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Collaborative interactions with many existing digital tabletop systems lack the fluidity of collaborating around a table using traditional media. This paper presents a critical analysis of the current state-of-the-art in digital tabletop systems research, targeted at discovering how user requirements for collaboration are currently being met and uncovering areas requiring further development. By considering research on tabletop displays, collaboration, and communication, several design guidelines for effective colocated collaboration around a tabletop display emerged. These guidelines suggest that technology must support: (1) natural interpersonal interaction, (2) transitions between activities, (3) transitions between personal and group work, (4) transitions between tabletop collaboration and external work, (5) the use of physical objects, (6) accessing shared physical and digital objects, (7) flexible user arrangements, and (8) simultaneous user interactions. The critical analysis also revealed several important directions for future research, including: standardization of methods to evaluate co-located collaboration; comparative studies to determine the impact of existing system configurations on collaboration; and creation of a taxonomy of collaborative tasks to help determine which tasks and activities are suitable for tabletop collaboration.

This paper re-assesses the role of real-time video as a technology to support interpersonal communications at distance. We review three distinct hypotheses about the role of video in the co-ordination of conversational content and process. For each hypothesis, we identify design implications and outstanding research questions derived from current findings. We first evaluate the non-verbal communication hypothesis, namely the prevailing assumption that the role of video is to supplement speech, and embodied in applications such as videoconferencing and videophone. We conclude that previous work has overestimated the importance of video at the expense of audio. This finding has strong implications for the implementation of such systems, and we make recommendations about both synchronisation and bandwidth allocation. Furthermore our own recent studies of workplace interactions point to other communicative functions of video. Current systems have neglected another potentially vital role of...

Abstract: We have considered the role of workplace studies from the CSCW literature which are intended to inform system design and implementation. We present a critique of these studies, categorised according to which phase of the design process they most inform, and discuss the tensions between providing explanatory accounts and usable design recommendations, the pressures on fieldworkers to provide both, the purposes different approaches serve, and the transition from fieldwork to system design.

Digital web-accessible annotations are a compelling medium for personal comments and shared discussions around documents. Only recently supported by widely used products, "in-context" digital annotation is a relatively unexamined phenomenon. This paper presents a case study of annotations created by members of a large development team using Microsoft Office 2000---approximately 450 people created 9,000 shared annotations on about 1250 documents over 10 months. We present quantitative data on use, supported by interviews with users, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the existing capabilities and possibilities for improvement. Keywords Annotation, asynchronous collaboration, distributed work, computer mediated communication, World Wide Web 1 INTRODUCTION Highlighting and writing comments in the margins as we read is a natural activity. These annotations are often personal notes for subsequent reference. When shared among co-workers they also support communication and collaborat...

Communication theories and technology have tended to focus on extended, formal meetings and have neglected a prevalent and vital form of workplace communication—namely, lightweight communication. Unlike formal, extended meetings, lightweight interaction is brief, informal, unplanned, and intermittent. We analyze naturalistic data from a study of workplace communication and derive five design criteria for lightweight interaction systems. These criteria require that systems for lightweight interaction support conversational tracking, rapid connection, the ability to leave a message, context management, and shared real-time objects. Using these criteria, we evaluate existing interpersonal communications technologies. We then describe an implementation of a system (TeleNotes) that is designed to support lightweight interaction by meeting these criteria. The interface metaphor allows communications to be based around desktop objects, resembling “sticky notes. ” These objects are also organized into “desktop piles ” to support conversational threads and provide mechanisms for initiating real-time audio, video, and application sharing. We conducted informal user testing of several system prototypes. Based on our findings, outstanding issues concerning theory and systems design for communication systems are outlined—in particular, with regard to the issue of managing conversations over time.

Approaches This brings us to the question of how social cues might best be portrayed in a digital system. We see three design approaches to answering this question: the realist, the mimetic, and the abstract. The realist approach involves trying to project social information from the physical domain into or through the digital domain. This work is exemplified in teleconferencing systems and media space research---see Finn, et al. (1997) for many examples.

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This commentary reviews the existing research literature concerning support for talking about objects in mediated communication, drawing three conclusions: (a) speech alone is often sufficient for effective conversations; (b) visual information about work objects is generally more valuable than visual information about work participants; (c) disjoint visual perspectives can undermine communication processes. I then comment on the four papers in the light of these observations, arguing that they broadly support these observations. I discuss the paradoxical failure of current technologies to support talk about objects, arguing that these need to be better integrated with existing communication applications. I conclude by outlining a research agenda for supporting talk about things, identifying outstanding theoretical, empirical and design issues.

Many systems have used video to support formal distributed meetings. Recent research, however, indicates that most workplace interactions are not group meetings. Instead they occur spontaneously for short periods of time, frequently between two people who discuss topics that build on prior discussions. In this paper, we characterise these informal interactions, describe their value, enumerate the functions they accomplish. We consider ways to design video-based systems to support such informal interactions among different types of distributed groups. We discuss some existing applications that support various aspects of informal communication and consider ways to build on those ideas to build systems designed specifically for opportunistic and spontaneous encounters.