As computers become integrated in our everyday lives, it is important that we do not limit computer-based collaboration to distributed settings. As the demand for collaborative applications grows, it is imperative that we investigate how to effectively support co-located collaboration and fully understand the consequences of this style of interaction. This paper presents preliminary results from a research study which examined pairs of elementary school children playing a puzzle solving game in various collaborative setups. Children's activity and engagement levels when playing on a computer with multiple input devices was compared to other traditional collaborative settings (paper-based, common desktop configuration). Preliminary qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed three main benefits of providing each child with access to a mouse and a cursor: (a) children exhibited a significantly higher level of engagement; (b) children tended to be more active; and (c) children significantly preferred playing on a computer equipped with multiple input devices and cursors.

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Relationships between images are often of a sequential nature. Temporal sequences may include keyframes in an animation or frequently recorded satellite pictures. An example for spatial sequences is Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as they show successive slices of a volume. When interacting with these images, the user may wish to see detailed information without losing the context. Detail-in-context techniques provide methods to display parts of the data in full detail without sacrificing contextual information. Studies have shown that it is important to match the user's mental model as well as the underlying structure of the data when designing a detailin-context algorithm. This paper describes a new algorithm to visualize sequential data and an application of this technique to the display of MR images.

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