Computers & Education 67 (2013) 130–141

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Computers & Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/compedu

Effects of drag-and-response interaction mechanism of multi-touchoperated tabletop technology on users’ awareness and collaborativeperformance

Wu-Yuin Hwang a, Rustam Shadiev b,*, Yueh-Min Huang b, Yi-Ting Cai a, Yu-Shu Yang a, Jia-Han Su a

aGraduate Institute of Network Learning Technology, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City 32001, Taoyuan County, Taiwan, ROCbDepartment of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, University Road, Tainan City 70101, Taiwan, ROC

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 13 August 2012Received in revised form29 January 2013Accepted 16 March 2013

Keywords:Cooperative/collaborative learningHuman–computer interfaceInteractive learning environments

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ886 6 275 7575 (#6E-mail address: rustamsh@gmail.com (R. Shadiev)

0360-1315/$ – see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. Ahttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.03.004

a b s t r a c t

In this study we proposed drag-and-response interaction mechanism of multi-touch operated tabletoptechnology which features a queue area, a rubber band and a transfer animation function. We conductedone experiment by applying our proposed drag-and-response and existing drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop mechanisms, one at a time, to support collaborative tasks on a large-size tabletop display. This studyaimed to compare collaborative performance of participants on tasks with different interaction mech-anisms and to explore effects of drag-and-response mechanism on awareness and collaboration ofparticipants. Perceptions of participants toward using drag-and-response mechanism were also inves-tigated. Results of this study revealed that drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop are not convenient mech-anisms for collaborative work on a tabletop display. According to the results, drag-and-drop mechanismresulted in more exchange errors, while there were several conflicts and uncoordinated behaviors duringcollaborative work with drag-and-pop mechanism. Further investigation through questionnaire andinterview surveys revealed that drag-and-response is beneficial for facilitating awareness and cohesivecollaboration due to its functions, such as a queue area, rubber band and transfer animation. Moreover,the results showed that the rubber band facilitated participants to work with remote targets on a multi-touch tabletop display easily and the queue area enabled participants to control flow of coins into apersonal panel and out of it.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

An interaction mechanism of touch-operated tabletop technology enables transferring digital objects from one location to another on agraphical user interface. Two well-known interaction mechanisms are drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop (Baudisch et al., 2003; Beaudouin-Lafon, 2000; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008). Drag-and-drop allows a user to select a digital object and then drag it to a different location(Beaudouin-Lafon, 2000; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008). Drag-and-pop is an extension of drag-and-drop and it allows users to transfer a remotedigital object from one location to another. As a user starts dragging one object toward specific remote target object, drag-and-pop respondsby temporarilymoving potential target object toward user’s current cursor location, thereby allowing a user to interact with the object usingcomparably small handmovements near the target object, and reducing dragging distance (Baudisch et al., 2003; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008).Moreover, recent evidence suggests that interaction mechanisms of tabletop systems can facilitate awareness and collaboration(Cao, Lindley, Helmes, & Sellen, 2010; Dietz & Leigh, 2001; Hornecker, Marshall, Dalton, & Rogers, 2008; Jamil, O’Hara, Perry, Karnik, &Subramanian, 2011; Kruger, Carpendale, Scott, & Greenberg, 2003; Morris, Huang, Paepcke, & Winograd, 2006; Nacenta, Pinelle, Stuckel,& Gutwin, 2007; Pinelle, Nacenta, Gutwin, & Stach, 2008; Piper, O’Brien, Morris, & Winograd, 2006; Shen, Vernier, Forlines, & Ringel,2004; Tuddenham & Robinson, 2009).

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However, several limitations of current mechanisms were reported in related literature and they need to be addressed accordingly.Firstly, some mechanisms (e.g. drag-and-drop) are inconvenient to work with digital objects on a large-size tabletop display (Collomb &Hascoët, 2008; Nacenta et al., 2007). Secondly, current interaction mechanisms have only basic interaction technique to get agreementamong users for completing collaborative action (Cao et al., 2010; Nacenta et al., 2007; Piper et al., 2006). These limitations lead to conflictsin collaboration and to situations when one user dominates another. Thirdly, most interaction mechanisms require users to be aware of allgestures of other group members and to give an immediate agreement by all members to proceed collaborative action (Morris et al., 2006;Piper et al., 2006). This limitation may bring users a distraction from their engagement in individual tasks and negatively influence onoutcomes of collaboration. Finally, users’ interactionwith digital objects was designed based on basic operations such as being able tomove,rotate, scale, and etc. (Cao et al., 2010; Jamil et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2006; Nacenta et al., 2007; Piper et al., 2006). Moreover, our survey ofliterature on touch-operated tabletop technology demonstrated that there have been few studies focused on investigating awareness andcollaborative performance of co-located users working on exchanging available digital resources on a graphical user interface.

Therefore, in this study we developed extended interaction mechanism, called drag-and-response. It features a queue area, rubber bandand transfer animation functions for facilitating users’ awareness and collaborative work on a multi-touch tabletop display. We argue thatour developed mechanism is more flexible comparing to current interaction techniques in following conditions. Firstly, the rubber band ofdrag-and-response allows users to work with remote target objects on a large-size tabletop display. Secondly, the queue area of drag-and-response helps to eliminate conflicts in collaboration and dominating of some users over others. Thirdly, with the queue area, users do notneed to come to immediate agreement to proceed collaborative action, thus users will be less distracted and they may focus on completingindividual tasks. And finally, the functions of drag-and-response mechanism enable users to advance their interactions with digital objectson a tabletop display beyond basic operations.

In this study we conducted one experiment in which participants were engaged in accomplishing collaborative tasks (i.e. exchangingdigital resources) on a tabletop display with drag-and-drop, drag-and-pop and drag-and-response interaction mechanisms, one at a time.This study aimed to evaluate participants’ collaborative performance using different interaction mechanisms. This study also exploredeffects of drag-and-response mechanism on users’ awareness and collaboration. Furthermore, participants’ perceptions toward drag-and-response mechanism and its functions were investigated in this study.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides related work on collaboration and awareness. The section also discussescurrent tabletop technology and well-known touch-operated interaction mechanisms. Section 3 presents our research purpose and Section4 describes designed methods of this study. Results, research findings and pedagogical implications are discussed in Section 5. Finally,conclusions and several suggestions for future development and research are drawn in Section 6.

2. Related work

2.1. Collaboration and awareness

Increasing importance of collaboration is one feature of today’s business environment. Bennis (1997) argued that in complex andtechnologically sophisticated society as ours, the most urgent projects cannot be accomplished by one person, but require the coordinatedcontributions of many talented people. Thus, in a global society, in which timely information is the most important commodity, collabo-ration is not simply desirable, it is inevitable. Kirschner, Paas, and Kirschner (2009) defined collaboration as a process when users worktogether to pursue a common goal and it requires certain mutual and shared effort of users (Wang, 2009). That is, users must communicateand interact with each other actively intending to establish a common focus and achieve a goal. A considerable amount of literature has beenpublished on collaboration, particularly its benefits for work, learning, and socializing. For example, according to Argyle (1991), Jamil et al.(2011) and Wang (2009), people can do more together than they could do alone, thereby increasing extent and efficiency of their work.

