Co-located Tabletop Collaboration: Technologies and Directions

As computer technology continues to move off the desktop and into the many facets of our lives, the need to support collaboration is growing rapidly. In particular, more appropriate technology is needed to facilitate our face-toface collaborative activities. Researchers have begun to develop technology that takes advantage of both the affordance of physical tabletops to facilitate small-group collaboration and the experience people have collaborating around tables. There appears to be great potential for this new technology to support our existing co-located collaborative activities as well as activities currently not possible in the physical world. The workshop will focus on exploring this potential by discussing the constraints and possibilities of existing and emerging technologies for supporting tabletop collaboration. We will also focus on identifying future research directions that with further explore the promise of tabletop technology. These goals will be accomplished through brief group presentations, brainstorming sessions, and small-group breakout sessions.