Trade-offs Between a Vertical Shared Display and Two Desktops in a Collaborative Path-Finding Task

Large vertical displays are considered well adapted for collaboration, due to their display surface and the space in front of them that can accommodate multiple people. However, there are few studies that empirically support this assertion, and they do not quantitatively assess the differences of collaboration in front of a shared display compared to a non-shared setup, such as multiple desktops with a common view. In this paper, we compare a large shared vertical display with two desktops, when pairs of users learn to perform a path-planning task. Our results did not indicate a significant difference in learning between the two setups, but found that participants adopted different task strategies. Moreover, while pairs were overall faster with the two desktops, quality was more consistent in the vertical shared display where pairs spent more time communicating, even though there is a-priori more implicit collaboration in this setup.