Multi-touch Table User Interfaces for Co-located Collaborative Software Visualization Craig Anslow School of Engineering and Computer Science Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
[email protected] ABSTRACT Integrated Development Environments (IDE) like Eclipse, Most software visualization systems and tools are designed and the web. These design decisions do not allow users in from a single-user perspective and are bound to the desktop, a co-located environment (within the same room) to easily IDEs, and the web. Few tools are designed with sufficient collaborate, communicate, or be aware of each others activi- support for the social aspects of understanding software such ties to analyse software [19]. Multi-touch user interfaces are as collaboration, communication, and awareness. This re- an interactive technique that allows single or multiple users search aims at supporting co-located collaborative software to collaboratively control graphical displays with more than analysis using software visualization techniques and multi- one finger, mouse pointer, or tangible object on various kinds touch tables. The research will be conducted via qualitative of surfaces and devices. user experiments which will inform the design of collabora- tive software visualization applications and further our un- The goal of this research is to investigate whether multi- derstanding of how software developers work together with touch interaction techniques are more effective for co-located multi-touch user interfaces. collaborative software visualization than existing single user desktop interaction techniques. The research will be con- ACM Classification: H1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Hu- ducted by user experiments to observe how users interact man Factors; H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: and collaborate with a multi-touch software visualization ap- User Interfaces.