Distributed Tabletops: Supporting Remote and Mixed-Presence Tabletop Collaboration

Abstract

Mixed-presence tabletop interfaces aim to support collaboration between remote groups. However, it is unclear why tabletop interaction techniques should be important for mixed-presence or remote collaboration, and projects in this area differ as to which elements of tabletop interaction they choose to support. In this paper we discuss the benefits of tabletop interaction for mixed-presence and remote collaboration. In particular, we wish to support the natural tabletop awareness mechanisms of territoriality, orientation and consequential communication. We derive design guidelines for such systems and present distributed tabletops, a novel system that can be customised to investigate various mixed-presence tasks. Our early observations of distributed tabletops in use validate our design lines.