ClearBoard: a seamless medium for shared drawing and conversation with eye contact

Ishii, H. and Kobayashi, M. 1992. ClearBoard: a seamless medium for shared drawing and conversation with eye contact. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Monterey, California, United States, May 03 - 07, 1992). P. Bauersfeld, J. Bennett, and G. Lynch, Eds. CHI '92. ACM, New York, NY, 525-532.

Abstract: This paper introduces a novel shared drawing medium called ClearBoard. It realizes (1) a seamless shared drawing space and (2) eye contact to support realtime and remote collaboration by two users. We devised the key metaphor: “talking through and drawing on a transparent glass window” to design ClearBoard. A prototype of ClearBoard is implemented based on the “Drafter-Mirror” architecture. This paper first reviews previous work on shared drawing support to clarify the design goals. We then examine three methaphors that fulfill these goals. The design requirements and the two possible system architectures of ClearBoard are described. Finally, some findings gained through the experimental use of the prototype, including the feature of “gaze awareness”, are discussed.