Intelligent Shifting Cues: Increasing the Awareness of Multi-Device Interaction Opportunities

The ever-increasing ubiquity of smart devices is creating new opportunities for people to interact and engage with digital information using multiple devices. In the simplest case this can refer to choosing which device to use for a particular task (e.g., phone, laptop or smartwatch), whereas a more complex example is simultaneously taking advantage of the capabilities of different devices (e.g., laptop and smart TV). Despite these types of opportunities becoming increasing available, currently the full potential of multi-device interactions is not being realized as people struggle to take advantage of them. As our first contribution, we study people’s willingness to engage with multi-device interactions and rank the factors that mediate this response through an online survey (N = 60). Our results show that users are strongly in favour of using multiple devices, but lack the awareness or information to engage with them, or feel that establishing the interactions is too laborious and would disrupt the fluidity of the interactions. Motivated by this result, as our second contribution we design and evaluate intelligent shifting cues, visualizations that offer information about available interaction opportunities and how to establish them, and study how they influence users willingness to engage in multi-device interactions. Results of our study show that the cues can be effective in helping people to engage with multiple devices, but that the suitability of the proposed device and fit with task are important mediating factors. We end the paper by deriving design implications for intelligent systems that can support people in engaging with multi-device interactions.