Shared canvases help groups work together by organizing ideas spatially
From Artifacts to Coordination: Exploring How Shared Canvases Drive Collaboration during Group Ideation
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Working together on ideas can be hard because people think differently and talk at different paces. This paper looks at how groups used shared digital canvases to plan trips together and found that organizing ideas and notes freely helps them work better as a team. The authors saw that these shared spaces made silent members more visible and helped the group naturally take on different roles without strict rules. This understanding can help design better tools for teamwork in the future.
What this means in practice
- •For software product managers: Design team collaboration tools that highlight contributions and let roles emerge naturally without preset tasks.
- •For remote work facilitators: Build digital workspaces that improve group coordination by letting users arrange ideas spatially to support both shared and private work regions.
Authors
Saramsh Gautam, Andrew M. Webb, Mahmood Jasim
Abstract
Recent years have seen a surge in tools that support collaborative ideation through shared canvases. While these canvases offer flexible workspaces, how collaborators leverage them to iteratively develop ideas by externalizing thoughts, organizing artifacts, and coordinating tasks remains underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory study with seven triads planning a travel itinerary using an infinite-canvas technology probe. Drawing on participant interviews and video analysis of their canvas interactions, we observed that collaborators contributed in parallel and arranged artifacts freely without a predefined structure. This spatial organization allowed collaborators to coordinate implicitly, made less vocal participants' contributions visible, helped distinguish private exploratory regions from shared working areas, and supported the emergence of distinct roles through repeated patterns of contribution. We discuss design implications for canvas-based ideation tools, including surfacing unnoticed contributions, supporting emergent roles without formalizing assignments, and keeping spatial cues legible for AI integration in collaborative canvases.