SocioCon: A Social Circle for Your Interactive Devices

Our everyday lives with technology are increasingly characterised by the use of multiple interactive devices. We are seeing more and more variety of specialised input and output devices that can connect with other devices to help the user perform a particular task in a more optimal or other beneficial way. When multiple devices are used together within a session, owing to the diversity of native interaction modalities, content representation and capabilities of each device, there are usability issues arising before, after or at the transition of inter-connectivity. In such a device-sharing situation, one device that could temporarily borrow the input or output modalities from other devices must know which devices are available or allowed to offer such connections, and how their combined use should push yet another way of end-user interactivity. In this paper, we envision a few typical usage scenarios where such multi-device interaction is expected or desirable, then from these develop an overarching concept of usability in a multi-device environment. Simple social heuristics in sharing the interactivity and resources amongst devices are employed to shape how the overall usability in these situations could be addressed and framed. We develop two multi-device interaction prototypes that correspond to some of these scenarios, conduct usability testing, report the findings and discuss further insights.