Dynamic Viewport Mapping for Multiuser Digital Whiteboard Sessions
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Solution Overview
Problem
In virtual meeting space environments, participants using digital whiteboards often face challenges in tracking changes and modifications made by active users, especially when different devices display different regions of the canvas, leading to confusion and the potential for chaos.
Innovation Solution
The system dynamically tracks manipulations and changes made by an active participant in a collaborative whiteboard session, ensuring that non-interacting participants follow these changes. This is achieved by designating a single active user at a time, with passive participants' viewports automatically mapping to the active user's viewport, allowing them to follow changes while still being free to interact with the whiteboard.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple participants interact with the whiteboard simultaneously, then collaboration efficiency is improved, but tracking changes and maintaining order becomes difficult leading to confusion
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary mechanism that designates one participant as the 'active user' at a time. This active user designation acts as a mediator that simplifies change tracking for all participants, allowing multiple users to collaborate efficiently without the complexity of tracking simultaneous changes from multiple sources.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts the active user designation based on detected activities. When a participant performs actions like drawing or manipulating objects, the system automatically identifies them as the active user and updates the viewport mapping accordingly. This dynamic adaptation allows the system to maintain order while supporting multiple participants.
2Loss of information
If passive participants view the entire canvas, then they can see all content, but they cannot effectively track changes made by the active user
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of showing the entire canvas to passive participants, the system applies local quality by mapping their viewports to specifically follow the active user's viewport. This ensures that passive participants see and track changes in the relevant region where the active user is working, making change tracking easy without losing visibility of important modifications.
3Adaptability or versatility
If each participant controls their own viewport independently, then device autonomy is maintained, but participants cannot follow changes made by others
Solution Approach 1:
The system maintains adaptability by allowing participants to control their viewports independently when they are the active user. When a participant becomes passive, their viewport dynamically maps to the active user's viewport, enabling them to follow changes automatically. This dynamic switching preserves flexibility while ensuring visibility of remote changes.
Data Source
AI summary
Presented herein are systems and methods that allow for dynamic tracking of changes made by an interacting participant. The non-interacting participants follow the changes made by the interacting participant but maintain the ability to take control of their viewport. The systems and methods introduce the concept of an area of interest (AOI), which is a region of the canvas that contains changes or modifications. The AOI relies on a notion of an active user. An active user is a participant that performs an action on the whiteboard. In order for the other participants to view and be aware of changes made to the whiteboard by the active user, the viewport of each device is automatically mapped to contain the AOI.