Abstract Coordination is an important aspect of group work. Previous studies have shown how collocated multi-user interfaces, such as interactive tabletops, support coordination by providing a shared space that enhances workspace awareness. However, only little is known about the coordination processes that occur during problem-solving on such shared devices and how the design of features and interaction techniques can impact coordination behaviour. In this paper we analyse users’ coordination mechanisms during joint manipulation tasks in Orbitia, an interactive tabletop-based problem-solving activity. The proposed design integrates a series of “breaches” seeking to challenge participants’ collaboration by confronting them to different limitations. We report on a case study with five groups of three users (N = 15), jointly solving tasks while facing different challenges related to the activity interface and the environment. By analysing 135 min of video material along with their transcripts, we identified nine different coordination mechanisms that relate to either coordination of information or coordination of actions. By exploring the occurrences of these mechanisms, we found that sharing unsolicited task-relevant information is a common coordination behaviour that can be observed at interactive tabletops, and that with breaches, more explicit coordination in the form of direct requests, orders, or shadowing is used.

One of the main benefits of large interactive surfaces (e.g. wall-sized displays) lies in their support for collocated collaboration by facilitating simultaneous interactions with the displays and high awareness of other group members' actions. In the context of remote collaboration, this awareness information needs to be acquired through digital means such as video feeds, which typically offer very limited information on non-verbal communication aspects, including on workspace awareness. We describe a new approach we have implemented to tackle that challenge through a multimodal pipeline that deals with tracking, attributing, transmitting, and visualising non-verbal information through what we refer to as workspace awareness cues, across wall-sized displays placed at distant locations. Our approach relies on commodity depth cameras combined with screen configuration information to generate deictic cues such as pointing targets and gaze direction. It also leverages recent artificial intelligence breakthroughs to attribute such cues to identified individuals and augment them with additional gestural interactions. In the present paper, we expand on the details and rationale behind our approach, describe its technical implementation, validate its novelty with regards to the existing literature, and report on early but promising results from an evaluation we conducted based on a mixed-presence decision-making scenario across two distant wall-sized displays.

In this paper, we present DeBORAh, a front-end, web-based software layer supporting orchestration of interactive spaces combining multiple devices and screens. DeBORAh uses a flexible approach to decompose multimedia content into containers and webpages, so that they can be displayed in various ways across devices. We describe the concept and implementation of DeBORAh and explain how it has been used to instantiate two different cross-device scenarios.

The design space of tangible and multi-touch tabletop interfaces is complex, and little is known about how the different characteristics of tangible and multi-touch interactive features affect collaboration strategies. With this work, we report on five different features designed for an interactive tabletop application to support collaborative problem-solving. We present the design details and describe preliminary results obtained from a user study with 15 participants.

Nowadays, computational thinking skills are considered as fundamental for our future daily life and many initiatives and tools are created to foster these skills. In this paper, we present the Kniwwelino, a new platform for prototyping physical computing projects based on WiFi. The novelty of our solution lies in the use of a WiFi chip on a small, extendable board, programmable via a block based visual programming language, making the platform compact, low-cost, WiFi enabled, and accessible to children. This paper presents the design rationale and implementation of the platform as well as two simple, example projects making use of the new WiFi-based functionalities.

This paper describes the design and implementation of BatSim, a tangible user interface for playful discovery of different methods of creating batteries. BatSim combines tangible interactions with augmented reality in an interactive workbench to support museum visitors in physically performing the different steps of the procedures and viewing the consequences on embedded screens. In this paper we describe the rationale of our design solution as well as how it could be realized in three iterations, progressively focusing on 1) the spatial setting, 2) the model and interactions and 3) the form and feedback. Based on our gained insights, we discuss the importance of combining multiple prototyping methods to take into account the different facets of tangible interaction design.

Collaborative problem solving is a skill that has become very important in our everyday lives and is constantly gaining attention in educational settings. In this paper, we present COPSE: a novel and unique software framework for instantiating Microworlds as collaborative problem solving activities on tangible tabletop interfaces. The framework provides three types of building blocks: widgets (provide input and localized feedback), equations (define the model), and scenes (visualize feedback), which can be specified in the form of structured text. Aim of COPSE is to simplify processes of creating, adjusting, and reusing custom Microworlds scenarios. We describe the structure of the framework, provide an example of a scenario, and report on a case study where we have used COPSE together with 33 teachers to build new scenarios on the fly.

This paper presents some implications about designing a collaborative problem solving task on a tangible user interface (TUI) for gesture analysis. We present our initial work within the European Horizon 2020 Marie Curie project Gestures in Tangible User Interfaces (GETUI). This project involves mainly creating a gesture taxonomy used in relation to a tangible tabletop. A preliminary user study showed that gesturing encourages the use of epistemic actions by lowering cognitive load. Our current user studies will enhance 21st Century skills and provide insights about the impact of gestures on collaboration, while also identify cultural differences of gestures.

This paper provides an analysis of the long-term, iterative design process of the ColorTable, a complex tangible user interface (TUI) supporting various stakeholders in collaboratively envisioning and discussing urban projects through constructing mixed reality scenes. The TUI has been iteratively designed, evaluated and redesigned in a series of real-world participatory design workshops over a 4-year period. We reflect on the most prominent redesign decisions related to (a) the sensing technology, (b) the physical objects, (c) the places for interaction and (d) the visual representations, in order to identify a series of 10 dimensions describing the design space of the ColorTable. Our aim is to provide new insights to the elaboration of design strategies of TUIs by describing the scope and complexity of the design space of a feature-rich TUI designed in a long-term, iterative process.

The paper describes the design story of the ColorTable, a tangible user interface in support of urban planners and diverse stakeholders collaboratively envisioning urban change, which was developed in an iterative process of design-evaluation-feedback-redesign in a series of workshops with users in the context of real urban planning projects. It seeks to clarify a number of more general design issues related to tangible user interfaces -- how to make use of material and spatial properties in designing both, physical interface and multiple and simultaneous interactions; how to handle the complexity of urban projects while keeping interfaces and interactions simple and transparent.

This paper discusses technological interventions in support of planners, citizens and other stakeholders in envisioning and nego-tiating an urban project. A set of prototypal tools, including a tangible user interface, has been developed that allow users to create and manipulate visual/auditory scenes and mesh these scenes with the real environment of an urban site. The paper dis-cusses how to support users – different types of stakeholders- in the collaborative creation of mixed reality configurations as an integral part of expressing their ideas about an urban project, dis-tinguishing between different types and levels of cooperation. It also looks into how to use mixed reality tools for enhancing an already highly developed representational culture.