JoyHolder: Tangible Back-of-Device Mobile Interactions

One-handed mobile use, which is predominantly thumb-driven, presents interaction challenges like screen occlusion, reachability of far and inside corners, and an increased chance of dropping the device. We adopt a Research through Design approach around single-hand mobile interaction by exploring a variety of back-of-device tangibles (including a touchpad, scroller, magnetic button, push button, slider, stretchable spiral and a ring joystick). The latter 'joy'-stick was inspired from the recent popular but passive ring phone 'holders', which we combined into ?JoyHolder' - a joystick-based interactive phone holder for tangible back-of-device input interactions. We demonstrate our low-fidelity and medium-fidelity prototypes (using crafting and digital fabrication methods) and our interactive JoyHolder to encourage discussion on tangible back-of-device interactions. Preliminary insights from a pilot-study we ran reflects the hesitation for adopting some of these tangibles, the potential of others and the importance of physical feedback while using back-of-device input modalities.