From Clicks to Touches: Enabling Face-to-Face Shared Interface

Abstract

Making the interactions with a digital user interface disappears into and becomes a part of the human to human interaction and conversation is a challenge. Conventional metaphor and underlying interface infrastructure for single-user desktop systems have been traditionally geared towards single mouse and keyboard-based WIMP interface design. On the other hand, people usually meet around a table, facing each other. A table setting provides a large interactive visual surface. It encourages collaboration, coordination, as well as simultaneous and parallel problem solving among multiple people. In this talk, I will describe six particular challenges for the design of direct-touch tabletop environments, and present solutions and experiences to these challenges.