Research

This project explores users' interpersonal interactions during collaboration around a tabletop display. Our goal is to better understand the affordances offered by this medium. Although researchers have demonstrated many potential uses for tabletop displays, we are just beginning to understand how people interact with them and how to best design interfaces that maximize their potential. In order to explore new collaborative tabletop interfaces, researchers must first build a suitable tabletop display system. This involves making decisions about appropriate input and output devices for the tabletop.

Little is actually known about the benefits or drawbacks of common input devices, such as mice or styli, when used with tabletop displays. What effect do direct and indirect input devices have on collaborative interactions? What are the tradeoffs between choosing one input device over another? This project addresses these questions through an investigation of the natural behaviour of collaborators sharing a tabletop workspace while using different input devices in a variety of conditions.

We have conducted a number of studies to investigate the effects of input devices on tabletop collaboration. These studies involved game-playing between pairs of participants, using touch-based input, mice, and styluses. In particular, we are interested in how input devices affect awareness of intent: how partners are able to seamlessly communicate and understand intentions while collaborating. Strong awareness of intent can afford coordination of actions on a shared display.

Our studies have provided observations that can be used to choose an input device appropriate for a specific tabletop task. Overall, direct input on tabletop displays supports natural gesturing and allows users to easily notice their partner's actions. In addition, it can provide rich interpersonal interactions, enabling users to both impart and understand each other's intentions seamlessly. The naturalness of these interactions makes it possible to utilize our existing capabilities for interaction in the physical world in the digital domain. This, in turn, allows us to leverage users' inherent communication and interaction skills for use in new media environments.

Indirect input devices, on the other hand, have ergonomic advantages. They may be more comfortable and allow easy access to all regions of the tabletop. Indirect devices can prevent physical interference and avoid occlusion of the display. These qualities can be taken advantage of in tabletop displays as well as other types of single display groupware.

Our ongoing work will continue to investigate how people interact collaboratively around a table, and how we can effectively support this process through technological innovation. We plan to investigate which tasks may be well suited for a tabletop display and how to best design these multi-user environments. In the short term, we plan to explore issues related to new input techniques, to find more meaningful measures for awareness of intent, and to examine new metaphors for tabletop interfaces.