Spatial Awareness in Mobile Devices to Compose Data Source: A Utilization Study

The growing amount of low cost mobile devices over the last years allowed almost each person to be equipped with their personal device. This situation is leading researchers to investigate new possibilities to exploit the physical presence of several mobile devices for purposes like co-located collaborative activities. For example, today it is a common situation that a group of users tries to satisfy situational needs by using their mobile devices without the possibility to 'integrate' or join them to make more use of their full potential. In this paper, we propose a study to evaluate a new paradigm designed to compose data sources available on each mobile device through their spatial arrangement on a desk. HuddleLamp is a device that allows each mobile device to be spatially-aware of all other mobile devices on the desk. The main goal of this study is to understand if spatial awareness features can support co-located collaborative tasks to satisfy situational informational needs.