Inter-Personal Browsing: Supporting cooperative web searching by face-to-face sharing of browser pages

We are studying a framework that facilitates the gathering and sharing of information in group work situations where several people are working on multifaceted problem-solving or emergent tasks by cooperating and sharing the workload. In particular, we are developing a framework for the smooth sharing of public information to stimulate debate while maintaining the focus of the group's web searching activities and confining private information on the PC screens of individual users. In this paper, we report on the implementation of Inter-Personal Browsing - a framework where each user has a small shared display in addition to the PC display, and can use this to share web browser screens with other users. Having introduced this system into a mechanism for practical learning of group work methodology, we introduce the results of studying its effectiveness from the viewpoint of information sharing and communication.