The Tabletop is Dead? - Long Live the Table’s Top!
in Workshop “The Disappearing Tabletop - Social and Technical Challenges for Cross-Surface Collaboration” in conjunction with the ACM Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces 2017 (ISS 2017)
October 17-20, 2017, Brighton, UK
Research with interactive tabletop displays has shown much promise for collaborative scenarios. However, tabletops never became a commercial success and rarely exist outside the research community. Being relatively expensive, heavy and immobile hardware, and only limited availability of commercial applications were some of the reasons that these systems never made it into our offices or living rooms. The timing with the introduction of multi-touch smartphones and tablets, with their smaller form factor, better mobility, support for multi touch interaction, and an app-ecosystem, made large interactive surfaces look bulky and outdated. There is, however, a shift to an increasing number of mobile and ad-hoc scenarios, where mobile devices are used on a table’s top.
Research with interactive tabletop displays has shown much promise for collaborative scenarios. However, tabletops never became a commercial success and rarely exist outside the research community. Being relatively expensive, heavy and immobile hardware, and only limited availability of commercial applications were some of the reasons that these systems never made it into our offices or living rooms. The timing with the introduction of multi-touch smartphones and tablets, with their smaller form factor, better mobility, support for multi touch interaction, and an app-ecosystem, made large interactive surfaces look bulky and outdated. There is, however, a shift to an increasing number of mobile and ad-hoc scenarios, where mobile devices are used on a table’s top.
