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Investigating teamwork and taskwork in single- and multi-display groupware systems

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Abstract

Multi-display groupware (MDG) systems, which typically comprise both public and personal displays, promise to enhance collaboration, yet little is understood about how they differ in use from single-display groupware (SDG) systems. While research has established the technical feasibility of MDG systems, evaluations have not addressed the question of how users’ behave in such environments, how their interface design can impact group behavior, or what advantages they offer for collaboration. This paper presents a user study that investigates the impact of display configuration and software interface design on taskwork and teamwork. Groups of three completed a collaborative optimization task in single- and multi-display environments, under different task interface constraints. Our results suggest that MDG configurations offer advantages for performing individual task duties, whereas SDG conditions offer advantages for coordinating access to shared resources. The results also reveal the importance of ergonomic design considerations when designing co-located groupware systems.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for financial support, and the Collaborative Systems Lab at the University of Waterloo and the EDGE lab at Dalhousie University for their help, suggestions and moral support in conducting this work. We would also like to thank Regan Mandryk and Brian Bailey for their invaluable discussions surrounding MDG design and evaluation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    James R. Wallace, Stacey D. Scott, Taryn Stutz & Tricia Enns

  2. Microsoft Research, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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  1. James R. Wallace
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  2. Stacey D. Scott
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Correspondence to James R. Wallace.

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Wallace, J.R., Scott, S.D., Stutz, T. et al. Investigating teamwork and taskwork in single- and multi-display groupware systems. Pers Ubiquit Comput 13, 569–581 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0241-8

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