Authors: Gary Perelman ¹; Marcos Serrano ¹; Christophe Bortolaso ¹; Célia Picard ²; Mustapha Derras ²; Emmanuel Dubois ^3,4

• 1 Etude de L’Interaction Personne SystèmE
• 2 Berger-Levrault
• 3 Etude de L’Interaction Personne SystèmE
• 4 Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier

Although ubiquitous data analysis is a promising approach, analyzing data in spreadsheets on tablets is a tedious task due to the limited size of the display and tactile vocabulary. In this article, we present the design and evaluation of new interaction techniques based on the combination of a tablet containing the data and a smartphone used as a mediator between the user and the tablet. To do this, we propose to use stacking gestures, i. e. to place a smartphone on top of a tablet. Stacking is an inexpensive, easy to implement, efficient and effective way to improve the analysis of data on tablets, increasing the vocabulary and broadening the display surface by using smartphones that are always available. We first explore stacking-based solutions to delimit the possible interaction vocabulary and present the manufacture of a conductive shell for smartphones. Then, we propose new techniques based on stacking to perform data analysis of a spreadsheet, i.e. the creation of pivot tables and their manipulation. We evaluate our stacking techniques against the tactile interactions provided by current mobile spreadsheet applications. Our studies reveal that some of our interaction techniques are 30% faster than touch to create pivot tables.