WeSearch: Supporting Collaborative Search and Sensemaking on a Tabletop Display

Groups of users often have shared information needs – for example, business colleagues need to conduct research relating to joint projects and students must work together on group homework assignments. In this paper, we introduce WeSearch, a collaborative Web search system designed to leverage the benefits of tabletop displays for face-to-face collaboration and organization tasks. We describe the design of WeSearch and explain the interactions it affords. We then describe an evaluation in which eleven groups used WeSearch to conduct real collaborative search tasks. Based on our study’s findings, we analyze the effectiveness of the features introduced by WeSearch.