HCI over multiple screens

Abstract

Mobile devices are playing an increasingly important role in leisure activities, including TV viewing. Broadcasters see this as an opportunity to enhance a TV programme through the provision of additional information to the 'second screen', but determining how to optimise this experience is one of the grand challenges currently facing content providers. Addressing this issue requires a detailed understanding of interaction with both the TV and the secondary device, but this new form of HCI, as much about passive consumption as active interaction, is not well represented by typical task-based paradigms. This paper describes experiments that use eye tracking to understand one of the key components of this new area of study - determining which device is currently receiving the user's attention - and discusses the considerable challenge of accurately monitoring attention while maintaining ecological validity.