How Groups of Users Associate Wireless Devices

Group association, the process of connecting a group of devices, opens up new opportunities for users to spontaneously share resources. Research has shown numerous techniques and protocols for group association; however, what people intuitively do to associate a group of devices remains an open question. We contribute a study of eliciting device association techniques from groups of non-technical people. In all, we collected and analysed 496 techniques from 61 participants. Our results show that mobility and physicality of devices influence how people perceive groups association. We present a complete set of user-defined techniques with subjective ratings and popularity scores. We examined people's rationale and the effects of different device form factors. We analysed the techniques based on the roles that users assume with respect to device association. Our findings draw out insights from the perspective of users for design of group association