Social Aspects of Using Large Public Interactive Displays for Collaboration

  • Authors:
  • Daniel M. Russell;Clemens Drews;Alison Sue

  • Affiliations:
  • IBM Almaden Research Center, San José, CA;IBM Almaden Research Center, San José, CA;IBM Almaden Research Center, San José, CA

  • Venue:
  • UbiComp '02 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Ubiquitous Computing
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Large displays have several natural affordances that cansimplify small group collaborative work. They are large enough tohold multiple work areas, they are easy to see and can bemanipulated directly via touch. When placed into group and publicspaces, such displays create pervasively available working surfacesfor lightweight, temporary walkup use. The BlueBoard is a largeplasma display with touch sensing and a badge reader to identifyindividuals using the board. The onboard software acts as a thinclient giving access to each participant's web-based content (e.g.,home pages, project pages). The client also has a set of tools andmechanisms that support rapid exchange of content between thosepresent. The overall design of the BlueBoard is one that is easilylearnable (under 5 minutes), very simple to use, and permits noveluses for collaboration. Our initial field study revealed a numberof social issues about the use of a large pervasively availabledisplay surface, yet indicates that a shared public display spacetruly has distinct properties that lend themselves to sharingcontent. Extreme learnability & overall simplicity of designmakes BlueBoard a tool for collaboration that supportsintermittent, but effective use for side-by-side collaborationbetween colleagues.