MobIES: extending mobile interfaces using external screens

Recent mobile phones allow users to perform a multitude of different tasks. Complexity of tasks challenges the design of mobile applications in many ways. For instance, the limited screen space of mobile devices allows only a small number of items to be displayed. Therefore, users often have to change the view or have to resize the displayed content (e.g., images or maps) to view the required information. We present the system MobIES, which allows users to extend the mobile interfaces of their mobiles phones using external screens. Users connect their mobile phone with an external display by holding it on the border of the external display. When the connection is established, the user interface of the currently active mobile application is distributed on the phone and the external screen. This enables users to take advantage of using existing screens in their environments and temporarily benefit from an extended screen space. In this paper, we discuss the concept of MobIES and present a prototype implementation.