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Object and Arm Shadows: Visual Feedback for Cross Device Transfer

This is a completed project.

 

The use of personal surfaces, such as smartphones or tablets, in conjunction with a shared surface, such as a digital tabletop, enables the use of private, secure, or proprietary data during a group situation. At present, moving information between digital tabletops and such peripheral devices tends to be cumbersome, often interfering with the task or activity at hand by capturing the attention of the person initiating the information transfer. This project aims to improve this information transfer experience to enable people to remain engaged in the ongoing group activity.

The main idea being investigated in this project is to track the user during a Pick-and-Drop-style (Rekimoto, 1997) transfer action between the peripheral device and the digital tabletop and provide visual feedback on the digital tabletop surface. This feedback depicts the information that is in transit between devices as an artifact “held” in the hand of the transferee, moving in real-time below the user’s hand until the artifact is released. This project builds on the previous SurfNet project, UbiCursor, in that it focuses on providing people awareness information when information is “between” displays (i.e. in the “ether”).

 

To investigate the proposed design concept, a case study of a digital tabletop game was undertaken. The card-based game Dominion1 was implemented to evaluate the proposed information transfer technique. The game Dominion was chosen as it requires players to hold private hands of cards, as well as to share decks of cards with other players, typically on a table.

 

 




1  Published by Rio Grande, used with permission.

 


 


 


 

Last picture : example of feedback used.