TangiMap: a tangible interface for visualization of large documents on handheld computers

The applications for handheld computers have evolved from very simple schedulers or note editors to more complex applications where high-level interaction tasks are required. Despite this evolution, the input devices for interaction with handhelds are still limited to a few buttons and styluses associated with sensitive screens. In this paper we focus on the visualization of large documents (e.g. maps) that cannot be displayed in their entirety on the small-size screens. We present a new taskadapted and device-adapted interface called TangiMap. TangiMap is a three degrees of freedom camera-based interface where the user interacts by moving a tangible interface behind the handheld computer. TangiMap benefits from two-handed interaction providing a kinaesthetic feedback and a frame of reference. We undertook an experiment to compare TangiMap with a classical stylus interface for a two-dimensional target searching task. The results showed that TangiMap was faster and that the user preferences were largely in its favor.