A person carrying a box an wearing a smartwatch

Encumbered Interaction

The number of wearable devices that we carry increases, with smaller companion devices like smartwatches providing quick access for simple tasks. These devices are, however, not necessarily in direct sight of the user, and during everyday activities, it is unlikely, even undesirable, that the user constantly focuses on or interacts with these screens. Furthermore, interaction is often limited because our hands are occupied carrying or holding items such as bags, papers, boxes, or tools.

  • [PDF] [DOI] F. Heller, D. Vanacken, E. Geurts, and K. Luyten, “Impact of Situational Impairment on Interaction with Wearable Displays,” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI ’20 Extended Abstracts), New York, NY, USA, 2020.
    [Bibtex]
    @inproceedings{heller2020b,
    abstract = {The number of wearable devices that we carry increases, with smaller companion devices like smartwatches providing quick access for simple tasks. These devices are, however, not necessarily in direct sight of the user and during everyday activities, it is unlikely, even undesirable, that the user constantly focuses on or interacts with these screens. Furthermore, interaction is often limited because our hands are occupied carrying or holding items such as bags, papers, boxes, or tools. In this paper, we evaluate how encumbrance affects, among others, the time it takes to perceive and react to a notification depending on the placement of the companion device. Our experimental results can assist designers in choosing the right device for the task.},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    author = {Heller, Florian and Vanacken, Davy and Geurts, Eva and Luyten, Kris},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '20 Extended Abstracts)},
    doi = {10.1145/3406324.3410540},
    keywords = {Wearable computing; Encumbered interaction; Smartwatch; Smart Glasses},
    location = {Oldenburg, Germany},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {MobileHCI '20},
    title = {Impact of Situational Impairment on Interaction with Wearable Displays},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3406324.3410540},
    year = {2020},
    bdsk-url-1 = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3406324.3410540}}