Emergency response planning is a process that involves many different stakeholders who may communicate concurrently with different channels and exchange different information artefacts. The planning typically occurs in an emergency operations centre (EOC) and involves personnel both in the room and also in the field. The EOC provides an interesting context for examining the use of tablets, tabletops and large wall displays, and their role in facilitating information and communication exchange in an emergency response planning scenario. In collaboration with a military and emergency response simulation software company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, we developed ePlan MultiSurface, a multi-surface environment for communication and collaboration for emergency response planning exercises. In this paper, we describe the domain, how it informed our prototype, and insights on collaboration, interaction and information dissemination in multi-surface environments for EOCs.

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Over a billion people use social networking sites like Facebook to maintain awareness of their friends. Facebook's News Feed is the primary mechanism by which people are shown updates about their friends' daily activities on the site in the form of an algorithmically curated list of stories. This paper examines how people browse the News Feed, their perceptions and satisfaction while using it, and the interactions they make with their personal social network. We conducted a qualitative study involving think-aloud semi-structured interviews as the participants casually browsed their own feeds. We observed a wide variation in the use of the News Feed ranging from careful consideration of social conventions, judgment of people, and annoyance and frustration towards certain friends. Our findings suggest that people do not deliberately curate their own News Feed either due to lack of awareness or perceived social repercussions.