Proxemic-aware controls: designing remote controls for ubiquitous computing ecologies

Remote controls facilitate interactions at-a-distance with appliances. However, the complexity, diversity, and in-creasing number of digital appliances in ubiquitous com-puting ecologies make it increasingly difficult to: (1) dis-cover which appliances are controllable; (2) select a par-ticular appliance from the large number available; (3) view information about its status; and (4) control the ap-pliance in a pertinent manner. To mitigate these problems we contribute proxemic-aware controls, which exploit the spatial relationships between a person's handheld de-vice and all surrounding appliances to create a dynamic appliance control interface. Specifically, a person can discover and select an appliance by the way one orients a mobile device around the room, and then progressively view the appliance's status and control its features in in-creasing detail by simply moving towards it. We illus-trate proxemic-aware controls of assorted appliances through various scenarios. We then provide a generalized conceptual framework that informs future designs of proxemic-aware controls.