How Do Users Like Their Tangibles? An Exploration of Interaction Techniques for Data Transfer with Everyday Objects

Abstract

People interact with a multitude of personal digital devices and infrastructural hardware every day. Oftentimes, they need to transfer data from one device to another. In many cases this process is still surprisingly cumbersome, requiring additional, non-intuitive steps, such as authentication, device pairing, or network setup. Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allow for quick and intuitive physical interaction with digital data. Therefore, they offer a promising design space towards more natural interaction techniques for cross-device data transfer. In a workshop and an elicitation study, we investigated different form factors and interaction techniques using six everyday objects in three different situations. We found that designing effective tangibles requires consideration of various factors which strongly depend on the target group and intended use case.