Resolving display shape dependence issues on tabletops

Advances in display technologies are transforming the capabilities—and potential applications—of system interfaces. Previously, the overwhelming majority of systems have utilised rectangular displays; this may soon change with digital devices increasingly designed to be ubiquitous and pervasive, to facilitate frictionless human interaction. At present, software is invariably designed assuming it will be used with a display of a specific shape; however, there is an emerging demand for systems built around interacting with tabletop interfaces to be capable of handling a wide range of potential display shapes. In this paper, the design of software for use on a range of differently shaped tabletop displays is considered, proposing a novel but extensible technique that can be used to minimise the influence of the issues of using different display shapes. Furthermore, we present a study that applies the technique to adapt several software applications to several different display shapes.