Projector phones, handheld game consoles and many other mobile devices increasingly include more than
one display, and therefore present a new breed of mobile Multi-Display Environments (MDEs) to users.
Existing studies illustrate the effects of visual separation between displays in MDEs and suggest interaction
techniques that mitigate these effects. Currently, mobile devices with heterogeneous displays such as
projector phones are often designed without reference to visual separation issues; therefore it is critical
to establish whether concerns and opportunities raised in the existing MDE literature apply to the emerging
category of Mobile MDEs (MMDEs). This project investigates the effects of visual separation in the context
of MMDEs and contrasts these with fixed MDE results, and explores design factors for Mobile MDEs. Our study
uses a novel eye-tracking methodology for measuring switches in visual context between displays and identifies
that MMDEs offer increased design flexibility over traditional MDEs in terms of visual separation. We discuss
these results and identify several design implications in the publication below.