Contextual design considerations for co-located, collaborative tables

To date, digital tabletop research has predominantly focused on resolving fundamental software and hardware challenges introduced by this new interactive platform. Understanding not only what technical functionality a digital tabletop can provide, but also how appropriate that functionality is for different usage contexts is crucial in designing tables intended for use outside of the research lab. In this paper, we propose five contextual factors to consider in the tabletop design process - social and cultural, activity, temporal, ecological, and motivational - and discuss how these factors influence the design of three main aspects of tabletop systems: software interface, physical form, and connectedness. This work provides a means for tabletop designers to understand the factors that impact the applicability of existing and future design approaches for a given context of use.