One core dimension of collaboration is awareness. It refers to an ability of individuals working together to gain some level of under-standing about each other’s activities and a context (Börner, Kalz, & Specht, 2012; Carroll, Rosson, Convertino, & Ganoe, 2006; Gutwin &Greenberg, 2002; Rogers & Lindley, 2004). Individuals are being informed through awareness about specific aspects of other groupmembers, such as where group members are, what they are doing, what they are interested in, and etc. (Bodemer & Dehler, 2011; Börneret al., 2012; Rogers & Lindley, 2004). Gutwin and Greenberg (2002) emphasized importance of being aware of others as it plays an importantrole in fluidity and naturalness of collaboration.

2.2. Interaction techniques of touch-operated tabletop technologies

An interaction of users with digital objects on a graphical user interface of a tabletop was defined as one core element of tabletoptechnologies. Therefore, a considerable amount of literature has been paying much attention on developing and improving various inter-action techniques for different attributes of collaboration (Baudisch et al., 2003; Beaudouin-Lafon, 2000; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008; Jamilet al., 2011; Nacenta et al., 2007; Pinelle et al., 2008). Drag-and-drop is well-known interaction mechanism that allows input on sharedworkspace, i.e. an area between users that is visible to all of them (Baudisch et al., 2003; Beaudouin-Lafon, 2000; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008).According to Beaudouin-Lafon (2000) and Collomb and Hascoët (2008), drag-and-drop interaction mechanism uses a pointing device totransfer or copy an information without using an invisible clipboard. This mechanism allows a user to select an object by “grabbing” it anddragging it to a different location. Drag-and-pop is another well-known interaction mechanismwhich allows users to interact with remotedigital objects from their local spaces, i.e. an area close to a user. Drag-and-pop extends drag-and-drop mechanism as drag-and-popprovides users with access to content of the screen in situations when that would otherwise be impossible or hard to reach, e.g. an ob-ject located far away from a user (Baudisch et al., 2003; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008). As a user starts dragging one object toward specific targetobject, drag-and-pop responds by temporarily moving potential target object toward a user’s current cursor location, thereby allowing auser to interact with the object using comparably small hand movements near the target object and reducing dragging distance. Severalother interaction techniques with an input from the local space such as Radar, Pantograph, Laser and etc. were proposed elsewhere (Jamilet al., 2011; Nacenta et al., 2007; Pinelle et al., 2008).

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2.3. Current touch-operated tabletop technologies for collaboration and awareness: their features and limitations

A large and growing body of literature has been investigating a potential of tabletops technologies, particularly their interactionmechanisms, to support different attributes of collaborative work. For example, Jamil et al. (2011) have studied how different interactiontechniquesmay effects talk patterns of co-located learners working collaboratively. Jamil et al. (2011) implemented a table-based interactiontechniquewith three different conditions: interactive table using direct touch interaction, interactive table using pantograph interaction andnon-digital table. Learners were assigned several tasks in which they were asked to classify objects first and then to group objects togetherbymoving them on a surface of tabletops simultaneously. The interaction technique enabled learners tomove and rotate objects under threedifferent tabletop conditions. In addition, learners could scale digital objects on tabletops and work with remote objects using pantographinteraction. Results of the study showed that the tabletop interaction technique under particular condition resulted in different type ofcommunication pattern. Moreover, results suggested that using interactive tabletop technology was beneficial for collaboration due toparticular arrangement of learners around shared objects on a tabletop display. Learners’ arrangement could support face-to-face inter-action and opportunities for simultaneous input and equal access to objects. A role of visibility in observing actions of others in tabletopsettings could promote shared awareness for improved coordination and understanding. Rogers and Lindley (2004) carried out anexploratory study to investigate effects of a multi-touch tabletop system on group work. Experimental findings of Rogers and Lindleysuggested that a multi-touch tabletop technology could facilitate collaborative work of users and make their interaction fluid. That is, groupmembers switched between roles, explored many ideas, and they had a great awareness of what other members were doing. Piper et al.(2006) conducted an experiment by implementing SIDES (a Cooperative Tabletop Computer Game for Social Skills Development) to helppracticing effective group work skills while playing a puzzle-style game. Participants of the experiment had to build a path by moving,rotating and connecting piles on center area (or a group space) of a tabletop to allow a “frog” to travel from the “Start” lily pad to the “Finish”lily pad. Participants could vote for the path using a control panel of the system. This approach ensured that no player has more control overthe state of the game than others and it encouraged social interaction by necessitating communication and coordination among groupmembers. Experimental findings revealed that SIDES could provide an engaging experience for users, who typically find group workextremely challenging and as a source of anxiety. Morris et al. (2006) implemented CollabDraw system for an interaction of co-located usersusing a touch-sensing input device. The system allowed groups of two to four users to create diagrams, pictures, collages and simple an-imations collaboratively using free-form drawing and photo collage techniques. Users have made gestures cooperatively to interact with thesystem. That is, the system could interpret gestures of more than one user as contributing to a single, combined command to execute it.Morris et al. (2006) have believed that cooperative gestures are useful for enhancing users’ sense of teamwork, increasing awareness ofimportant system events and facilitating reachability. Cao et al. (2010) developed TellTable system for children to develop collaborativestories using photos and drawings of real-world objects. The system featured two interaction techniques, “Make” for creating stories and“Tell” for recording and replaying stories. Children could add objects, interact with them (i.e. using cut, draw, erase and paste operations)and manipulate them (i.e. move, rotate and scale) using “Make”. Children could add recorded voices to objects of their stories using “Tell”.Cao et al. (2010) conducted one experiment and experimental results demonstrated that TellTable was useful tool for supporting collab-orative storytelling activities amongst small groups of children. Nacenta et al. (2007) carried out an exploratory study to investigate howdifferent interaction techniques influence coordination and awareness of participants engaged in collaborative tasks. Two collaborativeactivities were designed in their study; participants were asked to play a simple puzzle game in one activity and to construct a storyline for ashort story using images and written notes in another activity. Pantograph, telepointers, radar views, drag-and-drop and laser beaminteraction techniqueswere proposed in the study of Nacenta et al. (2007) to support activities. Nacenta and his colleagues found that choiceof interaction technique significantly affected coordination measures, performance measures, and preferences. Experimental results alsoshowed that choice of a tabletop interaction technique does indeed matter, thus, the researchers provided several suggestions regardingbetter utilization of tabletop systems to support group work.

