How do interactive tabletop systems influence collaboration?

This paper examines some aspects of the usefulness of interactive tabletop systems, if and how these impact collaboration. We chose creative problem solving such as brainstorming as an application framework to test several collaborative media: the use of pen-and-paper tools, the ‘‘around-the-table’’ form factor, the digital tabletop interface, the attractiveness of interaction styles. Eighty subjects in total (20 groups of four members) participated in the experiments. The evaluation criteria were task performance, collaboration patterns (especially equity of contributions), and users’ subjective experience. The ‘‘aroundthe-table’’ form factor, which is hypothesized to promote social comparison, increased performance and improved collaboration through an increase of equity. Moreover, the attractiveness of the tabletop device improved subjective experience and increased motivation to engage in the task. However, designing attractiveness seems a highly challenging issue, since overly attractive interfaces may distract users from the task

AUGMENTED TOUCH INTERACTIONS WITH FINGER CONTACT SHAPE AND ORIENTATION

Touchscreen interactions are far less expressive than the range of touch that human hands are capable of - even considering technologies such as multi-touch and force-sensitive surfaces. Recently, some touchscreens have added the capability to sense the actual contact area of a finger on the touch surface, which provides additional degrees of freedom - the size and shape of the touch, and the finger's orientation. These additional sensory capabilities hold promise for increasing the expressiveness of touch interactions - but little is known about whether users can successfully use the new degrees of freedom. To provide this baseline information, we carried out a study with a finger-contact-sensing touchscreen, and asked participants to produce a range of touches and gestures with different shapes and orientations, with both one and two fingers. We found that people are able to reliably produce two touch shapes and three orientations across a wide range of touches and gestures - a result that was confirmed in another study that used the augmented touches for a screen lock application

Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

Touch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method.Comment: 17+2 pages, published at Mobile HCI 202

Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Supporting collaborative work using interactive tabletop

PhD ThesisCollaborative working is a key of success for organisations. People work together around tables at work, home, school, and coffee shops. With the explosion of the internet and computer systems, there are a variety of tools to support collaboration in groups, such as groupware, and tools that support online meetings. However, in the case of co-located meetings and face-to-face situations, facial expressions, body language, and the verbal communications have significant influence on the group decision making process. Often people have a natural preference for traditional pen-and-paper-based decision support solutions in such situations. Thus, it is a challenge to implement tools that rely advanced technological interfaces, such as interactive multi-touch tabletops, to support collaborative work. This thesis proposes a novel tabletop application to support group work and investigates the effectiveness and usability of the proposed system. The requirements for the developed system are based on a review of previous literature and also on requirements elicited from potential users. The innovative aspect of our system is that it allows the use of personal devices that allow some level of privacy for the participants in the group work. We expect that the personal devices may contribute to the effectiveness of the use of tabletops to support collaborative work. We chose for the purpose of evaluation experiment the collaborative development of mind maps by groups, which has been investigated earlier as a representative form of collaborative work. Two controlled laboratory experiments were designed to examine the usability features and associated emotional attitudes for the tabletop mind map application in comparison with the conventional pen-and-paper approach in the context of collaborative work. The evaluation clearly indicates that the combination of the tabletop and personal devices support and encourage multiple people working collaboratively. The comparison of the associated emotional attitudes indicates that the interactive tabletop facilitates the active involvement of participants in the group decision making significantly more than the use of the pen-and-paper conditions. The work reported here contributes significantly to our understanding of the usability and effectiveness of interactive tabletop applications in the context of supporting of collaborative work.The Royal Thai governmen

Sheet Music Unbound: A fluid approach to sheet music display and annotation on a multi-touch screen

In this thesis we present the design and prototype implementation of a Digital Music Stand that focuses on fluid music layout management and free-form digital ink annotation. An analysis of user constraints and available technology lead us to select a 21.5” multi-touch monitor as the preferred input and display device. This comfortably displays two A4 pages of music side by side with space for a control panel. The analysis also identified single handed input as a viable choice for musicians. Finger input was chosen to avoid the need for any additional input equipment. To support layout reflow and zooming we develop a vector based music representation, based around the bar structure. This representation supports animation of transitions, in such a way as to give responsive dynamic interaction with multi-touch gesture input. In developing the prototype, particular attention was paid to the problem of drawing small, intricate annotation accurately located on the music using a fingertip. The zoomable nature of the music structure was leveraged to accomplish this, and an evaluation carried out to establish the best level of magnification. The thesis demonstrates, in the context of music, that annotation and layout management (typically treated as two distinct tasks) can be integrated into a single task yielding fluid and natural interaction

Interaction techniques for older adults using touchscreen devices : a literature review

International audienceSeveral studies investigated different interaction techniques and input devices for older adults using touchscreen. This literature review analyses the population involved, the kind of tasks that were executed, the apparatus, the input techniques, the provided feedback, the collected data and author's findings and their recommendations. As conclusion, this review shows that age-related changes, previous experience with technologies, characteristics of handheld devices and use situations need to be studied

Multi-Modal Interfaces for Sensemaking of Graph-Connected Datasets

The visualization of hypothesized evolutionary processes is often shown through phylogenetic trees. Given evolutionary data presented in one of several widely accepted formats, software exists to render these data into a tree diagram. However, software packages commonly in use by biologists today often do not provide means to dynamically adjust and customize these diagrams for studying new hypothetical relationships, and for illustration and publication purposes. Even where these options are available, there can be a lack of intuitiveness and ease-of-use. The goal of our research is, thus, to investigate more natural and effective means of sensemaking of the data with different user input modalities. To this end, we experimented with different input modalities, designing and running a series of prototype studies, ultimately focusing our attention on pen-and-touch. Through several iterations of feedback and revision provided with the help of biology experts and students, we developed a pen-and-touch phylogenetic tree browsing and editing application called PhyloPen. This application expands on the capabilities of existing software with visualization techniques such as overview+detail, linked data views, and new interaction and manipulation techniques using pen-and-touch. To determine its impact on phylogenetic tree sensemaking, we conducted a within-subject comparative summative study against the most comparable and commonly used state-of-the-art mouse-based software system, Mesquite. Conducted with biology majors at the University of Central Florida, each used both software systems on a set number of exercise tasks of the same type. Determining effectiveness by several dependent measures, the results show PhyloPen was significantly better in terms of usefulness, satisfaction, ease-of-learning, ease-of-use, and cognitive load and relatively the same in variation of completion time. These results support an interaction paradigm that is superior to classic mouse-based interaction, which could have the potential to be applied to other communities that employ graph-based representations of their problem domains