Evaluation of a universal interaction and control device for use within multiple heterogeneous display ubiquitous environments

This paper provides an insight into the usability of our Universal Interaction Controller (UIC), a user interface device designed to support interactions in ubiquitous computing environments equipped with multiple heterogeneous displays. The results are presented of a user study we undertook to test the intuitiveness of Ukey, our UIC input device, comparing it to a wireless gyroscopic mouse, as benchmarked against a traditional mouse. We found that with no training, users were able to perform better with the UIC than with the gyroscopic mouse, but their performance with the traditional mouse exceeded both. With an hour of additional training, participant’s performance with the UIC was better than their performance with a traditional mouse when interacting between display devices.