Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings

Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams

Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today. CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices

Historical awareness support and its evaluation in collaborative software engineering

The types of awareness relevant to collaborative soft- ware engineering are identified and an additional type, "historical awareness" is proposed. This new type of awareness is the knowledge of how software artefacts re- sulting from collaboration have evolved in the course of their development. The types of awareness that different software engineer- ing environment architectures can support are discussed. A way to add awareness support to our existing OSCAR sys- tem, a component of the GENESIS software engineering platform, is proposed. Finally ways of instrumenting and evaluating the awareness support offered by the modified system are outlined

Remote Real-Time Collaboration Platform enabled by the Capture, Digitisation and Transfer of Human-Workpiece Interactions

In this highly globalised manufacturing ecosystem, product design and verification activities, production and inspection processes, and technical support services are spread across global supply chains and customer networks. Therefore, a platform for global teams to collaborate with each other in real-time to perform complex tasks is highly desirable. This work investigates the design and development of a remote real-time collaboration platform by using human motion capture technology powered by infrared light based depth imaging sensors borrowed from the gaming industry. The unique functionality of the proposed platform is the sharing of physical contexts during a collaboration session by not only exchanging human actions but also the effects of those actions on the task environment. This enables teams to remotely work on a common task problem at the same time and also get immediate feedback from each other which is vital for collaborative design, inspection and verifications tasks in the factories of the future

Industry-driven innovative system development for the construction industry: The DIVERCITY project

Collaborative working has become possible using the innovative integrated systems in construction as many activities are performed globally with stakeholders situated in various locations. The Integrated VR based information systems can bind the fragmentation and provide communication and collaboration between the distributed stakeholders n various locations. The development of these technologies is vital for the uptake of these systems by the construction industry. This paper starts by emphasising the importance of construction IT research and reviews some future research directions in this area. In particular, the paper explores how virtual prototyping can improve the productivity and effectiveness of construction projects, and presents DIVERCITY, which is th as a case study of the research in virtual prototyping. Besides, the paper explores the requirements engineering of the DIVERCITY project. DIVERCITY has large and evolving requirements, which considered the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, such as clients, architects and contractors. However, practitioners are often unsure of the detail of how virtual environments would support the construction process, and how to overcome some barriers to the introduction of new technologies. This complicates the requirements engineering process