Collaboratively Creating a Thematic Repository Using Interactive Table-Top Technology Fernando Loizides, Christina Vasiliou, Andri Ioannou, and Panayiotis Zaphiris Cyprus University of Technology {fernando.loizides,christina.vasiliou,andri.i.ioannou, panayiotis.zaphiris}@cut.ac.cy Abstract. This paper reports on the design and development of a sur- face computing application in support of collaborative idea creation and thematic categorisation. C.A.R.T (Collaborative Assisted Repository for Tabletops) allows up to 4 users to simultaneously interact with virtual objects, each containing a single concept, to create thematic categories. Each object, which replicates a physical post-it on a multi-touch table- top, is created by one of the team members either previous to the meeting or during the initial stage. The application then encourages the exchange of debate and conversation by presenting the ideas one at a time for users to discuss and categorise. The resulting idea repository can be used for roadmap creation as well as comparative studies using further partici- pants. The application’s main task is similar to that of card sorting and affinity diagramming. We report on the functionality of the application which was designed and developed following a user-centred approach. Keywords: Digital Repositories, Idea Mapping, Tabletops. 1 Introduction Surface computing and particularly multi-touch interactive tabletops have re- cently attracted attention in the fields of Digital Libraries, Human-Computer Interaction and Educational Technology. A few empirical investigations have demonstrated their affordances for collaborative brainstorming, yet a lot remains to be done. The use of table-top computing for the creation and manipulation of digital repositories remains under researched, largely due to the novelty of these interactive surface devices. Our application, C.A.R.T, is specifically designed to create repositories which contain ideas from a brainstorming session. The main functionality, is the interactive and collaborative structuring of the repository (underlying database) into thematic categories, rather than the input modality of the ideas. We begin by describing the application architecture, followed by the stages which a user undergoes to complete the task at hand. 2 System Overview C.A.R.T can accommodate from 1 to 4 users simultaneously around the table- top (See Figure 2 (left image)). It was created using Flash and Action Script P. Zaphiris et al. (Eds.): TPDL 2012, LNCS 7489, pp. 512–516, 2012. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012