Towards concurrent multi-tasking in shareable interfaces

Abstract

Shareable interfaces, those that can be interacted simultaneously by several users, are a common tool used both in CSCW research and in real world applications. They tend however to lack a capability that has been traditionally relevant to the usefulness of computing systems: multi-tasking. In this paper we explain why a combination of the multi-user features of shareable interfaces and the multi-tasking capabilities of general-purpose computing, could be relevant for building useful systems, and why these features are not present today in most of the current prototypes and systems. We also discuss possible approaches for solving the problems that prevent shareable interfaces to fully support multi-tasking, and we present a novel approach based on a distributed, application-centered, content-based gesture disambiguation. We describe how an already existing framework, GestureAgents, implements this new approach, focusing on expanding the description of the relevant elements related to this problem, and conclude with some example applications and a discussion.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7 / 2007–2013 through PHENICX project under grant agreement n° 601166.