A Framework for Developing Proxemic Mobile Applications

The widespread diffusion of smart and mobile devices continuously connected to the Internet has facilitated the users’ contact and interaction with other people, devices, and with their physical surroundings. Proxemic interaction, derived from proxemics theory, focuses on how Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) works with smart devices, using the five proxemic dimensions: Distance, Identity, Location, Movement, and orientation (DILMO). The current tools for developing proxemic applications require fixed devices that make it difficult to build proxemic mobile apps. In this work, we propose a framework to manage all components in a proxemic environment (i.e., interaction objects and DILMO dimensions that govern the HCI). We demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness and suitability of our framework, through the development of two proxemic mobile applications, as proof-of-concept.