“…Inacollaborativeenvironmentformanyreal-lifeartistic,cultural,design,engineering, mathematical,scientific,andtechnologicalapplications,itisnotuncommonforcollaboratorsto haveface-and-facemeetings.Partiallyduetotheemergingoftable-topdisplaysasaneffective platformforcollaboration,informationissharedonthetable-topsurfaceinthemeetings.As such,orientationorviewperspectivecannotbeneglected.Unlikeasingle-userenvironment (whereorientationmaynotbeanissue),objectorientationbecomescriticalinamulti-user environmentbecausenotallusersshareacommonperspectiveofthedisplayedinformation. Asinformationisviewedfromdifferentpositions,itmaybeperceiveddifferently.Astudy (Alallah et al, 2010) shows that user perception (e.g., legibility or readability) of a chart decreaseswhenthechartisnotorientedright-sideup.However,theuserperceptioncanbe improvedbyusingorientation-freevisualizers.Forinstance,FpMapViz(Leungetal.,2011) representsfrequentpatternsassquaresinahierarchicalfashionsothatextensionsofafrequent patternZareembeddedwithinsquaresrepresentingtheprefixesofZ.Thecolorofthesquare representing Z indicates the frequency range of Z, and the size of the square indicates the cardinalityofZ(seeFigure1(e)).…”