Paired Sketching of Distributed User Interfaces: Workflow, Protocol, Software Support, and Experiment

The evolving landscape of distributed user interfaces requires the prototyping stage also be distributed between users, tasks, platforms, and environments. To create a cohesive distribution of the user interface elements in such ecosystems, paired sketching has emerged as a collaborative design method that leverages multiple stakeholders’ strengths, including designers, developers, and end users, working in pairs. In the context of developer experience applied to paired sketching for distributed user interfaces, we decomposed a workflow into four disciplines according to the Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model (SPEM) notation. First, we defined a protocol to deploy paired sketching of distributed user interfaces, supported by UbiSketch , a collaborative software environment tailored featuring sketch recognition and whiteboarding. Second, to evaluate paired sketching for engineering interactive systems, we conducted an experiment involving five pairs of stakeholders who sketched a distributed user interface for inside-the-vehicule interaction distributed on four platforms: smartphone, tablet, pen display, and tabletop. Empirical results from questionnaires, reactivity, intention, perceived satisfaction, and free comments, suggest a preference order in which the tabletop is ranked first, followed by the tablet, smartphone, and pen display. Based on these results, we discuss the potential of paired sketching for distributed user interfaces.