Tangible Voting: A Technique for Interacting with Group Choices on a Tangible Tabletop

The tangible tabletop has been exploited in many different application domains as one of the most popular setups of Tangible User Interfaces. Proposed interaction techniques are based on, for instance, direct manipulation, dual hand input, or physical actuation. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a new interaction technique to support multiple users in their specifying and manipulating individual choices on a tangible tabletop. The proposed tangible widget consists of both a physical enclosing with several separated zones, and a number of tokens that can be distributed in these zones to specify the individual choices of the group. We present the rationale used in design, the technical implementation, and report on the use of the interaction technique during workshops with children.