Visual scoping and personal space on shared tabletop surfaces

Information is often shared between participants in meetings using a projector or a large display. Shared touch-based tabletop surface is an emerging technology. The shared display may not be able to accommodate all the information that participants want on the display. Moreover, large amounts of displayed information increase the complexity and clutter making it harder for participants to locate specific pieces of information. Key challenges are thus how to eliminate or hide irrelevant information and how participants can add information without distracting the other participants unintentionally. This study reports a novel approach that addresses these challenges by globally hiding information that is not relevant to all participants by introducing a private area on the public display.