Beyond “Social Protocols”: Multi-User Coordination Policies for Co-located Groupware

The status quo for co-located groupware is to assume that “social protocols” (standards of polite behavior) are sufficient to coordinate the actions of a group of users; however, prior studies of groupware use as well as our own observations of groups using a shared tabletop display suggest potential for improving groupware interfaces by incorporating coordination policies – direct manipulation mechanisms for avoiding and resolving conflicts. We discuss our observations of group tabletop usage and present our coordination framework. We conclude with example usage scenarios and discuss future research suggested by this framework.