Occlusion-aware menu design for digital tabletops

In this paper, we describe the design of menus for multi-user digital tabletops. On direct input surfaces, occlusions created by the user's hand decrease interaction performance with menus. The key design criteria are to avoid these occlusions and to adapt the menu placement to the user's handedness and position on the tabletop. We present an adaptive menu placement method based on direct touch and pen tracking that allows correct menu placement around the table. As an extension, we propose adding a gesture input area for fast interaction which can be partly occluded by the user's hand.