MobiZone: personalized interaction with multiple items on interactive surfaces

Current interactive surfaces do not support user identification. Hence, personalized applications that consider user-specific access control are not possible. Diverse approaches for identifying and distinguishing users have been investigated in previous research. Token-based approaches -- e.g., which utilize the user's mobile phone -- are especially promising, as they also allow for consideration of the user's personal digital context (e.g., stored messages, contacts, or media data). However, existing interaction techniques are limited regarding their ability to enable users to manipulate (e.g., select or copy) multiple items at the same time, as they are cumbersome when the number of files exceeds a certain amount. We present MobiZone, a technique that enables users to interact with large numbers of items on an interactive surface while enabling personalized access by using the mobile phone as a token. MobiZone provides a spatial zone that can be positioned, resized and associated with any action according to the user's needs; items enclosed by the zone can be manipulated simultaneously. We present three interaction techniques (FlashLight&Control, Remote&Control, and Place&Control) that enable users to control the zone. Additionally, we report the results of a comparative user study in which we compared the different interaction techniques for MobiZone. The results indicate that users are fastest with Remote&Control, and they also rated Remote&Control slightly higher than the other techniques.