Lyra Nikolovska’s last project is very relevant for our work on Interactive Tables. Her project is reflection on a type of social dynamics that takes place at tables during conversations. Who dominates the conversation?

Two people, seated at each end of the table, converse. As they converse, light emitting diodes (LEDs), embedded along the center of the table, are activated by their pattern of conversation. Two microphones pick up the duration and the volume of the conversation at regular intervals, and trigger light animation from the end where one speaks toward the other. If both people speak simultaneously, the lights start animating from both ends.

As in our technical solution, the table doesn’t parse nor “understand” the nature of the discourse, rather it isolates and brings forward one specific component of interaction at tables. One great point of this design is that the table does not use an “extra PC” for the computational part. Instead, there is a micro-controller embedded in the tabletop that does all the computation. The code is a couple of hundred lines.

Tags: collaboration tools, information visualization, interaction design, interactive furniture, ubiquitous computing