Impromptu: a new interaction framework for supporting collaboration in multiple display environments and its field evaluation for co-located software development

  • Authors:

  • Jacob T. Biehl;William T. Baker;Brian P. Bailey;Desney S. Tan;Kori M. Inkpen;Mary Czerwinski

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA;University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA;University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We present a new interaction framework for collaborating in multiple display environments (MDEs) and report results from a field study investigating its use in an authentic work setting. Our interaction framework, IMPROMPTU, allows users to share task information across displays via off-the-shelf applications, to jointly interact with information for focused problem solving and to place information on shared displays for discussion and reflection. Our framework also includes a lightweight interface for performing these and related actions. A three week field study of our framework was conducted in the domain of face-to-face group software development. Results show that teams utilized almost every feature of the framework in support of a wide range of development-related activities. The framework was used most to facilitate opportunistic collaboration involving task information. Teams reported wanting to continue using the framework as they found value in it overall.