Designing multi-user multi-device systems: an architecture for multi-browsing applications

ABSTRACT

As users get accustomed to an increasing diverse range of mobile devices, personal computers, intelligent home and office appliances, as well as shared public devices, collaborative multi-device systems are emerging to benefit from using together devices of different users and different capabilities. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the systematic design of such systems in symbiotic environments. It distinguishes between information and interaction spaces. Focusing on using devices together, we introduce relationships between interaction spaces and annotatable mappings between the information space and the interaction spaces. Customizable annotations and the corresponding transformation of information support the development of collaborative systems for different scenarios. To demonstrate the validity of our framework, we introduce an architecture for multi-device web-browsing systems, and an annotation vocabulary which particularly focuses on symbiotic environments. The evaluation of our implemented prototype confirms the usefulness of multi-browsing, and the need for supporting both developers and end users to individually annotate web pages.

REFERENCES

• 1: Chieko Asakawa , Hironobu Takagi, Annotation-based transcoding for nonvisual web access, Proceedings of the fourth international ACM conference on Assistive technologies, p.172-179, November 13-15, 2000, Arlington, Virginia, United States [doi>10.1145/354324.354588]
• 2: R. Atterer, A. Schmidt, and M. Wnuk. A Proxy-Based Infrastructure for Web Application Sharing and Remote Collaboration on Web Pages. In Proc. of the 11th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (INTERACT), 2007.
• 3: Jullien Bouchet , Laurence Nigay , Thierry Ganille, ICARE software components for rapidly developing multimodal interfaces, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, October 13-15, 2004, State College, PA, USA [doi>10.1145/1027933.1027975]
• 4: Yu Chen , Xing Xie , Wei-Ying Ma , Hong-Jiang Zhang, Adapting Web Pages for Small-Screen Devices, IEEE Internet Computing, v.9 n.1, p.50-56, January 2005 [doi>10.1109/MIC.2005.5]
• 5: Alistair Coles , Eric Deliot , Tom Melamed , Kevin Lansard, A framework for coordinated multi-modal browsing with multiple clients, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on World Wide Web, May 20-24, 2003, Budapest, Hungary [doi>10.1145/775152.775253]
• 6: Yun Ding , Heiner Litz, Creating multiplatform user interfaces by annotation and adaptation, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, January 29-February 01, 2006, Sydney, Australia [doi>10.1145/1111449.1111507]
• 7: Murielle Florins , Jean Vanderdonckt, Graceful degradation of user interfaces as a design method for multiplatform systems, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, January 13-16, 2004, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal [doi>10.1145/964442.964469]
• 8: S. Greenberg, M. Boyle, and J. Laberge. PDAs and Shared Public Displays: Making Personal Information Public, and Public Information Personal. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 3(1/2), 1999.
• 9: Richard Han , Veronique Perret , Mahmoud Naghshineh, WebSplitter: a unified XML framework for multi-device collaborative Web browsing, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.221-230, December 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/358916.358993]
• 10: Masahiro Hori , Goh Kondoh , Kouichi Ono , Shin-ichi Hirose , Sandeep Singhal, Annotation-based Web content transcoding, Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, v.33 n.1-6, p.197-211, June 2000
• 11: Brad Johanson , Shankar Ponnekanti , Caesar Sengupta , Armando Fox, Multibrowsing: Moving Web Content across Multiple Displays, Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, p.346-353, September 30-October 02, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• 12: Vassilis Kostakos , Eamonn O'Neill , Alan Penn, Designing Urban Pervasive Systems, Computer, v.39 n.9, p.52-59, September 2006 [doi>10.1109/MC.2006.303]
• 13: Takuya Maekawa , Takahiro Hara , Shojiro Nishio, A Collaborative Web Browsing System for Multiple Mobile Users, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, p.22-35, March 13-17, 2006 [doi>10.1109/PERCOM.2006.1]
• 14: T. Maekawa, T. Uemukai, T. Hara, and S. Nishio. Content Description and Partitioning Methods for Collaborative Browsing by Multiple Mobile Users. In Proc. of the 16th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'05), 2005.
• 15: Brad A. Myers, Using handhelds and PCs together, Communications of the ACM, v.44 n.11, p.34-41, Nov. 2001 [doi>10.1145/384150.384159]
• 16: Mandayam Raghunath , Chandra Narayanaswami , Claudio Pinhanez, Fostering a Symbiotic Handheld Environment, Computer, v.36 n.9, p.56-65, September 2003 [doi>10.1109/MC.2003.1231195]
• 17: Z. Shao, R. Capra, and M. Pérez-Quiñones. Annotations for HTML to VoiceXML Transcoding: Producing Voice WebPages with Usability in Mind. ArXiv Computer Science e-prints, cs.HC/0211037, 2002. Available under arxiv.org/pdf/cs.HC/0211037.pdf.
• 18: C. Wong, H. Chu, and M. Katagiri. GUI Migration across Heterogenous Java Profiles. In Proc. of the ACM SIGCHI-NZ'02), 2002.
• 19: W3C XML Path Language (XPath, Version 1.0, 1999. http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath.

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)
          Subjects: Prototyping

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
annotation, collaboration, collaborative multi-device web browsing, framework, interaction metaphor