Examining the Differences of On-Tabletop and Off-Tabletop Personal Territories in Collaborative Interaction

In this work in progress paper, we present first results of a collaborative tabletop study that compares different types of territories. Our research focuses on interaction with digital objects (post-it notes) during a brainstorming task in two conditions: In the first condition, the creation of digital objects took place on a large scaled tabletop screen – no delimited territories. In the second condition, mobile personal spaces (personal tablets) were used for the creation of digital objects. In both conditions, the tabletop was used for collaborative organization of the created digital objects. Based on a total of 20 groups, we report qualitative results about different territorial strategies during the observed brainstorming sessions. Furthermore, we discuss the dynamic positioning of the participants at the tabletop during collaborative work.