Experiences with and Observations of Direct-Touch Tabletops

Abstract

The design of multi-touch multiuser tabletop user interfaces is still in its infancy and is not yet well understood. To date, published experimental results have primarily focused on controlled user studies. In this paper, we present observations of user experience "in the wild" on interactive tables in four different real-world contexts-all non-controlled settings. We reflect upon our collective experience, report our observations, and summarize lessons learned by identifying design considerations relating to several aspects of interactive tables, such as simultaneous touching, ambiguous input, one-fingered touch, finger resolution, alternate touch input, crowding and clutter, text input, orientation, multiuser coordination, occlusion, ergonomic issues, and mental models.

Exploring Landscape Engagement through a Participatory Touch Table Approach

“…This met the requirements of this particular study since we wanted our participants to explore specific parts of the mapped landscape together, but future studies could benefit from exploiting the touch table's multi-touch capability, perhaps by using multi-user zooming lenses for maps as described in Ryall et al (2006). The ability to draw on and annotate the map would also be a useful addition to future studies, as it would lead to a participatory map that could be saved and distributed to participants.…”

“…The discussion in our study was participant led; by increasing the facilitation of touch table sessions in future research, it could be possible to circumvent the issue of 'zoomer dominance' on the touch table, such that all participants have equal opportunity to engage with it. Issues such as domination and reticence within focus groups have been well-researched (e.g., (Bloor et al 2001)) but participant engagement around a touch table involves additional challenges arising from necessarily smaller group sizes (see (Ryall et al 2006;Nacenta et al 2012)). There is much scope for future research to explore further these small group methodological issues.…”

“…Some participants were more hesitant to engage with the touch table than others, and/or were reluctant to re-engage if their initial interaction had encountered any usability problems such as unintentional panning (cf. (Ch'ng 2012;Ryall et al 2006)). As it was only possible to have one person engaging with Bing Maps at a time (i.e., in charge of zooming or scrolling to the place they wanted to talk about), it was necessary for participants to engage in a form of negotiation about (i) who would be the first to find their route and describe it; and then (ii) who would be the lead 'zoomer' after everyone had taken their turn showing and describing their route.…”

“…The ubiquity of touch-based devices such as tablets and smartphones mean that touch tables are non-threatening and appealing devices with which to engage. As Ryall et al (2006) observe, people seem to find touch tables and their applications "less intimidating, and often more playful, than a traditional computer desktop environment. " (p. 95).…”

User Study on 3D Multitouch Interaction (3DMi) and Gaze on Surface Computing

“…Research have shown that direct-touch interfaces do evoke confusion for first time users using touch interaction, organisation of content, and occlusion in uncontrolled environments [11]. More recent research suggests that surface computing are providing scopes for interactions that are nearer in experience to physical interactions as compared to classical windowed interfaces [9].…”