0: What is Cross-Device Interactions?

As a Masters student studying the field of cross-device interactions, I’ve been thinking of starting an encyclopedia of sorts which helps technical laypersons visualise and better appreciate cross-device interactions. I may get to it if there is sufficient public interest.

What is Cross-Device Interactions?

Cross-device Interactions is essentially a research jargon in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, which describes, quantifies, and makes sense of the interactions between multiple digital devices.

Some examples of these interactions could include:

• Content Transfer between devices

  • eg. Apple’s Airdrop for sharing a mobile phone contact

• Device Tracking

  • eg. Tracking the location of devices in the geo-spatial manner (Apple’s AirTag ecosystem, finding, and securing a lost phone

In literature review, much of the research work in Cross-device Interactions are centred around collaboration - studying optimising, and envisioning more intuitive ways to enable cross-device interactions to improve work productivity, quality of life.

What are some Interactions between the human user and device(s)?

Everyone engages in cross-device interaction on a daily-basis in a ballistic and ubiquitous manner. Some examples include:

Content Transfer

• Sharing content between devices through WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, WeChat, or any other means of communication through a mobile/web-based application

• Sharing content between devices through spatial gestures(i.e. VR/AR technologies) - “grabbing” the imaginary content in space as a means to visualise the transfer of content from one device to another, in a localhost setting

Content Distribution and Visualisation

• Visualising and distributing content on multiple devices and multiple customised display surfaces - opening Spotify on a side screen to be used as a “digital radio”, while working on a larger, main screen

Content Tracking

• Designing web applications/backend-heavy technologies to realise cross-device tracking in geo-spatial settings

Cross-device interactions are so integrated in our daily lives that as a user, we have to own more than one device to function optimally in our work and private lives. So it is quintessential, for any software engineer (hardware or software-focused) to create radiant, intuitive and easily refactorable user interfaces to facilitate cross-device interactions, regardless of the domain or application context.

Next up, we will pick a content to apply the study of cross-device interactions and delve deeper into the know-hows of creating cross-device applications.