Our survey of literature clearly demonstrated a potential of tabletop systems to facilitate collaboration and awareness. However, severalshortcomings of current interaction mechanisms of tabletop systems were found and they were reported elsewhere (Cao et al., 2010; Jamilet al., 2011; Nacenta et al., 2007). The most common limitation of interaction mechanisms relate to their inability to prevent conflictingsituations during group work. Yet, not all interaction mechanisms enable users to manipulate remote digital object on a tabletop surfaceefficiently due to different level of reach affordances and awareness enabled by systems. For example, Cao et al. (2010) observed situationswhen some children dominated collaborative activities (i.e. obvious attempts of some children to take over). That is, some childrenmodifiedor discarded objects on a large-size multi-touch tabletop display that their fellow group members were working on. Nacenta et al. (2007)also observed conflicting situations during group work. That is, multiple users touched the same object at the same time, no matter whatinteraction techniques was employed. Moreover, Nacenta et al. (2007) reported about differences in patterns to reach digital objects on atabletop surface using various interaction techniques. Participants who worked with drag-and-drop mechanism mostly tended to work intheir personal territory due to difficulty to reach distant objects. These participants showed more homogenous use of a space when usingother techniques, e.g. pantograph.

3. Research purpose

In this study we developed and proposed extended interaction mechanism, called drag-and-response, to facilitate users’ awareness andcollaborative work on a large-size display of a multi-touch operated tabletop. We argue that our developed mechanism is more flexiblecomparing to other current interaction mechanisms. Firstly, it allows users to work with remote digital objects on a large-size tabletopdisplay. Secondly, it helps to prevent conflicting situations that occur during collaboration, e.g. domination of some users over others. Finally,drag-and-response does not require everyone to come to an agreement immediately in order to proceed collaborative action, thus, usersmay focus on their individual tasks. In addition, drag-and-response mechanism supports users’ tight collaboration, i.e. users maycommunicate with each other intensively, be aware of actions of other participants and be engaged in exchanging digital objects within asmall group.We conducted one experiment inwhich participants were engaged in accomplishing collaborative tasks (i.e. exchanging digitalresources) on a display of a tabletop technology with drag-and-drop, drag-and-pop and drag-and-response interaction mechanisms, one at

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a time. This study aimed to evaluate participants’ collaborative performance using different interaction mechanisms. This study alsoexplored effects of drag-and-response mechanism on users’ awareness and collaboration. Furthermore, participants’ perceptions towarddrag-and-response mechanism and its functions were investigated. The following research questions were addressed in this study.

(1) What are participants’ perceptions toward drag-and-response interaction mechanism and its functions?(2) Do participants accomplish collaborative task faster using drag-and-response comparing to using drag-and-drop or drag-and-pop

interaction mechanisms?(3) Do participants accomplish collaborative task with less number of drops using drag-and-response comparing to using drag-and-drop or

drag-and-pop interaction mechanisms?(4) Do participants accomplish collaborative task with less number of exchange errors using drag-and-response comparing to using drag-

and-drop or drag-and-pop interaction mechanisms?(5) What are effects of drag-and-response interaction mechanism on collaborative performance?

4. Multi-user resource exchange system

In this study we developed a multi-user resource exchange system (MRES) for a multi-touch tabletop display following general designprinciples proposed by Baudisch et al. (2003), Beaudouin-Lafon (2000), Collomb and Hascoët (2008), Dietz and Leigh (2001), Horneckeret al. (2008), Hwang and Su (2012), Kruger et al. (2003), Shen et al. (2004) and Tuddenham and Robinson (2009). Drag-and-drop, drag-and-pop and drag-and-response are interaction mechanisms that were provided by our system for supporting collaboration. The MRESsystem was implemented as one application of Surface Application Framework (SAF) (Hwang & Su, 2012) using Java language and it wasrunning onWindows 7� using theMicrosoft� operating system. A tabletopwas 70 cm in height and a display surface had the physical size of140� 110 cmwith the resolution of 640� 512 pixels. A detailed information about settings of themulti-touch tabletop and SAF can be foundin Hwang and Su (2012).

Fig. 1 presents a screenshot of the system’s interface. It includes a public area, a group panel and three personal panels. The figure showsdigital objects (i.e. coins of different value) generated by the system and they are scattered throughout a public area. The group and personalpanels are dynamic and they can be rotated and relocated onto any location of the public area. The group panel was designed with thepurpose to monitor the progress of collaboration. As shown in the figure, the group panel indicates all steps, one by one, which need to betaken by users in order to accomplish a collaborative task. The group panel also indicates a number of a step on which participants areworking currently (on the top of the panel) and a number of errors participants made while completing a task (on the left side of the panel).Users need to press “Next” button on the group panel after they finish a task in order to proceed to next task. The group panel shows “Error”message after pressing “Next” button if a task was completed incorrectly, e.g. an incorrect amount of coins was collected; in this case userscannot proceed to next task but need to complete a current task correctly.

The personal panel was designed with a purpose to collect coins by users and exchanging themwith other groupmembers. The personalpanel features an announcement area, error number, resource collection area, queue area and counter functions (shown in Fig. 1). Theannouncement area indicates different notices related to a task. For example, at the beginning of a task it shows on the personal panel of auser a number which represents sum of money a user has to accumulate. A user has to press “Finish” button on the personal panel after

Fig. 1. A screenshot of multi-user resource exchange system’s interface with group panel, three personal panels and coins.

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assigned sum was accumulated. However, if incorrect sum was accumulated, the announcement area indicates “Error” message. That is, auser cannot proceed to next task but need to complete current task correctly. The system calculates all errors made by a user whilecompleting a task and it indicates total number of errors on the right side of the personal panel. The resource collection area allows users tocollect coins to the personal panel (i.e. a user may pull a coin from the public area into own resource collection area) as well as to discardthem. Coins pulled by a user are accumulated in different sections of the resource collection area by their value (i.e. one-dollar, five-dollar,ten-dollar, and fifty-dollar) and the “Counter” indicates how many coins are in each section. For example, the Counter on Fig. 1 shows thatthe resource collection area contains five five-dollar coins and three ten-dollar coins. The queue area was developed for drag-and-responseinteraction mechanism only. It buffers, accepts and rejects coins sent to a user by other group members. The queue area is invisible if it isempty; however, it pops up above the personal panel once a coinwas sent to it. Fig. 1 shows the queue area that buffers several coins sent byother groupmembers; the Counter of queue area indicates they are one one-dollar, two five-dollar and one ten-dollar coins. Both functions,the Counter and the queue area, were specifically designed for facilitating users’ awareness and collaboration. A user needs to press “Acceptall” or “Reject all” button of the queue area in order to accept or reject all buffered coins and to empty the queue area.

