Multi-user collaborative interface

Abstract

The multi-user characteristic is a key factor for interactive tabletops. Some emerging collaborative patterns emerge during the process of multiple users gathering around interactive table and collaborating face to face. The interface which shows the emerging collaborative pattern is a design paradigm of emerging interface,which is called "interactive interface". 6 characteristics and 5 emerging interactive modes,including concurrent operation of interactive interface and so on,were analyzed. In the aspect of design,the design paradigm for collaborative interface was proposed,and typical collaborative patterns were formally descripted and designed with hierarchical state machines. In the aspect of implementation,a set of component libraries embodying the collaborative traits and collaborative modes above were developed,and two typical applications were embodied based on these component libraries. Finally,user experiments were conducted,and experiment data were analyzed by Likert Scale. The results show that collaborative interface design based on interactive tabletops can improve decision quality,the efficiency of collaborative situation sensemaking and the visualization effect increase by more than 60%,the effect is significant.