Touch & Share: RFID based ubiquitous file containers

ABSTRACT

Here, we present Touch & Share, an application for sharing multimedia content in our everyday environment. Our main design criterion is ease of use. Visual icons placed in the environment act as data storage (file containers). Users can drop multimedia files into the containers and pick files from them by touching the icons with their mobile terminals. The icons are placed on, or near, the physical objects the files are related to. RFID tags are placed behind the icons and they store metadata information about the files available in the corresponding containers. When users bring their terminals near the icons, the terminals' RFID readers communicate with the tags, read the contents of a container from the tag and possibly write information about new files. The actual files are stored in a server, but the user experiences the files to be in the containers. The main contributions of this work are a general application for storing multimedia content in nearly any place or everyday object and a fully functional prototype built using only commercial off-the-self technology.

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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)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Information networks; Distributed systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design; Prototyping

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
HCI, NFC, RFID, file container, ubiquitous system