DADS System: Distributed Approach to Digital Affinity Diagram Collaboration

ABSTRACT

Affinity diagrams are a popular method for creating and organizing ideas. While there are many digital solutions for collaborative affinity diagram, they have not been widely adopted due to usability challenges, so may teams still revert back to traditional method of sticky notes for their affinity diagramming activities. We proposed Distributed Affinity Diagram System (DADS) to solve the existing usability problems and present a more usable solution compared with the traditional method. DADS proposes a dual-screen terminal that divides private input screen from common interactive screen in each user's setup. While private input encourages users to create and nurture ideas, common interactive spaces are designed to sync all users' actions across all terminals, allowing users to collaborate interactively through a distributed multi-touch system. The separation of input space and the distributed synchronized interactive space can improve usability, efficiency, and user satisfaction.

References

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

    • Collaborative and social computing systems and tools

      • Synchronous editors

    • Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

      • Computer supported cooperative work

• Information systems

  • Information systems applications

    • Collaborative and social computing systems and tools

      • Synchronous editors

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing and business

      • Computer supported cooperative work