Do's and Dont's in Applications for Co-surfing News

Abstract: When more than one user uses a system with a single input device, the person in charge of the control is often active, and the by-sitters become passive. This situation can lead to frustration and boredom among the by-sitters. One way to solve this problem could be to distribute the con-trol over the system so that more than one user can control the system simultaneously. These systems, where many users can work simultane-ously with separate input devices connected to the same, shared screen, are called Single Display Groupwares. In this report, a single display groupware prototype for surfing news co-operatively was developed. The purpose of the prototype was to find out if the use of SDGs is likely to be a successful way to engage by-sitters and support co-operation while surfing news through a media terminal. The system was tested on pairs of users. The subjects of thestudy were observed while using the system, and a number of patterns in the users’ strategies in dealing with the si-multaneous input situation emerged. The main conclusions that were drawn from the study were that multiple input can be a good solution when the system is so complex that the use can be divided into several parallel sub-activities. When the use of the system can’t be split into parallel sub-activities, the users will only hinder each other, and the ex-tra input device will just make the division of control unclear without giving any benefit.