Provide ways of conveying and supporting gestural communication. Gestures should be clearly visible, and should maintain their relation with objects within the work surface and with voice communication. Convey the process of creating artifacts to express ideas. The Figure displays a typical GroupSketch screen with four participants engaged in a design session. The borders enclose a shared work surface where people can draw, enter text, or gesture.
Every person also has a large, labelled cursor.
All participants see the same work surface on their display, and every movement of the cursor and change in the drawing is immediately visible on all displays. Each participant is represented by a unique labelled caricature located to the right of the work surface. A critical point is that GroupSketch supports simultaneous interactions, where any person can do any action at any time. The pen-shaped cursor also appears automatically when typing. Menu selections and cursor movements outside the work surface are private and are not broadcast to other workstations.