Antonio Gomes, Tristan Trutna, and Roel Vertegaal. 2015. DisplayCover: A Tablet Keyboard with an Embedded Thin-Film Touchscreen Display. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '15). [Paper]

DisplayCover explores the ability to dynamically alter the peripheral display content based on usage context, while extending the user experience and interaction model to the horizontal plane, where hands naturally rest. For example, stylus annotation can be performed directly on the peripheral cover, reducing the need need for users to routinely home their hands between the slate display and the physical keyboard.

DisplayCover is a peripheral cover designed for compact touch-enabled laptops. A tactile keyboard affords users with the comfort and ease of use provided by physical keys. A thin-film e-ink display with a resolution of 1280x305px extends the available screen real estate of the slate device by up to 8%. An e-ink display as chosen due to the bistable nature of electrophoretic ink, reducing the secondary screen's impact on battery life.

To illustrate the potential and immediate feasibility of our approach, we highlight a series of application scenarios to showcase interactions techniques and features enabled by DisplayCover, aimed at increasing productivity in compact, touch-enabled devices. Application scenarios include concurrent access to multiple applications; gestures and trackpad interactions; context-aware applications; as well as stylus annotation on the horizontal plane.

Inspiration for DisplayCover came from an ongoing effort at the Applied Sciences Group to explore peripheral input devices as a means to extend the desktop experience to peripheral hardware, which led to the development of the Microsoft Adaptive Keyboard