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April 16, 2007
Lit Review- The use patterns of large, interactive display surfaces
The use patterns of large, interactive display surfaces: Case studies of media design and use for BlueBoard and MERBoard (Russell, Trimble et al. 2004)This paper discusses the design and deployment of BlueBoard and MERBoard (Mars Expedition Rover Board), two interactive displays deployed at IBM’s Almaden Research Lab and the NASA Ames Research Lab, respectively. I have already discussed the BlueBoard paper in some detail; to summarize, the BlueBoard display is a large public touch screen public display that has been deployed in an IBM Research lab. Users of the display could browse each other’s homepages, and use the display as a digital whiteboard. The researchers have published a preliminary evaluation of the display, finding that 3 important design considerations: (1) representation of a person who’s participating in a session at the BlueBoard, (2) providing adequate tools for use at the board (e.g., a whiteboard function, a map of the area, etc.) and (3) keeping personal information private while making location-based information available.
The MERBoard system is based on the original Blueboard display system, but greatly customized for the target audience and located in a less public space. While the Blueboard was primarily designed to support informal encounters in the hallway, the MERBoard was designed to be an integral part of NASA Mars Expedition Rover planning. Thus, MERBoard was designed as a rich collaborative system where users could display and annotate documents, share content from their laptops, and store this data in a MERBoard storage system. The MERBoard supported multiple users interacting with data on the display at once, public and private storage, and also maintained a rich version history of documents created on the display. Together this functionality helped the MERBoard effectively support extended work sessions.
This paper mentions some of the results from two largely antidotal evaluations; however, it does not provide a detailed picture of the actual use of these displays. Its primary contribution comes in the description of the two different systems, and in its emphasis on approaching the design of large interactive displays from a user centric perspective. It also provides a nice example of the differences between displays situated in hallways, and those in a location more central to accomplishing work (i.e. a meeting room).
Russell, D. M., J. P. Trimble and A. Dieberger (2004). The Use Patterns of Large, Interactive Display Surfaces: Case Studies of Media Design and Use for BlueBoard and MERBoard. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 4 - Volume 4, IEEE Computer Society.
The MERBoard is what I would call a semi-public, or small group display. Although, we current have stayed away from designing tools for collaborative work sessions, one can imagine a public display that would support multiple modes of interaction -- one of which would be similar to the interactions supported by MERBoard
Posted by bcx at April 16, 2007 05:41 PM