Comparing Interaction Styles for Shared Use of Pervasive Applications

An issue often neglected in the design of pervasive display infrastructures and applications is the user interaction required to set up or start using the application. In this paper a system is described that makes it possible to compare different interaction styles for identifying and selecting resources in an environment shared by multiple users. An experiment was conducted to test two different interaction styles, one based on selecting devices by matching labels and another one in which participants selected devices by physically connecting to them with a personal token. This experiment showed that participants were more inclined to employ a cooperative selection strategy when using a personal token, as opposed to a solitary strategy when matching labels.