UbiCompass: An IoT interaction concept

Abstract

Lately, different wearable form factors have reached the consumer domain. Wearables enable at-a-glance access to information and can continually sense the surrounding environment. Internet of Things (IoT) researchers have focused on the main enabling factors: The integration of several technologies and communication solutions. Less effort has been devoted to exploring how not-so-tech-savvy end users can discover and directly interact with the numerous connected things predicted by the IoT vision. This paper presents a novel IoT interaction concept called UbiCompass. A functional, smartwatch face prototype of the UbiCompass was developed and integrated with an existing smart home system, in which five different connected devices could be controlled using simple interaction. It was then compared to a traditional smartphone mobile application in a controlled experiment. The results show statistically significant differences in favor of the proposed concept. This highlights the potential the UbiCompass has as an IoT interaction concept.