I'm currently working on a user experience problem that involves a user's multiple devices (smart phone, tablet, laptop, etc.)
What I'm trying to accomplish is that the app "intuitively senses" when the user is on their laptop/desktop (as opposed to smart phone or tablet), and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
My question is: what sort of criteria would suffice to determine if a user is at their computer?
For example:
- Smart phone / tablet is connected to computer. (This method seems pretty strong but presents some nearly-insurmountable technical challenges, especially within Apple's walled garden.)
- Computer is on.
- Computer is not idle.
Answer
Functionally, I think it's pretty clear what evidence indicates a user is actively using a given device:
- Recent user input
That's it. The input device could be waking up the device, logging in, triggering any mouse event (move, scroll, click, etc.), triggering any touch event (tap, drag, etc.). With desktop PC's (dying breed that they are) and plugged-in laptops and mobile devices, you can't count on the device being "not idle" to mean there is a person sitting there.
A tricky and major exception to this rule is when the user is doing something passive for an extended period of time - ie watching a movie. Not sure how to handle that, frankly.
How bad is it if you are wrong? Is it worse to be wrong in one direction (false positive vs. false negative)?
Technically, this is probably a crazy-hard, make-lots-of-compromises-and-educated-guesses problem, but I think your goal should be to see whether there has been recent user input.
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