An Intuitive Interface for Interactively Pairing Multiple Mobile Devices

Abstract

We designed an intuitive user interface to connect multiple mobile devices over a network and relate the applications running on them. We proposed a pinching gesture for making a connection between two devices, which is realized by swiping the touch screens of the two annexed mobile devices as if to stitch them together. We believe that this user interface can create new user experiences for multiple-screen usage, especially by designing the application content to react instantly to the connection and disconnection triggered by the gesture. We expect this interface to fulfill a great potential in inspiring application designers to conceive various ideas, particularly suited for visually fascinating content that takes advantage of the dynamic reconfigurable multi-display feature. To demonstrate the potential, we produced some prototype applications. In this article, we explain the idea and details of the interface mechanism, and introduce the design of the sample applications.