Assignment 8- Beth

Last week I had a group meeting with three other people in one of the engineering library’s meeting rooms. We were working on outlining an argument for a very large case study. To do this, we hooked up one member’s computer to the screen so everyone could see the word document where we were writing the outline.

One issue that came up had to do with interaction with the display. Only one person could use the mouse of the computer at a time to change anything on the screen. A couple times someone across the table was making a point and we would pass the computer over to them so that they could type up their contribution. While it would have been much more convenient to all have our own screen or mouse to add our contributions, which would add complications about control over edits. With the computer, it was obvious that whoever had the computer could make the changes.

While Scott’s et al.’s article describes many collaborative interactions that technology should support in tabletop systems, these kinds of features are still relevant to my group’s use of the overhead screen for our meeting. Because we all shared one computer, we did not support some of their suggestions, like transitions between personal and group work as well as flexible and simultaneous user arrangements. When someone was adding text, they established a one-user dynamic with the technology that excluded the rest of the group. Even though we could all see the changes, it made it less of a collaborative task. To establish better transitions from personal to group work, Scott et al. suggest that each member has their own personal display in front of them adjacent to the main projection to enhance their ability to shift attention back and forth while maintaining personal work boundaries. Another way to do this would be to partition the input space to integrate the personal and group work more fluidly without adding more screens. While our meeting set-up allowed us all to sit at one table and watch the screen, the need to pass the computer back and forth caused some arrangement issues and lack of simultaneous actions. The orientation of the computer allowed one person to make changes while the rest of the group was unable to reach the input device. Synchronous collaboration was not possible with only one mouse and keyboard. To account for each of the above issues, it would have been better if we all had input devices.