Heterogeneous Device Arrangements Affect Both Partners' Experiences in Collaborative Media Spaces.

HCI has a history of developing rich media spaces to support collaboration between remote parties and testing such systems in investigations where each partner uses the same device setup (i.e., homogeneous device arrangements). In this work, we contribute an infrastructure that supports connection between a projector-camera media space and commodity mobile devices (i.e., tablets, smartphones). Deploying three device arrangements using this infrastructure, we conducted a mixed-methods investigation of device heterogeneity in media space collaboration. We found that the commodity devices provided a worse user experience, though this effect was moderated in some collaboration tasks. Collaborating with a partner who was using a commodity device also negatively affected the experience of the other user. We report specific collaboration concerns introduced by device heterogeneity. Based on these findings, we offer implications for the design of media spaces that use heterogeneous devices.