THE POWER OF TAPPING : An interaction model for implementing NFC in Android applications

Sammanfattning: Near Field Communication (NFC) is an RFID-based technology that creates a port between the physical and the digital world through an interaction technique often referred to as tapping; communication is initiated when two interactive NFC-items briefly touch each other. The tapping interaction technique opens up for creation of new types of user interfaces that are compelling to use for both experienced and novice users. Previous work has proven the strengths of interfaces utilizing NFC from a usability perspective, but except for a couple of tries to make the technique more wide spread, e.g. by Nokia in the early 2000’s, the market penetration is unexpectedly low given NFC’s potential. We have explored possible implementations of the tapping technique and created a design space by developing three prototypes: Sparakvittot, an NFC integrated version of an already up and running service used to handle digital receipts; PatientSafetyPrototype, a tool for hospital nurses used to ease the medicine handling process in order to enhance patient safety; TapThat, used to immediately transfer playback of a sound file between devices by a simple tap. These three prototypes serve as illustrations of NFC’s three different modes of operation: card emulation, which is making active NFC hardware act like if it was passive, i.e. not capable of initiating communication; Read/write, i.e. making active NFC hardware read or write a passive NFC-tag; Peer-to-peer, which is making active NFC hardware communicate with another active NFC hardware. All our three prototypes were designed, developed and evaluated with end-users. Together, the three prototypes show some of the potential and strengths of NFC, but they also show the importance of finding a consistent model for interaction which users can recognize and related to irrespective of which application is being used. The report concludes with an interaction model to be used when developing an NFC integrated Android application in order to create a pliable user experience. The interaction model is not necessarily Android specific and can also be used when implementing the tapping technique in applications in general. In short our interaction model states that applications should provide feedback when tapping. This feedback should consist of sounds, haptic and GUI dialogues. Application preferences should make it possible for experienced users to decide which feedback they prefer. It is also important to define a clear interaction model and be consistent on how the tapping technique is implemented in different contexts. Our interaction model is followed by other findings from the study that we believe are important to consider when implementing NFC in Android smartphone applications: the importance of determining if NFC integration is suitable, to use specific intent filters and to use high-fidelity prototypes when evaluating.