An Exploration of Techniques for Off-Screen Content Interaction in Mobile Devices

This paper is an attempt to explore new ways for allowing interaction with mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Mobile devices have become very popular in a relatively short time. Their popularity is mainly due to the portability and until very recently their ease-of-interaction through the touch-enabled screen when compared to older devices. Their portability comes with a trade-off: the small screen through which users can interact with their content. The small size screen can limit significantly the amount of content they can interact with, and also the manner in which this interaction is carried out. In this research, we explore the ways of extending the interaction space of these devices. We assess if, how well, and what mechanisms are possible for enabling users to interact with content located off the screen. In this paper, we report our approach and some early results of experiments we have conducted.