Video Recording - A Promising Metaphor for Inter-Device Task Migration

task migration, public displays, inter-device interaction

Throughout the day people are interacting with an ever increasing number of devices - smartphones, public displays, kiosks or a desktop computers. Currently, there is a lack of support for seamless task migration among devices - starting a task on one device and continuing it on another, without the need of manual application state inspection and data transfer. We are solving this problem by employing our framework for application state acquisition coupled with user interface based on an intuitive metaphor: video recording. Our interface allows for continuous interaction - mobile device's display is updated in real-time and receives continuous feedback. In every moment user is given relevant task and content-migration options for selected application. Our approach thus emphasizes spontaneous and unplanned content access with minimal user input, while being very responsive. The experimental results show that our solution provides reliable task migration at interactive frame rates. This substantially outperforms the existing solutions. We carried out a user study as well as empirical evaluation tests. The results indicate that the system is perceived as intuitive, easy to learn and effective in transferring ongoing tasks between the desktop/kiosk and a mobile device.