That one there! Pointing to establish device identity

Authors:

Colin Swindells

Kori M. Inkpen

John C. Dill

Melanie Tory

Link to paper

Summary:

Goal: Facilitate Human - Computer Identification with a pointing device.

As the number of devices increase, users need to go through the cumbersome process of remembering the wireless settings and other parameters to connect to devices in the environment. The scenario can also applied to when the user wants to share documents with other users around in a wireless network. This paper provides a device which works on micro-controller with IR receivers and transmitters that can used to point at some device and connect to it easily.

A user study was conducted with 4 users each for 2 phases. First phases required users to select mobile devices and the second included selection of item from the given list. A pre and post questionnaire data were collected. The results were then compared to the performance of users with graphical list from which the users can select a device of choice.

Discussion:

The user study and the data analysis were pretty thorough. There does not seem to much preference for the device over the graphical list (UI).