Determining device position through minimal user input

In many co-located, collaborative systems there is a need for the constituent devices used to be aware of the physical positions of their networked counterparts. This paper addresses this challenge by presenting a novel method of utilising users’ judgement of direction to obtain the location and orientation of a touch interface. The technique requires a user to draw several arrows on an interface which point towards physical landmarks in an environment. This allows for the setup of interface locations in a way which is (i) quick; (ii) inexpensive; (iii) not encumbering; and (iv) capable of being performed despite obstructions in the environment. A user study is presented which investigates what influence a user’s accuracy has on the technique’s resulting calculated location of an interface. The study reveals that the magnitude of a user’s inaccuracies is proportional to the size of the error in the result and that there is no improvement in user accuracy with practice. Finally, we make observations on the future extension and application of this technique.