Engagement on the Tabletop

Interactive surfaces are a new type of technology that are seeing more and more uses. They are now used for entertainment, games, and work (among other contexts). Our group wanted to study how people become engaged while using these types of surfaces. We created an interaction palette on the Diamond Touch Table, and have conducted preliminary evaluations on user engagement: people become engaged on these surfaces when they feel like they become an expert, feel like a hacker, standing up, or when there are others around whom they can interact with.

The How

In order to measure how people become engaged with interactive and tabletop surfaces, we took a look at how the research has measured and talked about engagement. We found out that engagement is typically measured through an examination of peoples’ physiological responses to something. We then noticed that this type of information didn’t pay any attention to how people feel, interact with others, or talk during their interactions with technology. This type of approach is how we decided to approach our study of people’s use of this type of technology: through an examination of both physiological data and an examination of people’s behavior with these technologies.

We then developed an interaction palette to use as a means for people to interact with a Mitsubishi Diamond Touch Table. We first created paper prototypes of the different interaction types that were represented in many different touch technologies. After prototyping how these interactions would work, we then developed this palette using Flash. During the development of these interactions, we invited people in to play with the interactions so we can adjust them based on the feedback we received. These adjustments allowed us to conduct pilot studies of how people become engaged with these types of technologies. Our results were presented at ITS 2009 (Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces).

In the spring semester, we are going to be creating an application that uses all of our interactions to allow people to complete a simple task, while we observe their behaviors with interactive surfaces. These results will then be chronicled into a conference submission.

Collaborators

Chad Camara, Heiko Maiwand, Jingyu Wu

Read Our Paper
Take a Look at Our Poster

Project Photos