Response: Equal Opportunities and Shareable Interfaces

Summary:

The purpose of the research conducted in this paper, was to examine different types of workspaces. These workspaces consisted of 3 types – a single laptop workstation, a tabletop and a mixture of tabletops and tangibles. In these workspaces, they examined a task and how they were completed in each one. The primary finding in this paper was that the mixture provided equal participation in terms of communication. The tabletop workspace had more equal participation physically and digitally. The laptop workspace, understandably, had the most communication, which was understandable given that one person was controlling the workspace and needed to communicate. Another finding from the research was that more coordinated and highly constructive collaborations occurred in the mixed workspace. In essence, its design encouraged and enforced true team collaboration. This lead the researchers to believe that configuration and entry point factors are major determinations in how effective shareable interfaces can be.

Response:

A lot of the data and findings in this paper, to me, seemed fairly obvious. If one person controls a laptop, then it makes sense that in a team, there is going to be more verbal communication than digital, especially compared to workspaces that have tabletops. The same is said vice versa. However, to me, the majority of this paper highlighted other, more interesting things. For me, the point of a multi-surface environment/system is to support highly collaborative work, and judging from the findings from the mixed workspace, this seems to be the case. With many surfaces and people in the room, you naturally have to be coordinated in tasks, and if this is coupled with appropriate tasks/software, it can be far, far more efficient than the single laptop/desktop workspace. My only critique of this paper is that the task essentially lead to this conclusion. I would have liked to see a task that would require multiple screens to be effective, for example, one with multiple maps needed for spatial analysis. Overall, I like the findings (because they support my research!)