MOBILE FOCUS + CONTEXT: EXPLORING THE COMBINATION OF LARGE OVERVIEWS WITH HIGH-RESOLUTION DETAILS IN DYNAMIC, MOBILE WORK ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

This thesis explores the concept of Mobile Focus + Context (mF+C)- using a phone to view details of content shown on a mobile projected display. A mobile phone and portable projector can be combined to give a truly mobile information display system. After defining the characteristics of an ideal mF+C system we present a limited prototype using off-the-shelf hardware, and define ways to address the limited projection size. Next we present a mockup that creates the user experience of a fully-featured mF+C system, used as an experimental apparatus. We identify three candidate interaction techniques for linking the mobile phone (focus) and the projector (context) displays that we compare in a user study: Immersive (IMS), where the phone works as a lens controlled by moving it relative to the projection, Side-by-Side (SBS) where the detail on the phone is highlighted on the context, and the user pans the focus by swiping, and Swipe (SWP) where the user simultaneously pans the projected context and the focus by swiping. We find that SWP took longer and was least preferred of the three techniques to perform a range of tasks involving maps and electronic diagrams. IMS and SBS were equally preferred, and performed comparably in terms of time and accuracy. IMS involved fewer shifts in attention between focus and context, and more overall time spent looking at the focus screen, and this is correlated with a robustness to degradation in context image quality, which may be useful in noisy and dynamic work environments.