Touch & connect and touch & select: interacting with a computer by touching it with a mobile phone

ABSTRACT

Exchanging data between a mobile phone and a computer such as a laptop is still a very cumbersome process. This paper presents two different techniques, touch & connect and touch & select, designed help to overcome this problem and facilitate and speed up spontaneous interactions between such devices. Using touch & connect, the user can physically touch a computer in order to pair a Bluetooth connection and initiate a file transfer between these two devices. Touch & select extends this concept in that users can select a specific object or location on the computer screen by simply touching it with the mobile phone. We report the implementation of these interaction techniques based on Near Field Communication (NFC) tags and present a formal, comparative study focusing on transferring images. The results provide clear evidence of the advantages of touch & connect and touch & select when compared with current Bluetooth-based implementations. Considering task completion time for uploading and downloading pictures, touch & select was 43% and touch & connect 31% faster than the conventional Bluetooth-based approach.

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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.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors
  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, Experimentation, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
display, interaction, mobile, picture sharing, touch