The eLabBench: an interactive tabletop system for the biology laboratory

We present the eLabBench -- a tabletop system supporting experimental research in the biology laboratory. The eLabBench allows biologists to organize their experiments around the notions of activities and resources , and seamlessly roam information between their office computer and the digital laboratory bench. At the bench, biologists can pull digital resources, annotate them, and interact with hybrid (tangible + digital) objects such as racks of test tubes. This paper focuses on the eLabBench's design, and presents three main contributions: First, based on observations we highlight a set of characteristics digital benches should support in a laboratory. Second, we describe the eLabBench , including a simple implementation of activity-based computing for tabletop environments, with support for activity roaming, note-taking, and hybrid objects. Third, we present preliminary feedback of the eLabBench based on a ongoing deployment in a biology laboratory, and propose a design space definition for the design of single-user, work-oriented, tabletop systems.