Collaboration with personal devices in digital workrooms

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Collaboration with personal devices in digital workrooms. Digital workrooms are multi-display ecologies comprising shared devices like interactive walls and tabletops, as well as personal devices such as tablets, laptops and PDAs. While rich with possibility, we do not yet know how people will work together collaboratively in these rooms. Collaborative work is generally comprised of both shared work (e.g. discussion) and independent activity, where an individual temporarily disengages with the group to complete a task. The problem is that if transitioning between independent and group tasks is cumbersome, it breaks the flow of activity. In traditional workrooms, with paper-based media, these transitions are achieved through the semantic division of labour across different surfaces and people. Yet, how will this occur in digital workrooms? In the proposed research, I explore the integration of personal devices in digital workrooms as a mechanism for supporting these transitions. I will develop a theoretical design rationale for how interaction techniques can manage and coordinate these transitions through both spatial and semantic distribution of tasks. I will do this by pursuing three objectives: first, I will design, develop and evaluate mechanisms for moving information between devices that allow people to fluidly transition between shared and independent tasks in digital workrooms; second, I will explore how space can be exploited as a resource for coordinating activity across shared and personal devices in digital workrooms, and finally, I will study how digital workrooms are appropriated over long-term use as a means of providing design insight for the first objective. This work is critical for near-future computing. Large-scale digital workrooms are rapidly becoming adopted in business, education and research. They are important, because they allow large groups with diverse expertise to tackle difficult problems (e.g. construction, data analysis, etc.) together. The research in this proposal will help inform the design of technologies to support meaningful, natural activity in these digital workrooms.