Investigating Cross-Device Interaction Techniques: A Case of Card Playing on Handhelds and Tablets

Cross-device interaction is getting more and more common as mobile and handheld technologies surround us in almost every situation and context. HCI research has started to study various aspects of cross-device interaction including application areas and techniques, but we still need further studies on opportunities. We illustrate six cross-device interaction techniques. Using two different prototype systems that implement them for a card-playing context we evaluate them in two studies on usability and usefulness. Our findings suggest that some techniques were fast to perform (touch-and-hold and tap-tap) and some had a high number of errors (swipe). Also, our participants would sometimes mix up the techniques and make a wrong action while playing the game. Finally, we discuss and illustrate issues of cross-device interaction consistency and division of shared and personal devices.