Distributed tabletops: territoriality and orientation in distributed collaboration

Abstract

Previous research has shown that orientation and territory serve key roles during tabletop collaboration. However, no one has yet investigated whether they can play similar roles in distributed collaboration. In this paper, we design and implement distributed tabletops to address this problem and hence improve distributed collaboration. We show that distributed tabletops allowgeographically-separated collaborators to use orientation and territory to mediate their interactions as they would in co-located collaboration. We also suggest that distributed tabletops offer further benefits such as an increased sense of presence.