RelateGateways: Using Spatial Context to Identify and Interact with Pervasive Services

Our everyday life is surrounded by pervasive services such as those offered by printers, public displays, multimedia systems, workstations, etc. While on the run we should be able to use the mobile devices we carry along to interact with these services. Yet, a number of studies have shown that it is rather complicated for users to identify available services in an unknown context. The RelateGateways project extends the mobile desktop with a new kind of widget: the gateways. These components are arranged around the edge of the screen, pointing towards the co-located services. Once identified, a service can be consumed in a consistent manner by dragging-and-dropping an object on the gateway, without the need for the user to install, configure or learn how to use yet another system for each service