Semantic Interactivity: leveraging NLP to enable a shared interaction approach for joint activities

Collocated collaboration, where individuals work together in the same physical space and time, remains a cornerstone of effective teamwork. However, most collaborative systems are designed to support individual tasks rather than joint activities; they enable interactions for users to complete tasks rather than interactivity to engage in shared experiences. In this work, we introduce an NLP-driven mechanism that enables semantic interactivity through a shared interaction mechanism. This mechanism was developed as part of CollEagle, an interactive tabletop system that supports shared externalisation practices by offering a low-effort way for users to create, curate, organise, and structure information to capture the essence of collaborative discussions. Our preliminary study highlights the potential for semantic interactivity to mediate group interactions, suggesting that the interaction approach paves the way for designing novel collaborative interfaces. We contribute our implementation and offer insights for future research to enable semantic interactivity in systems that support joint activities.