Multi-Device Touchscreen Alignment for Electronic Document Display
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulties in viewing large electronic documents on mobile computing devices with touchscreens, as documents often exceed the screen width, requiring scrolling and zooming, which can be frustrating and diminish the viewing experience.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that allows multiple computing devices with touchscreens to align and display segments of an electronic document by obtaining screen coordinates and timestamps from user gestures across multiple devices, determining their alignment, and displaying corresponding segments on each device, creating a virtual screen that intersects all touchscreens.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a single mobile computing device is used to display large electronic documents, then the device's portability and multi-faceted capabilities are maintained, but the viewing experience deteriorates due to the need for extensive scrolling and zooming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple mobile computing devices to form a unified display system. When a user initiates a gesture spanning multiple devices, the system merges their screens into a coordinated multi-device display, allowing large electronic documents to be viewed across the combined screen area without requiring extensive scrolling or zooming operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extends the display space from a single two-dimensional screen to a multi-dimensional arrangement involving multiple devices. By detecting gestures that cross device boundaries and calculating alignment between devices, the system creates an extended display workspace that adds spatial dimensions to the viewing area, enabling documents to be displayed across multiple screens in a coordinated manner.
2Area of stationary object
If the touchscreen size is increased to accommodate larger documents, then the viewing experience improves, but the portability and compactness of mobile devices deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of increasing the screen area of a single mobile device, the patent combines the screens of multiple portable devices to create a larger effective display area. This allows users to leverage the existing compact form factors of multiple devices while achieving the combined screen real estate needed for viewing large documents without sacrificing portability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent divides the display of large electronic documents across multiple separate device screens. Each device displays a segment of the overall document, and the system coordinates these segments to provide a seamless viewing experience. This segmentation allows each device to remain compact while collectively providing a large viewing area.
3Ease of operation
If multiple computing devices are coordinated to display document segments, then the viewing experience improves by eliminating scrolling and zooming, but the system complexity increases due to alignment and coordinate mapping requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs alignment calculations and coordinate mappings between multiple devices based on user gestures. When a user performs a gesture spanning multiple devices, the system self-calibrates by detecting the gesture path, calculating the alignment between devices, and establishing the coordinate relationships without requiring manual configuration or complex user setup procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback from user gestures to dynamically adjust and determine the alignment between devices. By monitoring the coordinates and timing of gestures that cross device boundaries, the system receives feedback about device positioning and uses this information to automatically calculate and establish the correct alignment and coordinate mappings for coordinated document display.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for operating computing devices (CDs) to display an electronic document (ED), including: obtaining, by a first CD having a first touchscreen, a first plurality of screen coordinates associated with a first portion of a first gesture performed by a user; obtaining, by the first CD and from a second CD having a second touchscreen, a second plurality of screen coordinates associated with a second portion of the first gesture performed by the user; determining, by the first CD and based on the first plurality of screen coordinates and the second plurality of screen coordinates, an alignment of the first touchscreen and the second touchscreen; and displaying, by the first CD and based on the alignment, a first segment of the ED on the first touchscreen, where the second CD displays a second segment of the ED on the second touchscreen while the first segment is displayed.