We embedded the rubber band function (Baudisch et al., 2003; Collomb & Hascoët, 2008) in the MRES for facilitating users’ awarenessand collaborative work. In terms of collaboration, the rubber band enables users to interact with remote and difficult to reach objects. Forexample, a user needs to send a coin from own personal panel to a remote personal panel of another user. As a user starts dragging the coinfrom one personal panel toward another, a link icon of the personal panel located in the direction of a user’s dragmotionwill appear in frontof his/her cursor (shown in Fig. 2). The link icon is connected to own personal panel using the rubber band. Then a user drags a coin over thepersonal panel of another user and releases it. The transfer animation function of theMRES traces a path onwhich a coin hasmoved from thepersonal panel of one user toward the personal panel of another user. Therefore, both, the rubber band and the transfer animation functions,enable users’ awareness of who is exchanging coins and of what value.

5. Collaborative activity

In this study we designed a collaborative activity for co-located participants to exchange digital coins on a display of the multi-touchtabletop. A collaborative activity included three assignments. We randomly divided students into groups at the beginning of this studyand every group was asked to complete these three assignments using three interaction mechanisms respectively (i.e. one mechanism forone assignment). Every assignment included a set of eight tasks. TheMRES has randomly assigned specific sum of money at the beginning ofeach task, which had to be accumulated by each group into own personal panel, and yet, the MRES has generated several coins of differentface values. The total value of generated coins was equal to the total sum of money to accumulate. A task could be completed and group wasallowed to proceed to next task only after all members of a group accumulated assigned sum of money. Therefore, students were shiftingbetween individual (i.e. accumulating coins in own personal panels) and collaborating missions (i.e. exchanging coins and helping eachothers).

The collaborative activity was designed under such condition in order to facilitate participants’ tight collaboration through intensiveinteraction, awareness and exchanging resources. Participants were exposed to simple tasks, like classification of coins or pictures based ontheir content and/or location. Digital coins or pictures were spread on the tabletop display surface so that participants had to know whatresources are available on the display surface, what resources other participants have, and what resources have to be exchanged with othersin order to complete each task efficiently. We assumed that drag-and-response interactionmechanismmay facilitate effective collaboration.

6. Methods

6.1. Participants

Sixty undergraduate students (male participants were 63.33% and female participants were 36.66%) participated in this study. Theparticipants were aged between 19 and 22 years. The study areas of majority of the participants were information management (38.33%),communications engineering (28.33%) andmechanical engineering (16.67%). The participants had used computer almost every day (91.66%)and most of them (71.66%) had experience using a touch-operated device before this study. However, none of the participants had priorexperience with interactive tabletops.

Fig. 2. The rubber band.

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6.2. Research variables of using interaction mechanisms

The following research variables were defined in this study with relation to accomplishing collaborative tasks using different interactionmechanisms:

- Task completion time: time spent by a group on accomplishing the assignment using one interaction mechanism;- Number of drops: a quantity of dropping a coinmade by a group during accomplishing the assignment using one interactionmechanism.A drop is a result of an action in which a participant dropped a coin onto the public area intentionally or accidently while dragging it.

- Number of exchange errors: a quantity of exchange errors made by a group during accomplishing the assignment using one interactionmechanism. An exchange error is a result of an action in which a participant accepted a coin, which was transferred to him/her byanother participant, and discarded it afterward, e.g. a coin was unwanted.

6.3. Research procedure

The experiment was conducted in a research laboratory of one public university for about two and a half weeks. All sixty students wererandomly divided into twenty small groups (i.e. with three students in each group) at the beginning of the experiment. Each groupwas asked tocomplete three assignments using three interaction mechanisms. That is twenty groups were classified into three clusters with each goingthrough threemechanisms indifferentorder, therefore, to eliminate aneffect of experimental sequences and their side effects. The experimentalorder assignedgroups randomly toonemechanism for completingone assignment; participantsperformedassignments three timesusing threedifferent mechanisms, one at a time. Two researchers instructed participants (around 5 min) about operating the MRES. The instruction wasfollowed by a short practice toworkwith theMRES (around 10min) so that participants could get acquainted and experiencedwith the systemand three interactionmechanisms. Participantswere allowed to start collaborative activityafterweobtained their confirmation about theywerefamiliar with the system and its interaction mechanisms and they were able to perform collaborative activity. Each group was given 40 min tocomplete threeassignments. In this study,wecollecteddata fromdifferent sources toexpandanunderstanding fromonedata set to anotheror toconfirm findings from different data sources (Creswell, 2012). Therefore, the system recorded all data from collaborative work of participantssuch as task completion time, number of drops, and number of exchange errors. After the experiment, participants were invited to complete aquestionnaire surveyandyet, the researchershave conductedone-on-one semi-structured interviewswith selectedparticipants to explore theirperceptions toward using drag-and-response mechanism and its functions. All collected data were analyzed afterward.

6.4. Questionnaire survey

Fifty items divided into four dimensions (Tables 2–5) were in our questionnaire survey. Ten items of Dimensions 1 and twelve items ofDimension 2 were designed based on the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1986). Six items of Dimension 3 were designed followingrecommendations of Moon and Kim (2001) regarding participants’ intrinsic belief in technology acceptance. Twenty-two items ofDimension 4 were designed based on a theory of social presence developed by Short, Williams, and Christie (1976).

- Dimension 1: Perceived easy of drag-and-response interaction mechanism use: the degree to which a participant believes that using drag-and-response interaction mechanism would be free of physical and mental effort.

- Dimension 2: Perceived usefulness of drag-and-response interaction mechanism: the degree to which a participant believes that usingdrag-and-response interaction mechanism would enhance his/her performance to complete a collaborative task.

- Dimension 3: Perceived playfulness of drag-and-response interaction mechanism: the degree to which a participant finds the interactionwith drag-and-response mechanism intrinsically enjoyable or interesting.

- Dimension4:Perceivedawarenessdue to functions of drag-and-response interactionmechanism: thedegree towhichaparticipant understandsabout other participants’ actions and their context due to the resource collection area, the transfer animation and the rubber band functions.

In this study we did not intend to compare perceptions of participants regarding three different interaction mechanisms as drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop interaction mechanisms were developed by other studies. We only aimed to narrow our research focus and toinvestigate the perceptions of participants regarding our proposed interactive mechanism.

We made the questionnaire survey available online. Valid answer data to the questionnaire were obtained from fifty participants out ofsixty. Responses to the questionnaire items were scored using a five-point Likert scale, anchored by the end-points “strongly disagree” (1)and “strongly agree” (5).

6.5. One-on-one semi-structured interviews

One-on-one semi-structured interviews with subsequent data analysis followed the general recommendations of Creswell (2012). Eightparticipants were interviewed; four of them are participants who ranked some items of the questionnaire survey low and four of them arerandomly selected participants. Interviewees were asked open-ended questions about their experience using three interaction mechanismsand their opinions about effects of drag-and-response interaction mechanism on collaborative performance. Each interview tookapproximately 30 min; interviews were recorded and then transcribed for analysis. Text segments that met the criteria for providing thebest research information were highlighted and coded. Next, codes were sorted to form categories; codes with similar meanings wereaggregated together. Established categories produced a framework to report findings to the research questions.

