CSL Members Leila Homaeian, Nippun Goyal (alumni), Jim Wallace (alumni), and Stacey Scott's Poster "Investigating Communication Grounding in Cross-Surface Interaction" will be presented at the ACM ISS 2017 conference in Brighton, UK, October 17-20, 2017. Please stop by our poster at the conference. 

Poster Abstract: This work studied the ability of two different cross-surface interaction techniques to support communication “grounding” during joint analysis and discussion in a collaborative sensemaking task. Grounding is the process of establishing mutual knowledge, beliefs, or assumptions during conversation to effectively communicate, and is essential for collaborative analysis. Our study found several specific design features of the studied cross-surface interfaces that either supported or hindered the grounding process. For instance, one technique provided “flexible ownership” of widgets on a shared tabletop that controlled the data connection between the tabletop and user’s personal tablets. This feature enabled cooperative interaction strategies known to facilitate the grounding process. This paper will discuss this, and other cross-surface design features that impact grounding.