Collaborating around large interactive displays: which way is best to meet?
Yvonne Rogers, Siân E. Lindley · 2003
Large interactive displays are increasingly being situated in a variety of work and public places. An assumed benefit is that the technology provides a large interactional space that makes it simpler to support collaborative work. A study was carried out investigating how the physical orientation of a shared display affects group collaboration. Stark differences were found between the way groups coordinate their work and collaborate when using an interactive table-based display versus a wall-based display. The physical affordances of the displays engender different social affordances: the table display encouraged group members to switch more roles, explore more ideas and follow more closely what each other was doing. In contrast, groups found it socially awkward to collaborate around the wall display. In a follow-up study, where both displays were made available, groups adopted a greater division of labour and more rigid roles, resulting in more efficient working but less equity of idea generation. We discuss why this is so in terms of the interactional resources that come into play, and suggest that the threshold for what is considered acceptable social behaviour depends on the physical arrangement of technology.