A fisheye text editor for relaxed-WYSIWIS groupware

Abstract

Participants in a real-time groupware conference require a sense of awareness about other people’s interactions within a large shared workspace. Fisheye views can afford this awareness by assigning a focal point to each participant. The fisheye effect around these multiple focal points provides peripheral awareness by showing people’s location in the global context, and by magnifying the area around their work to highlight interaction details. An adjustable magnification function lets people customize the awareness information to fit their collaboration needs. A fisheye text editor illustrates how this can be accomplished.