Sketched menus and iconic gestures, techniques designed in the context of shareable interfaces
Suppose a user is interacting with other persons around a digital tabletop or in front of a digital wall. A user wants to launch a new graphical component or an application in the part of the screen next to him. Traditional methods such as popup menus allow him to first open the application and afterwards let him move, resize and orient the component appropriately. Meanwhile, the component may cover some objects the others users are looking at or interacting with. How to avoid this disruption of other persons' activity?
 This paper describes menu techniques for adding a new user's interface object on a shared device while preserving mutual awareness of the participants without disturbing them in their interaction. We present Sketched Menu, Abbreviated Sketched Menu and Iconic Gestures. These techniques let a user specify the shape, the size, the location and the orientation of the desired object before its creation.
 Sketched menus and iconic gestures preserve the mutual awareness. These techniques allow both adaptation of a user to the current context -the actions of the other users and the spatial arrangement of the objects on the tabletop-and the others to be aware of the foreseen action and the related space claim.