skip to main content
10.1145/1449715.1449733acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesuistConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

An infrastructure for extending applications' user experiences across multiple personal devices

Published: 19 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Users increasingly interact with a heterogeneous collection of computing devices. The applications that users employ on those devices, however, still largely provide user experiences that assume the use of a single computer. This failure is due in part to the difficulty of creating user experiences that span multiple devices, particularly the need to manage identifying, connecting to, and communicating with other devices. In this paper we present an infrastructure based on instant messaging that simplifies adding that additional functionality to applications. Our infrastructure elevates device ownership to a first class property, allowing developers to provide functionality that spans personal devices without writing code to manage users' devices or establish connections among them. It also provides simple mechanisms for applications to send information, events, or commands between a user's devices. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our infrastructure by presenting a set of sample applications built with it and a user study demonstrating that developers new to the infrastructure can implement all of the cross-device functionality for three applications in, on average, less than two and a half hours.

References

[1]
Ahn, J. and Pierce, J.S. SEREFE: Serendipitous File Exchange Between Users and Devices. In Proceedings of Mobile HCI 2005, pp. 39--46.
[2]
Bardram, J. Bunde-Pedersen, J., and Soegaard, M. Support for activity-based computing in a personal computing operating system. In Proceedings of CHI 2006, pp. 211--220.
[3]
Beagle. http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page.
[4]
Caceres, R., Carter, C., Narayanaswami, C., and Raghunath, M. T. Reincarnating PCs with Portable SoulPads. In Proceedings of ACM/USENIX MobiSys 2005, pp. 65--78.
[5]
Dearman, D. and Pierce, J. "It's on my other computer!": Computing with Multiple Devices. In Proceedings of CHI 2008, pp. 1144--1153.
[6]
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. Core, Instant Messaging and Presence. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3920.txt and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3921.txt.
[7]
eyeOS. http://eyeos.org.
[8]
FolderShare is a Windows Live Service. https://www.foldershare.com/
[9]
Fox, A., Johanson, B., Hanrahan, P., and Winograd, T. Integrating Information Appliances into an Interactive Space. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 20, 3 (May/June 2000), pp. 54--65.
[10]
Hutchings, H. and Pierce, J. Understanding the whethers, hows, and whys of divisible interfaces. In Proceedings of AVI 2006, pp. 274--277.
[11]
Johanson, B., Pennekanti, S., Sengupta, C., and Fox, A. Multibrowsing: Moving Web Content across Multiple Displays. In Proceedings of Ubicomp 2001, pp. 346--353.
[12]
Microsoft Office Groove. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/default.aspx.
[13]
Newman, M., Izadi, S., Edwards, W. K., Sedivy, J., and Smith, T. User Interfaces When and Where They are Needed: An Infrastructure for Recombinant Computing. In Proceedings of UIST 2002, pp. 171--180.
[14]
Olsen, D. R., Nielsen, S. T., and Parslow, D. Join and capture: a model for nomadic interaction. In Proceedings of UIST 2001, pp. 131--140.
[15]
Oulasvirta, A. and Sumari, L. Mobile kits and laptop trays: managing multiple devices in mobile information work. In Proceedings of CHI 2007, pp. 1127--1136.
[16]
Pering, T., Ballagas, R., and Want, R. Spontaneous marriages of mobile devices and interactive spaces. Communications of the ACM, 48, 9 (2005), pp. 53--59.
[17]
Raghunath, M., Narayanaswami, C., and Pinhanez, C. Fostering a Symbiotic Handheld Environment. IEEE Computer, Sept. 2003, pp. 55--65.
[18]
Richardson, T., Stafford-Fraser, Q., Wood, K. R., and Hopper, A. Virtual Network Computing. IEEE Internet Computing, 1, 1-2, (Jan./Feb. 1998), pp. 33--38.
[19]
Roman, M., Hess, C., Cerquiera, R, Ranganathan, A, Campbell, R., Nahrstedt, K. A Middleware Infrastructure for Active Spaces. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1 (2002), pp. 74--83.
[20]
Satyanarayanan, M., Kistler, J., Kumar, P., Okasaki, M., Siegel, E., and Steere, D. Coda: A Highly-Available File System for a Distributed Workstation Environment. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 39, 4 (April 1990), pp. 447--459.
[21]
Satyanarayanan, M., Kozuch, M., Helfrich, C., and O'Hallaron, D. R. Towards Seamless Mobility on Pervasive Hardware. Pervasive & Mobile Computing, 1, 2 (July 2005), pp. 157--189.
[22]
Schilit, B. N. and Sengupta, U. Device Ensembles. IEEE Computer, 37, 12 (Dec. 2004), pp. 56--64.
[23]
Synergy. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/.
[24]
Tandler, P. The BEACH application model and software framework for synchronous collaboration in ubiquitous computing environments. Journal of Systems and Software, 69, 3 (January 2004), pp. 267--296.
[25]
Tang, J. C., Lin, J., Pierce, J. S., Whittaker, S., and Drews, C. Recent Shortcuts: Using Recent Interactions to Support Shared Activities. In Proceedings of CHI 2007, pp. 1263--1272.
[26]
Yin, M. and Zhai, S. Dial and see: tackling the voice menu navigation problem with cross-device user experience integration. In Proceedings of UIST 2005.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Non-Dyadic Interaction: A Literature Review of 15 Years of Human-Robot Interaction Conference PublicationsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/348824211:2(1-32)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
  • (2019)It's in the CloudACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/3353401.335340850:3(116-137)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2019
  • (2019)Cross-Device TaxonomyProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300792(1-28)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. An infrastructure for extending applications' user experiences across multiple personal devices

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '08: Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2008
    308 pages
    ISBN:9781595939753
    DOI:10.1145/1449715
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 19 October 2008

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. application development
    2. infrastructure
    3. multi-device services
    4. multi-device user experiences

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    UIST08

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

    Upcoming Conference

    UIST '25
    The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
    September 28 - October 1, 2025
    Busan , Republic of Korea

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)9
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2022)Non-Dyadic Interaction: A Literature Review of 15 Years of Human-Robot Interaction Conference PublicationsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/348824211:2(1-32)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
    • (2019)It's in the CloudACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/3353401.335340850:3(116-137)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2019
    • (2019)Cross-Device TaxonomyProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300792(1-28)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2018)XD-ARProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/32290892:EICS(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2018
    • (2018)Web5VRProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/31794292:EICS(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2018
    • (2018)MercuryProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3174162(1-12)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
    • (2017)Long-life applicationPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-017-1077-221:6(1025-1037)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2017
    • (2015)A lightweight framework for transparent cross platform communication of controller data in ambient assisted living environmentsInformation Sciences: an International Journal10.1016/j.ins.2014.10.070300:C(124-139)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2015
    • (2015)Phylter: A System for Modulating Notifications in Wearables Using Physiological SensingFoundations of Augmented Cognition10.1007/978-3-319-20816-9_17(167-177)Online publication date: 2015
    • (2014)DirewolfJournal of Web Engineering10.5555/2685119.268512213:3-4(203-222)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2014
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media