Opportunistic Annexing

Mobile devices such as cellular phones and tablet PCs provide users with constant access to computation and communication.   Because these devices are mobile, the suffer limitations to the quality of I/O they may possess due to size and weight requirements.  Our research focuses on how we can take advantage of the I/O resources of stationary devices such as desktop PCs to improve interactions with mobile devices.  By opportunistically annexing devices they encounter, users can can improve the I/O of their mobile devices without decreasing their portability.  A cellular phone user may annex a keyboard to respond to an email or a larger display to view web pages.  

Pierce, J. S., Mahaney, H. E. (2004) "Opportunistic Annexing for Handheld Devices:  Opportunities and Challenges". The Human-Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC 2004). Fraser, CO. (pdf)

Mahaney, H. E., Pierce, J. S. (2003) "Opportunistic Awareness: Annexing Peripheral Devices for Information Monitoring". Position paper and Presentation for the Workshop on Multi-Device Interfaces for Ubiquitous Peripheral Interaction at The Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP 2003).  Seattle, WA. (pdf)

Mahaney, H. E., Pierce, J. S. (2003) "Studying Handheld Device Use to Identify Areas for Improvement". GVU Technical Report GIT-GVU-04-14 (pdf)

DIAMOND (Dividing Interfaces Across Multiple Opportunistically aNnexed Devices)

One method of taking advantage of multiple devices is to divide an application's interface across them.  For example, an email reply window may be divided between a cellular phone and a PC to allow a user to take advantage of the PC's keyboard to enter text while leaving the contact information contained in the email headers on the cellular phone.  We developed the DIAMOND framework to enable exploration of these types of applications with interfaces that divide across multiple devices at run-time.  DIAMOND uses and XML description language (XDL) to define user interfaces and their possible division points.  XDL enables designers to describe user interface controls, layouts and behaviors at design-time.  These descriptions are used by device specific DIAMOND system interpreter to render user interfaces at run-time.  Because the designer cannot anticipate a user's situation at run-time, DIAMOND relies on the user to make the final decisions about how the interface should be divided.  Our current focuses with DIAMOND include investing how interface division can be used to address privacy concerns and what interface techniques are appropriate for presenting division options to users. 

Hutchings, H. M., Pierce, J. S. (Submitted) "DIAMOND: A Framework for Dividing Interfaces Across Multiple Opportunistically Annexed Devices."  Submitted to UIST 2005. (pdf)

Pierce, J.S., Mahaney, H. E.(2005) "Tool Support for Divisible Interfaces." Position paper and Presentation for the Workshop on The Future of User Interface Design Tools at The Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005).  Portland, OR. (pdf)