Foreword

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This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 35, User interfaces.

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Introduction

User interfaces are an essential medium for information transmission between human and machines. It is a basic need to realize natural and efficient input interaction experience on the user interfaces.

With more and more smart devices entering and being distributed in people's daily life, user interfaces are widely used and collaborated between smart phones, tablets, desktop computers, smart watches, televisions, in-vehicle systems, virtual and augmented reality, and other information and communications technology systems.

The main purpose of uniformly converting the input actions across different input devices is to reduce the workload of designers and developers of systems and software applications, and to ensure the consistency of user input experience in cross-device scenarios.

With various smart devices, the industry has been researching and developing user interface technologies that support multiple input methods to improve cross-device input experiences. At present, research and development on the automatic conversion of input actions on the cross-devices has entered the practice and implementation level.

A standardized framework of input action unification module can be used to support the implementation of operations across device user interfaces and promote the development of cross-device software applications technology and industry.

1 Scope

This document specifies a unification module for input actions, including its framework, requirements and recommendations, for consistently accessing the operations across multiple types of devices. This document recognizes the input actions as user behaviours that are commonly used to manipulate system or application operations (functions) through user interfaces. It also identifies the need and use cases of unifying input actions across devices.

This document does not specify parameter settings and details of the input actions. This document is applicable to all types of organizations.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

3.1 Terms related to actions

3.2 Terms related to devices

3.3 Terms related to systems

4 Background to unifying input actions across devices

4.1 Overview of input action, input device and interaction with user interface

4.2 Physical input actions

4.3 Logical input actions

4.4 Physical and logical input actions for ICT device connections

5 Need for unifying input actions

5.1 Overview

5.2 Device-specific input actions on user interfaces

5.3 Unifying input actions on user interfaces

6 Use cases of unifying input actions across devices

6.1 A simple closed system

6.2 A system with attached peripheral devices

6.3 Two systems interacting with one another

6.4 More complicated configurations

7 Framework of unification module for input actions

8 Requirements and recommendations

8.1 Functional requirements and recommendations

8.2 Additional requirements and recommendations

Bibliography