Evaluating the effects of fluid interface components on tabletop collaboration

Abstract

Tabletop displays provide exciting opportunities to support individual and collaborative activities such as planning, organizing, and storyboarding. It has been previously suggested that continuous flow of interface items can ease information access and exploration on a tabletop workspace, yet this concept has not been adequately studied. This paper presents an exploratory user study of Interface Currents, a reconfigurable and mobile tabletop interface component that offers a controllable flow for interface items placed on its surface. Our study shows that Interface Currents supported information access and sharing on a tabletop workspace. The study findings also demonstrate that mobility, flexibility, and general adjustability of Interface Currents are important factors in providing interface support for variations in task and group interactions.

An evaluation of coordination techniques for protecting objects and territories in tabletop groupware

“…Scott et al [20] suggest that territoriality can be used to design techniques that improve collaboration, for example by tying specific functionality to certain regions of the table; Interface Currents [7] and Storage Bins [19] explore this idea. Tang et al [25] also suggest that techniques that allow users to create personal and mobile territories can help mitigate negative interference where people access others' personal artifacts, while still allowing for positive awareness-related interference over shared artifacts.…”

Introducing Kupla UI

“…Other challenges in large wall user interfaces design are catching curiosity, intuitivity for walk-up-and-use, management of personal territories, supporting playful navigation and search function. There is a lot of variety within freely movable content widget designs such as Currents [2] or 3D Worlds of Information [3]. Kupla UI is another kind of variation since it is based on spherical physics modeled content widgets [1].…”

Benefits of interactive display environments in the software development process

“…Concerning software development, they could be used to add certain artifacts to existing models. Multi-user techniques like Storagebins [16] and Currents [6] could be used in early stages of the development process like brainstorming sessions, collecting requirements and identifying use cases or classes, for instance with Class-Responsibility-Collaboration Cards. Some techniques deal with the handling of piles of artifacts on multitouch displays (e.g., [1]).…”