Interactive Coffee Tables: Interfacing TV within an Intuitive, Fun and Shared Experience

Watching television is usually a shared experience allowing family or friends that share the same viewing interests to watch, comment and enjoy programs together. The interaction part however is at the opposite end being reduced to the traditional remote control which by itself proves very limited with respect to the sharing part: although the viewing experience is shared among the group, the control part of the interface only allows one-viewer-at-a-time interaction. We are discussing in this paper a new interaction technique for controlling the TV set using one commonly available shared wide-area interface: the coffee table. By visually designating interaction sensitive areas on the coffee table surface, television control may be achieved via simple hand movements across the surface which may be performed by any of the viewers at any time. The final interface is thus fun, simple, intuitive, and very important, wide-shareable and immediately available for all the participants.