Sharing a physical environment, such as that of a wall-display, facilitates gaining awareness of others' actions and intentions, thereby bringing benefits for collaboration. Previous studies have provided first insights on awareness in the context of tabletops or smaller vertical displays. This paper seeks to advance the current understanding on how users share awareness information in wall-display environments and focusses on mid-air pointing gestures as a foundational part of communication. We present a scenario dealing with the organization of medical supply chains in crisis situations, and report on the results of a user study with 24 users, split into 6 groups of 4, performing several tasks. We investigate pointing gestures and identify three subtypes used as awareness cues during face-to-face collaboration: narrative pointing, loose pointing, and sharp pointing. Our observations show that reliance on gesture subtypes varies across participants and groups, and that sometimes vague pointing is sufficient to support verbal negotiations.

翻译：共享物理环境（如墙壁显示）有助于获取他人动作和意图的情境意识，从而为协作带来优势。此前研究已初步揭示了平板桌面或小型垂直显示屏环境中的情境意识特征。本文旨在深化对用户如何在墙壁显示环境中共享情境意识信息的理解，重点关注空中指向手势作为交流基础组成部分的作用。我们构建了一个应对危机情境下医疗供应链组织的场景，并报告了涉及24名用户（分为6组，每组4人）执行多项任务的用户研究结果。通过分析指向手势，我们识别出三种面对面协作中用作情境意识线索的子类型：叙述性指向、松散指向和精准指向。观察表明，手势子类型的依赖程度因参与者及群体而异，且有时模糊指向足以支持言语协商。