Investigating the Role of an Overview Device in Multi-Device Collaboration

Abstract

The availability of mobile device ecologies enables new types of ad-hoc co-located decision-making and sensemaking practices in which people find, collect, discuss, and share information. However, little is known about what kind of device configurations are suitable for these types of tasks. This paper contributes new insights into how people use configurations of devices for one representative example task: collaborative co-located trip-planning. We present an empirical study that explores and compares three strategies to use multiple devices: no-overview, overview on own device, and a separate overview device. The results show that the overview facilitated decision-and sensemaking during a collaborative trip-planning task by aiding groups to iterate their itinerary, organize locations and timings efficiently, and discover new insights. Groups shared and discussed more opinions, resulting in more democratic decision-making. Groups provided with a separate overview device engaged more frequently and spent more time in closely-coupled collaboration.

Cross-Device Taxonomy

“…Knowledge work (62) → Project management: task management [265], productivity [356], project management [13], ad-hoc sharing of resources [252], job scheduling [353] → Presenting: presentation software [379], proxemicaware presenter [205], multi-display environment [201] → Searching: search [283], finding information [90] → Browsing: cross-screen browsing [164] → Other examples: note-taking [246], scientific work [148], activity-aware computing [140], police analyst station [4] Games and Installations (31) → Museum experiences: museum activities and simulations [194], museum guide and artwork [93], spatial music experience [205] → Playing and dancing: interactive dance club and music creation [10], proxemic-aware pong [205], snake game [147], Where's Waldo game [156], tower defense game [147], multi-device AR game [332], VR storyboard creation [125] → Guides: city guide [291], tourist guide [119], conference guide [334], exploring neighborhood [178] → Businesses: retail [266], restaurant menu [80] Home Computing (61) → Creativity: drawing [278], photo sorting [218], comic strips and collage [24], scrapbook [236] → Media consumption: mixed-reality TV [9], TV access [208]<...>…”

“…→Space Window Manager [24] and Layout Manager [357] →World-in-miniature [24,323,358] →RadarMap [2,97], Map [24], MiniMap [16] 2 | Content visualisation and distribution strategies →Multiple coordinated views [48,91,92,120,263,322] →Brush-and-linking, across devices [7,63] →Overview and detail [16,136,287,322] →Central overview device [31] →Focus and Context [98,322] →Adaptive views, applications, adaptive UIs [21,150,373] →Overlaying information [357] →MagicLens views [16,28] →Dynamically corrected perspective views [226] 3 | Feedback and feedforward approaches →Object shadow [22] →Gesture shadows/ghosts [22,188,301] →Temporary preview shadows of content [206] →Perspective cursor [227,349] →Multi-display pointers [163,286]…”

“…Second, to increase the overview and understanding of where information and applications are located across devices, a number of content visualisations and distribution approaches have been developed. This category includes realtime coordinated views across devices [91,92,120,263,322], brushing-and-linking between devices [7,63], overview and detail on demand or on other devices [16,31,136,287,322], magic lens views [16,28], or dynamically corrected perspective views [226]. Third, to increase the intelligibility of crossdevice systems, feedback and feedforward mechanisms have been developed.…”

“…Both Informative → observational studies (e.g. interviews, diary study) [40-42, 75, 112, 148, 153, 252, 290] → gesture elicitation studies [166,230,271,305] Usage 219→ qualitative lab study [31,32,49,116,133,143,230,231,263,357] → quantitative user study [8,16,28,97,109,122,136,165,187,189,198,212,249,271,274,314,352,366] → mixed method lab study [7,54,190,191,206,255,264,302,352,367] → deployment in → social setting, conference [224,317,335] → classroom, students [37,53,…”

“…The underlying challenge is in communicating the action possibilities and benefits of cross-device interaction in systems and applications. More specifically, we need new concepts, feedback and feed-forward mechanisms, and user interface patterns that are designed specifically for cross-device computing [31].…”