6.6. Statistical analysis methods

In this study we adopted Cronbach’s alpha (a) to test the reliability of the questionnaire items (Creswell, 2012). Values for all dimensionsof the questionnaire were higher than 0.78, indicating that the reliability of the questionnaire items was satisfied. We conducted one-way

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analysis of variance to test for differences among means of variables for three interaction mechanisms (Creswell, 2012). In addition, weadopted Scheffe’s post-hoc procedure to test for differences of means of variables from each other.

7. Results and discussion

7.1. The questionnaire survey

Results of the questionnaire survey are presented in Tables 2–5. According to the results, participants ranked almost all items of thequestionnaire high. The results suggested most participants agreed that it was easy to use drag-and-response interaction mechanism andthe mechanism was useful and playful for collaborative work. Besides, participants perceived that they were aware of others’ actions andcontext due to the resource collection area, the transfer animation and the rubber band functions. However, the results revealed that theitems (no.) 2, 8, 9, 16, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 43, 46 and 47 of the questionnaire survey were ranked as the lowest. Participants mentioned theitem 2 (perception of learning to operate the mechanism easily) was ranked low because some of them were not familiar with themechanism and they did not know how to use it. That is, a guidance of an expert to achieve effective action with drag-and-responsemechanism was necessary for participants. The item 8 (perception of selecting coins easily) was ranked low because it took longer timefor participants to select a coin using drag-and-response mechanism. The system required a participant to touch a coin and to hold fingerson it for a few seconds, due to image processing procedure for drag-and-response mechanism, as a confirmation of intended touch and of“select a coin” command for the system. The items 9,16 and 37 (perceptions that drag-and-response mechanism is flexible for transferring acoin, it helps to accomplish a task faster, and the transfer animation function increases awareness of who sent a coin) were scored low by afew participants due to their misconception regarding the functions of drag-and-response mechanism. Researchers gave additionalexplanation about the functions of the drag-and-response mechanism during interviews and then participants admitted they scoredabovementioned items unfairly. Participants scored the items 31, 33 34, 35, 40, 46 and 47 (perceived awareness of others’ activities andcontexts) low because theywere mostly concentrated on completing own individual missions. For example, when a participant was focusedon pulling necessary coins into ownpersonal panel and pulling unwanted coins out of it or calculating the sum of money he accumulated, hepaid less or no attention to others, neither on the transfer animation and the rubber band functions.

Wewill address the limitations of our proposedmechanism revealed by the questionnaire survey and interviews in our future study. Firstly,we will use additional strategy for the instruction about the system and its functions in order to prevent participants’misconceptions. Besides,we will provide continuing guidance to users during collaboration on using drag-and-response mechanism effectively. Secondly, we willimprove our mechanism so that time to execute a user’s command will be shortened. Thirdly, we will enable pop-up windows to notify usersabout taking actions or manipulating objects (e.g. pressing “Accept all” or “Reject all” button to empty the queue area). Finally, we will modifycollaborative activity so that it may facilitate awareness better and make collaborative work more fluid, natural and efficient.

7.2. Statistical analysis

Results of statistical analysis are presented in Table 1. According to the results of descriptive statistics, participants spent less time toaccomplish task using drag-and-drop (M ¼ 67.54; SD ¼ 15.82) and drag-and-pop (M ¼ 62.17; SD ¼ 13.50) mechanisms comparing to usingdrag-and-response (M ¼ 82.34; SD ¼ 19.95) mechanism. The results of one-way analysis of variance revealed significant difference in taskcompletion time (F(2,57)¼ 7.880, p¼ 0.001). Scheffe post-hoc test revealed that task completion timewas significantly less using drag-and-drop (p ¼ 0.025) and drag-and-pop (p ¼ 0.001) mechanisms compared to using drag-and-response mechanism. However, there was nosignificant difference in task completion time between using drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop (p ¼ 0.596) mechanisms. The results ofdescriptive statistics revealed that participants made more drops using drag-and-drop (M ¼ 15.61; SD ¼ 26.93) mechanism comparing tousing drag-and-pop (M ¼ 14.92; SD ¼ 9.96) and drag-and-response (M ¼ 9.73; SD ¼ 28.00) mechanisms. However, the results of one-wayanalysis of variance revealed no statistically significant difference in number of drops (F(2,57)¼ 0.385, p¼ 0.682) using different interactionmechanisms. The results of descriptive statistics showed that participants made more exchange errors using drag-and-drop (M ¼ 6.28;SD ¼ 2.67) mechanism than using drag-and-pop (M ¼ 0.84; SD ¼ 0.66) and drag-and-response (M ¼ 1.46; SD ¼ 1.84) mechanisms. Theresults of one-way analysis of variance revealed significant difference in number of exchange errors (F(2,57) ¼ 48.522, p ¼ 0.000) using

Table 1The results of statistical analyses.

Variable/mechanism Mean SD SE F Sig. Scheffe post-hoc test

Task completion timeDrag-and-drop 67.54 15.82 3.54 7.880 0.001 Drag-and-drop < drag-and-response (p ¼ 0.025)

Drag-and-pop < drag-and-response (p ¼ 0.001)Drag-and-pop 62.17 13.50 3.02Drag-and-response 82.34 19.95 4.46

The number of dropsDrag-and-drop 15.61 26.93 6.02 0.385 0.682Drag-and-pop 14.92 9.96 2.23Drag-and-response 9.73 28.00 6.26

The number of exchange errorsDrag-and-drop 6.28 2.67 0.60 48.522 0.000 Drag-and-pop < drag-and-drop (p ¼ 0.000)

Drag-and-response < drag-and-drop (p ¼ 0.000)Drag-and-pop 0.84 0.66 0.15Drag-and-response 1.46 1.84 0.41

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different interaction mechanisms. Scheffe post-hoc test revealed that number of exchange errors was significantly lower using drag-and-pop (p ¼ 0.000) and drag-and-response (p ¼ 0.000) mechanisms compared to using drag-and-drop mechanism. However, there was nosignificant difference in number of exchange errors between using drag-and-pop and drag-and-response (p ¼ 0.595) mechanisms.

According to the results, participants took significantly longer to complete the assignment using drag-and-response mechanism.Interviews with participants revealed that a reason for such performance was due to the queue area of drag-and-response mechanism. Aprocedure of exchanging a coin could be completed only after a coin was transferred by one participant and accepted or rejected byanother. Participants mentioned during interviews that they could not accept or reject a coin immediately, particularly, when they werefocused on other steps of a task (e.g. calculating the value of collected coins, discussing a strategy to exchange coins with anotherparticipant). If a coin was not accepted, neither was a coin rejected, it buffered inside of the queue area. There were some particular casesreported by interviewees when the queue area of one participant buffered several coins, which he or she did not need, thus, others couldnot use them for completing individual missions. Besides, participants complained that all coins inside of a queue area could spreadthroughout the public area after they pressed “Reject all” button. Perhaps, it may save some time and the assignment can be completedfaster if the system enables a participant to transfer unwanted coins from the queue area directly to a personal panel of anotherparticipant who needs them. During interviews participants mentioned they have used verbal communication to confirm their exchangeactions while using drag-and-drop or drag-and-pop mechanisms. Thus, participants have learnt how to get others’ permission beforetheir action (e.g. send coins to others) and it was helpful during collaboration. Perhaps, if participants have cohesive communicationwhile using the function of drag-and-response mechanism to accept or reject coins they may complete collaborative tasks faster andmore efficiently.

Drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop mechanisms have no queue area, neither have they the function to accept or to reject coins. Therefore,the assignment was completed faster using these two mechanisms. However, participants mentioned during interviews about some lim-itations of drag-and-drop and drag-and-pop mechanisms. Participants complained that it was not easy to manipulate remote objects usingdrag-and-drop mechanism. Collomb and Hascoët (2008) and Nacenta et al. (2007) also reported about such limitation of drag-and-dropmechanism. Participants also mentioned that drag-and-pop mechanism cannot enable one’s awareness of coins sent to his/her personalpanel or coins pulled out of his/her personal panel by other participants without negotiation. That is, anyone may unintentionally getunwanted coins sent by others or lose necessary coins pulled by others due to uncoordinated actions of participants. Similar conflicts duringcollaboration were reported by Cao et al. (2010), Morris et al. (2006), Nacenta et al. (2007), and Piper et al. (2006). During the interviewsparticipants confirmed that the function of drag-and-response mechanism to accept and to reject coins was useful to prevent such con-flicting situations.

According to the results, there was no significant difference in number of drops when participants used different interaction mecha-nisms. The results also showed significant overlap between the standard deviations across conditions, which probably accounts for the lackof significant difference across interaction mechanisms. However, participants mentioned during the interviews that it was likely to makemore drops using drag-and-dropmechanism due to large-size of the multi-touch tabletop display. Particularly, it was not easy to hold a coinwhile dragging it for a long distance (e.g. from one side of the table to another); when a participant was dragging a coin it could probablydrop somewhere between its initial location and a destination. Another reason was due to the user interface design of the multi-touchtabletop technology. In this study we used a digital camera for capturing movements of participants’ fingers on a display of the multi-touch tabletop and we admit that this is not perfect technique yet. That is, dragging a coin on a surface of the multi-touch tabletopfaster than the capacity of the technology for image processing can afford may result into a failure, i.e. generation of a drop. Therefore,when a participant moved a coin too fast using drag-and-drop mechanism it dropped somewhere without reaching its destination. Drag-and-pop and drag-and-response mechanisms feature the rubber band function and participants did not need to drag an object for moving itfrom one location to another. Similar limitations of drag-and-drop mechanism were reported by Collomb and Hascoët (2008) and Nacentaet al. (2007).

The results showed that participants made significantly higher number of exchange errors using drag-and-drop interaction mechanismcomparing to using the other twomechanisms. Interviews with participants revealed a reason for making high number of errors; it was dueto participants’ uncoordinated actions to exchange coins. In one case, some participants, who used drag-and-drop interaction mechanism,pulled all unnecessary coins out of own personal panels to personal panels of others at the very beginning of a task without getting theirconfirmation. Then later, participants realized that some coins, which they already transferred to others, were actually necessary and theyhad to pull them back. In the other case, participants have transferred some coins to personal panels of others upon requests; however, itturned out later that requesters made miscalculation and not all requested coins were necessary. As a result, the transfers of both cases leadto higher number of exchange errors. Cao et al. (2010), Morris et al. (2006), Nacenta et al. (2007), and Piper et al. (2006) also revealed similardrawbacks of collaboration resulted from incoordination among users.We suggest that groupmembers canmake less exchange errors usingan interaction mechanism if they discuss about accomplishing a task (e.g. how many coins and of what value each member needs) beforestarting a transfer.

7.3. Effects of drag-and-response interaction mechanism on collaborative performance

We conducted further investigation by interviewing participants to explore effects of our proposed drag-and-response interactionmechanism on collaboration as well as how it may address limitations of current interaction mechanisms reported in related literature.

Most participants mentioned that drag-and-response interaction mechanismwas effective for collaboration due to its functions, i.e. thequeue area, rubber band and transfer animation. According to participants, the queue area enabled them to control a flow of coins intopersonal panels and out of them. That is, participants could accept necessary coins and reject unnecessary coins. By controlling flow of coinsparticipants may have fewer coins, mostly necessary ones, in their personal panels and thus, they can easier and faster calculate accu-mulated sum of money and determine coins they still need and therefore, make less exchange errors during the collaborative activity.According to participants, the rubber band and transfer animation functions better facilitated awareness and collaboration. Users wereaware of others’ actions and context and therefore they could accomplish collaborative task more efficiently and with less conflicts. Forexample, the rubber band and transfer animation functions enabled participants to be aware of what objects others work with, so that they

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did not manipulate the same objects simultaneously. Moreover, the rubber band was efficient function to work with remote targets on alarge-size multi-touch tabletop display. Due to the rubber band, participants did not need to lean on the table to reach remote objects (e.g.coins) and to drag objects as they had to do using drag-and-drop mechanism. Thus, participants who used drag-and-response interactionmechanism were less likely to make a drop of a coin. In addition, drag-and-response was found as more flexible mechanism in term ofgetting agreement from group members on exchanging digital objects. For example, a coin sent by one participant (a sender) to another (areceiver) would be buffered in the queue area of the receiver until he/she accept or reject it. Thus, the receiver of coins will be less distractedand focused on completing individual tasks and yet, such mechanism can prevent conflicts in collaboration (i.e. situations when one userdominates another).

Despites the benefits of drag-and-response interaction mechanism for collaboration we discussed in this section, one limitation wasrevealed in this study. A limitation relates to the queue area and it needs to be addressed. As we mentioned earlier, the queue area bufferedand locked some coins, which other members needed, until coins were accepted or rejected. If a participant rejected coins buffered in thequeue area, all of them could spread throughout the public area, so then other members had to collect them one by one. Morris, Ryall, Shen,Forlines, and Vernier (2004) and Scott, Grant, and Mandryk (2003) discussed issues, which may arise during a work of multiple users on ashared tabletop display and caused by unanticipated behavior of participants, e.g. an accident or confusion. Morris et al. (2004) and Scottet al. (2003) suggested that implementation of interaction techniques to support multi-user collaborative work should be done with greatcare in order not to interfere with existing social protocols and group dynamics. Morris et al. (2004) and Scott et al. (2003) proposed usefuldesign guidelines to follow which can support group members collaboration efficiently, e.g. support interpersonal interaction and transi-tions between personal and groupwork of participants.Wewill redesign the functions of drag-and-response interactionmechanism, so thata participant will not only be able to accept and reject coins but also to transfer some coins from the queue area directly to other participants,who need them. We will enable a popping-up alert window to let a participant know that his/her queue area buffers coins for long time.Besides, we will suggest participants to ask others orally to accept or reject coins if coins were not proceeded immediately. Perhaps, aprocedure to transfer coins will be completed faster and they won’t be locked in the queue area. Moreover, we will suggest group membersto negotiate about coins exchange, e.g. who does need coins, coins of what value and howmany, which may invoke some discussion amongmembers and be effective for collaborative performance.

