Augmenting Surface Interaction through Context-Sensitive Mobile Devices

We discuss the benefits of using a mobile device to expand and improve the interactions on a large touch-sensitive surface. The mobile device’s denser arrangement of pixels and touch-sensor elements, and its rich set of mechanical on-board input controls, can be leveraged for increased expressiveness, visual feedback and more precise direct-manipulation. We also show how these devices can support unique input from multiple simultaneous users in collaborative scenarios. Handheld mobile devices and large interactive surfaces can be mutually beneficial in numerous ways, while their complementary nature allows them to preserve the behavior of the original user interface.