Comments are represented in the system by miniature pictures of their authors. The user can directly click on faces to see peoples' overall opinion, or click buttons to access help, watch movies or make comments. After exploration of what previous users have said, an author's audio note overview, and movie watching, users of the kiosk can make a comment to the given topic. Having one opportunity to express their overall view forces users to be articulate. The Argument Map is a representation of the evolution of the conversation to illustrate the spatial and temporal paths of the discussion where users can trace an argument, line of reasoning or origin of a thought.
Users can start new lines of thought or respond to an existing comment.
The display clearly indicates the relationship between the response and the original comment. As the user writes each comment, he or she classifies it as an elaboration, critique, alternative, question, rephrasing, or new idea. The comments thus appear in trees, where each tree covers some topic and descendants of any node are responses to that comment. Users may make any number of comments but are forced to place each one within the tree structure. As conversation and argumentation structures are made explicit, we intend novice users to learn to recognize, categorize and organize their knowledge of the subject.