coisTable: An Individual-and-Spatial-Aware Tabletop System for Co-located Collaboration

We present coisTable, a tabletop system that integrates a shared interactive surface with spatial-aware and identifiable tangible devices to support co-located collaborative work. We describe the underlying technical contributions: a hybrid interaction paradigm of graphical and tangible interfaces to foster the collaboration space; a workspace partition strategy to facilitate coordination; a natural identification to promote participation using tangible terminals. In addition, we detail the system prototype including the hardware implementation and the software architecture. Capabilities and interaction modalities are illustrated with the comparison of three conditions of a project management simulation. Finally, we report on the experimental results and the limitations of the tabletop system.