Wipe It! a Direct Manipulation Technique for Ubiquitous Information Items

We present an interaction technique called “wiping”, which allows to move information units beyond screen boundaries onto different devices or displays in the environment. The technique uses a physical metaphor and makes the information units behave similar to physical objects. The technique can be used with mice or pens on the corresponding devices, or with bare hands under a camera. We give a technical definition of the wiping gesture, describe a prototypical implementation and demonstration setup, and discuss some properties of the technique.