Designing Proxemic-aware Cross-Device Applications: A Feasibility Study

Abstract

We live surrounded by the most varied computing devices, which may give us the opportunity to combine them to form a unified and richer user experience. Considering this opportunity, we created the UnaxY Framework to support the development of applications with UI components distributed by co-located devices. This paper is focused on a feasibility study based on two prototype applications created using UnaxY. We performed user studies to evaluate concepts associated to this type of applications and the framework they were based on. We had a special interest in assessing how managing the application state and collaborating across devices would be perceived and received by users. The results are positive and clearly indicate that we should continue developing solutions that support a generalized implementation of applications with the user interaction spanning multiple devices.