The Effect of Undergraduate Library Users’ Dyadic Diversity Attributes on Interactive Tabletop Collaboration, Performance, and Perception

Sixty undergraduate students were paired up and participated in a usability study of the Library Explorer software on a Microsoft PixelSense Tabletop. Specific investigation into the impact of diversity attributes on collaboration style, collaboration quality, task performance, and participants’ perception revealed interesting patterns. Problem solving ideas were coded as suggestions. Gender composition and task performance were found to be significantly associated with the frequency of suggestions’ non-acceptance. Results show that during participants’ collaborative discovery on interactive tabletops, gender and racial diversities, while directly influenced their collaboration styles and processes, did not impact their team performance. Diversity attributes that significantly correlated with team effectiveness included native language diversity, differences in tabletop use experiences, usability ratings, and the frequency of suggestions not being accepted. Findings of the study not only enrich the understanding of the connection between team compositional diversity and collaboration styles, but also provide insights on how team members’ suggestion behaviors may help capture the dynamics of collaboration on interactive tabletops.