting concept, and I'd like to see it implemented in the real world, but I believe that will only happen once a device like the interface becomes more multipurpose, and not to mention mainstream. There are already table-type touch interfaces, but they are not very widespread. The benefit of a personal computer is that they are prolific and multipurpose, i.e. one can do more than just interact with photos and files on a phone. The cost of this type of system would make it prohibitive to own except for possibly a gadget junkie until the above issues are addressed. Really neat concept though :)