7.4. Pedagogical implications

Based on the results of this study we make several implications for learning in this section. In our study we aimed to help par-ticipants to acquire and improve their skills such as coordination, negotiation, collaboration and finding effective strategy for accom-plishing tasks. Our observations of participants’ collaborative behavior revealed that participants usually interacted with each otherbefore performing the activity in order to find a strategy to accomplish tasks efficiently. The results of this study showed that differentgroups of participants have used different strategies. The following are three strategies that we observed in this study and we providecorresponding description to each of them. Strategy 1: Coins in and out. Following this strategy, participants get rid of all coins located intheir personal areas at the very beginning of the collaborative activity. That is, participants pull out all coins to the public area, nomatter they need them or not. After that, participants discuss about who need to pull coins and of what value into a personal panel. Atfirst sight, this strategy looks efficient as all coins will be available for participants in the public area after they were pulled out;participants then can distribute all available coins fairly among themselves. However, using this strategy resulted to high number ofexchange errors and participants found it as time consuming (i.e. they pulled coins out of own personal panel and then pulled some ofthem back). Therefore, this strategy was ineffective to complete tasks in this study. Strategy 2: Taking turns. Using this strategy, par-ticipants help each other to complete tasks one by one, i.e. by taking turns. That is, participants A and B help participant C to completehis task first, then participants A and C help participant B with his task and finally, participant B and C help participant A. This also canbe considered as an effective collaborative strategy since participants help each other and they accomplish tasks one by one. However,using this strategy did not result into good performance on tasks. At the beginning of the activity participants A and B pulled out allcoins from their personal panels to the public area so that participant C could use them and then later, participants A and B pulled someof these coins back as participant C did not need them. Such manipulation of coins resulted into high number of exchange errors.Moreover, participants considered this strategy as time consuming; they pulled all coins out of own personal panels and then pulledsome of them back. Therefore, this strategy was also ineffective to complete tasks in this study. Strategy 3: Type set. Using this strategy,at the very beginning of the activity participants discuss about who need to pull coins from the public area into personal areas, coins ofwhat value and how many of them. Participants start pulling coins of high value (i.e. fifty-dollars) into personal panels first, and thenswitch to coins of lower value (i.e. ten-dollar) and so on. Finally, participants end up with pulling in coins of the lowest value (i.e. one-dollar). That is, participants consider that coins of higher value need to be distributed first while coins of lower value need to bedistributed last. This strategy was based on coin type and it was effective; using this strategy resulted to less exchange errors andaccording to participants, it was not time consuming. Therefore, we suggest that this strategy should be advised to participants per-forming similar collaborative activity.

Using the effective strategy is very important for collaborative performance as it does effect performance on tasks as well as learningprocess. In the beginning of the activity, participants did not know how to accomplish tasks so they performed first few tasks intuitively andwithout applying any strategy. However, later, working on following tasks, participants started discussing with group members to brain-storm and to select some strategies for tasks accomplishment. Our observation showed that participants used different strategies, one byone. Participants tried one strategy and then evaluated their performance after using it; if performance did not improve, participants usedanother strategy. We noticed that some groups found effective strategy. This suggests that learning process took place among participantsregarding strategies to accomplish tasks (i.e. proposing different strategies, discussing them, selecting most appropriate, testing andevaluating it, deciding to use it or selecting another one). We may also conclude that using different strategies is a migration process duringaccomplishingmultiple tasks, from one strategy to another. That is, one strategy selected by participants can improve their performance andanother can decline it. In the future we will study such migration process deeper and yet, we will explore more collaborative strategies andtheir relationship with performance on tasks using different interaction mechanisms of touch-operated tabletop technologies, i.e. what

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strategies do participants use, what are their effects on task performance or learning and how different mechanisms can support theirimplementation.

Exploring awareness of participants working on collaborative tasks on a surface of tabletop technology in co-located environment wasone main focus of this study. Our results suggest that awareness is one important component of collaboration as it can support intensiveinteraction among participants and help to achieve effective collaboration. In this study, we observed awareness of participants and weclassified it into different levels. They are awareness on a resources level (i.e. about digital objects, such as coins), awareness on a situationallevel (i.e. about other participants’ emotional or physical state, location and etc.) and awareness on a strategy level (i.e. about using astrategy, advantages and disadvantages of a strategy). An example of awareness on a resources level is when group members need to knowabout what coins are available on the public area in order to select appropriate strategy and proceed a task efficiently. An example ofawareness on a situational level is when participants need to knowwho needs coins, coins of what value and howmany based on their facialexpression, gesture, body language or oral request. An example of awareness on a strategy level is when participants need to know how todistribute all available coins fairly among each other with less exchange errors.

8. Conclusions

In this study we proposed drag-and-response interaction mechanismwhich extends current interaction mechanisms of touch-operatedtabletop technologies. We designed the collaborative activity for exchanging available digital resources and we conducted one experimentwith drag-and-drop, drag-and-pop, and drag-and-response interactionmechanisms supporting collaboration of co-located participants on adisplay of themulti-touch tabletop system.We aimed to analyze and compare collaborative performance of participants using three differentinteractionmechanisms, effects of drag-and-response on collaborative performance, and perceptions of participants toward using drag-and-response mechanism. The results of this study revealed that participants took longer to complete the assignment using drag-and-responseinteraction mechanism. No significant difference was found in number of drops across using three different interaction mechanisms. Theresults also showed that participants made less exchange errors using drag-and-pop and drag-and-response interaction mechanisms. Theresults of this study suggest that participants cannot outperform in all three research variables (i.e. task completion time, number of drops,and number of exchange errors) using one particular interaction mechanism. Based on the results of this study wemay conclude that drag-and-drop is not convenient mechanism for working on a large-size display of a multi-touch tabletop as participants made high number ofdrops. Participants found drag-and-pop is the efficient mechanism for manipulating objects on a display of the tabletop; however drag-and-pop cannot support intensive collaboration effectively due to participants’ uncoordinated behavior and conflicts in collaboration. As for drag-and-response, further investigation revealed that the mechanism is beneficial for cohesive collaborative work due to the queue area, rubberband and transfer animation functions. The queue area enables participants to control the flow of coins into personal panels and out of them.The rubber band and the transfer animation functions facilitate participants’ awareness and collaborative work. Moreover, the rubber bandenables participants to work with remote targets on a large-size multi-touch tabletop display easily. Several pedagogical implications weremade for teaching and research communities of this field regarding strategies to complete collaborative tasks and levels of awareness thatneed to be considered and implemented appropriately during collaborative activities in the future.

