Is Two Enough?! Studying Benefits, Barriers, and Biases of Multi-Tablet Use for Collaborative Visualization

A sizable part of HCI research on cross-device interaction is driven by the vision of users conducting complex knowledge work seamlessly across multiple mobile devices. This is based on the Weiserian assumption that people will be inclined to distribute their work across multiple "pads" if such are available. We observed that this is not the reality today, even when devices were in abundance. We present a study with 24 participants in 12 dyads completing a collaborative visualization task with up to six tablets. They could choose between three different visualization types to answer questions about economic data. Tasks were designed to afford simultaneous use of tablets, either with linked or independent views. We found that users typically utilized only one tablet per user. A quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed a "legacy bias" that introduced barriers for using more tablets and reduced the overall benefit of multi-device visualization.