Evaluating touching and pointing with a mobile terminal for physical browsing

ABSTRACT

Physical browsing is a user interaction paradigm in which the user interacts with physical objects by using a mobile terminal to select the object for some action. The objects contain links to digital services and information related to the objects. The links are implemented with tags that are readable by the mobile terminal. We have built a system that supports selecting objects for interaction by touching and pointing at them. Our physical browsing system emulates passive sensor-equipped long-range RFID tags and a mobile terminal equipped with an RFID reader. We have compared different system configurations for touching and pointing. Additionally, we have evaluated other parameters of physical selection, such as conditions for choice of selection method. In our evaluation of the system, we found touching and pointing to be useful and complementary methods for selecting an object for interaction.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Keywords:
PDA, RFID, evaluation, laser pointer, mobile phone, physical selection