The limitation of this study regarding the queue area of drag-and-response interaction mechanism should be acknowledged andaddressed in the future. The queue area has buffered and locked coins for long period of time so that other members could not use them. Inthe future, we will let participants know about coins buffered inside of their queue area by implementing popping an alert window up. Wewill also redesign the queue area so that a participant will be able both, to accept or reject coins and to transfer some of coins to other groupmembers, who need them.

Acknowledgements

This study is partially supported by the National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan under the contract numbersNSC 98-2511-S-008-005-MY3, NSC 101-2511-S-008-012-MY3, NSC 101-2511-S-008-013-MY3, NSC 100-2511-S-006-014-MY3, andNSC 101-3113-P-006-023.

Appendix A. Questionnaire survey

Table 2Dimension 1: perceived easy of drag-and-response interaction mechanism use.

# Items Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Mean Standarddeviation

1 It was easy to learn how to use drag-and-response mechanism 21 24 5 0 0 4.32 0.652 I learnt how to operate drag-and-response mechanism without any guidance

of an expert13 25 10 2 0 3.98 0.79

3 It was easy to get familiar with user interface of drag-and-response mechanism 16 32 2 0 0 4.28 0.544 It was easy to use functions of drag-and-response mechanism 16 33 1 0 0 4.30 0.505 Using drag-and-response mechanism in my way was even easier 13 25 11 1 0 4.00 0.766 Interaction process with drag-and-response mechanism was clear and

understandable13 33 3 0 1 4.14 0.70

7 I spent a lot of time to learn how to use drag-and-response mechanism 2 3 8 26 11 2.18 0.988 I could easily select coins that I need by using drag-and-response mechanism 9 31 9 1 0 3.96 0.679 Drag-and-response mechanism is flexible for transferring a coin 12 27 8 3 0 3.96 0.8110 It was easy to use drag-and-response mechanism 17 28 5 0 0 4.24 0.62

Table 4Dimension 3: perceived playfulness of drag-and-response interaction mechanism.

# Items Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Mean Standarddeviation

23 I enjoyed to use drag-and-response mechanism 11 30 9 0 0 4.04 0.6424 The time I spent to accomplish collaborative task using drag-and-response

mechanism passed fast16 26 8 0 0 4.16 0.68

25 Using drag-and-response mechanism for collaborative tasks made activity fun 21 22 7 0 0 4.28 0.7026 Using drag-and-response mechanism for collaborative tasks made me enjoy a

process of collaboration15 28 7 0 0 4.16 0.65

27 It was interesting to use drag-and-response mechanism during a collaboration 14 29 7 0 0 4.14 0.6428 Overall, I am satisfied with the experience of using drag-and-response mechanism 21 25 4 0 0 4.34 0.63

Table 5Dimension 4: perceived awareness due to the resource collection area/ the transfer animation function/ the rubber band function.

# Items Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Mean Standarddeviation

29 I was aware of a number of peers that sent me coins due to the resource collection area 17 26 6 1 0 4.18 0.7230 I was aware of a number of coins I received from peers due to the resource collection area 19 26 4 1 0 4.26 0.6931 I was aware of a problem solving status of peers due to the resource collection area 8 21 17 4 0 3.66 0.8532 I was aware of what coins need to be processed due to the resource collection area 17 28 5 0 0 4.24 0.6233 I was aware of my peers’ need due to the resource collection area 7 25 14 4 0 3.70 0.8134 I was aware of a peer who needs certain coins due to the resource collection area 7 17 16 10 0 3.42 0.9735 Overall, I was aware of accomplishing task progress of my peers due to the resource

collection area5 26 13 6 0 3.60 0.83

36 I was aware of who sent me a coin due to the transfer animation function 11 31 8 0 0 4.06 0.6137 I was aware of who sent a coin to a peer due to the transfer animation function 11 26 12 1 0 3.94 0.7438 I was aware of what coin was transferred due to the transfer animation function 11 34 5 0 0 4.12 0.5639 I was aware of who received a coin due to the transfer animation function 19 24 7 0 0 4.24 0.69240 I was aware of who sent a coin due to the transfer animation function 9 22 18 1 0 3.78 0.7641 I was aware of a destination where coin was transferred due to the transfer

animation function22 24 4 0 0 4.36 0.63

42 I was aware of coin transfer process accomplishment due to the transferanimation function

13 30 7 0 0 4.12 0.63

43 I was aware of my peers’ intention for coins exchange due to the transferanimation function

8 32 10 0 0 3.96 0.60

44 I was aware of someone is going to send a coin due to the rubber band function 23 21 4 2 0 4.3 0.7945 I was aware of who is going to send me a coin due to the rubber band function 17 24 8 1 0 4.14 0.7646 I was aware of who has extra coins due to the rubber band function 11 19 18 2 0 3.78 0.8447 I was aware of my peers’ intention due to the rubber band function 10 28 10 2 0 3.92 0.7548 I was aware of who is engaged in sending coins due to the rubber band function 14 30 3 3 0 4.10 0.7649 I was aware of whom I am sending a coin due to the rubber band function 14 29 6 1 0 4.12 0.6950 I was aware of a destination where a coin will be sent due to the rubber band function 21 25 3 1 0 4.32 0.68

Table 3Dimension 2: perceived usefulness of drag-and-response interaction mechanism.

# Items Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Mean Standarddeviation

11 Functions of drag-and-response mechanism met my demands for collaboration 5 38 4 0 0 4.08 0.4912 Operation flow met my demands for collaboration 9 31 10 0 0 3.98 0.6213 User interface of drag-and-response mechanism met my demands for collaboration 8 33 9 0 0 3.98 0.5914 Drag-and-response mechanism was useful for collaboration 15 31 4 0 0 4.22 0.5815 Drag-and-response mechanism enhanced my productivity during collaboration 11 27 12 0 0 3.98 0.6816 Drag-and-response mechanism allowed me to accomplish individual task faster 12 24 12 2 0 3.92 0.8017 Drag-and-response mechanism was useful to collect coins that I needed 12 33 5 0 1 4.14 0.5718 Drag-and-response mechanism was useful to accomplish collaborative task faster 12 28 9 1 0 4.02 0.7119 The resource collection area of drag-and-response mechanism was useful to accomplish

individual task faster12 27 11 0 0 4.02 0.68

20 The resource collection area of drag-and-response mechanism was useful to collectcoins I needed

20 28 2 1 0 4.36 0.56

21 The resource collection area of drag-and-response mechanism was useful to completecollaborative task faster

12 30 7 1 0 4.06 0.68

22 Overall, I think drag-and-response mechanism was useful as it supported collaboration 14 33 3 0 0 4.22 0.54

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