Audio-enhanced collaboration at an interactive electronic whiteboard

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental setup to investigate new possibilities to support cooperative work of a team with audio feedback on a large interactive electronic whiteboard, called DynaWall®. To enrich the interaction and the feedback qualities within a team work situation the DynaWall is equipped with a set of loudspeakers which are invisibly integrated into the environment. Different forms of audio feedback are realized and discussed to meet the requirements for collaborative team work situations. An audio feedback for a gesture interface with sound cues is implemented to improve the use of gestures to execute commands. Furthermore a spatial sound property of moved and thrown information objects on the surface of the otherwise silent electronic whiteboard is introduced to add an imitated natural sound behavior. The focus of the setup is to experiment with sound feedback for a non-standard computer environment useful in a cooperative team work situation.