Nomadic projection within reach - overcoming deficiencies in nomadic information management through mobile projected interfaces

The achievements in pervasive and nomadic computing, today, allow us to take and use our mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets everywhere we go. However, the mobility came at a cost: the small screen space of mobile devices leads to a deficient Human-ComputerInteraction (HCI) across several aspects, ranging from missing overview and awareness about the own digital information flow, to lacking support for multi-tasking and (privacy-respectful) collaboration. Any more complex tasks quickly become cumbersome to perform on mobile devices, which created the demand for constantly increasing display sizes in recent years. However, physical screen sizes are constrained by the required mobility (smartphones have to fit pockets, the hand, and the ear), such as display resolutions are constrained by the capabilities of the human eye—and both have reached their limits as far as smartphones and tablets are regarded. Conversely, mobile projection promises large projected displays to be created anywhere, anytime, from very tiny physical form factors by means of battery-powered pico-projectors that can be integrated, for instance, to smartphones. But while this is generally true, the low luminance of these projectors that falls short magnitudes below the requirements dictated by ambient light, precluded them from being used in nomadic on-the-go scenarios so far and instead relegated them to a niche existence. Further on, while successfully applied to some application domains, for instance gaming, interaction concepts for nomadic information management with these projected interfaces are yet to be presented. To this matter, this thesis first provides an analysis of deficiencies in nomadic information management that might be addressable by mobile projection. It then continues by presenting a new framework called Nomadic Projection Within Reach that aims at allowing mobile projection to fulfill its full promise on improving nomadic interaction, today. By drastically decreasing the projection distance, the framework— compared to traditional usage rather counter-intuitively—promotes the utility of a small but bright projected display instead of a larger darker one. The additional nearby display leads to a touchable mobile multidisplay environment (MMDE), bringing nomadic projection within reach, both physically as well as figuratively. All in all, these changes provide completely new opportunities for overcoming the current deficiencies in nomadic information management using mobile projection. Further on, for use cases that require to cover a larger distance, an advancement of the framework to Nomadic Projection Within Extended Reach