Study on generic tangible objects used to collaborate remotely on RFID tabletops

摘要

Having the tools to work remotely with other people is one of the ambitions of people who work in a group context. In fact they have to move and to link their team-work in order to collaborate on one or several tasks. This paper describes a study on an innovative system designed to support remote collaborative applications on tabletops with tangible interaction. We propose a set of generic tangible objects. They model a set of collaborative styles which are possible between tabletop users. Our goal is to study the usability of and satisfaction with such objects that provide remote collaboration among users of interactive tabletops for tangible interaction. An application adapted to remote collaboration was tested in the laboratory with adult participants. Twelve test groups, each composed of three participants, tested a distributed application for the learning and recognition of colors. Our analysis, supported by observations, log file analysis and questionnaires, focuses on whether the use of generic objects to collaborate remotely is easy and understandable for users. It also considers user satisfaction when using the distributed tabletop with tangible objects.