The WorkTop project began as a pilot study that aimed to show that digital tabletops can support workplace collaboration among STEM professionals with the intention of extending the support to remote collaboration for people with disabilities. The project began in January of 2009 and will begin user testing this Spring.
The first phase of the project was to determine what kinds of collaboration STEM professionals take part in and then determine a task for the application to support. We initially focused on specific design tasks, like HVAC planning and evacuation routes and began designing an application that would support quick collaborative 3D modeling; however, as we talked to more potential users, we realized that the primary collaborative function that everyone takes part in is brainstorming, and a primary brainstorming activity is sketching. So, we designed a collaborative sketching application that sought to handle tabletop design issues we uncovered during background research, such as orientation and the difference between personal and shared space.
The initial designs gave each user a personal space for independent work and provided a central shared space into which a user dragged a sketch for discussion and revision. The shared space rotated to solve the orientation issues. We performed paper prototype user testing with this design and determined that the central shared space was inconvenient, individual workspaces needed to be fluid to accommodate any position around the table and that users wanted their own sets of tools and were not comfortable sharing tools.
Given this information, we refined our design, and I began development.