Design and Evaluation of Cross-Objects User Interface for Whiteboard Interaction

Whiteboard has long been an important tool for education and communication, and nowadays it embraces display functions and other interactive features such as pen pointing and selecting of digital contents. Despite the enhanced interactivity, it is often time- and cost-consuming to implement specific apparatus for different whiteboard interactions. Therefore, we aimed at incorporating physical-world objects (e.g. Lego Rubik’s cubes) as the cross-objects user interface for multiple whiteboard interaction tasks without incurring heavy development work. The user interface utilised electromagnetic technique to extract electromechanical signals and recognised normal objects, thus extended the generality. To further understand effectiveness of the user interface, we implemented a low-fidelity prototype and conducted within-subject evaluation. The results showed the cross-objects user interface was natural, responsive, and easy of learning as the conventional whiteboard. Moreover, the user interface outperformed over the conventional one in the perspectives of configuration efficiency and versatility of multiple interaction tasks. Given these findings, practical implications for future tangible user interface design for whiteboard interactions are discussed.