Personal Device as a Controller for Interactive Surfaces: Usability and Utility of Different Connection Methods

The popularity of touch-screen-equipped smart phones has made them an attractive choice for interacting with large display surfaces, especially in public spaces. The challenge in using a personal mobile device for interaction in such a setting lies in the usability of methods to initiate the interaction, as the users may give up if the interaction is not immediately successful. For this reason, a few commercial systems have already opted to use web-based interaction instead of dedicated mobile applications. However, the usability of different methods of initiating the web-based interaction has not been extensively studied. In this paper we present the results of a laboratory usability study with 20 participants, in which we studied how the users experienced four different methods of initiating web-based interaction between a smart phone and a large display surface. The compared initiation methods were NFC, QR code, typing an URL and connecting to a WiFi access point. Additionally, in order to study how the users experienced the quality of the connection, the first three methods were used over 3G. Our results indicate typing an URL to be the most usable method for initiating the connection between the smart phone and the large display surface. The difference in quality between the 3G and WiFi connections was deemed hardly noticeable by the subjects. We acknowledge that our results are only preliminary, and the subject needs to be studied in a more realistic setting to get a more comprehensive picture.