QueryTogether: Enabling entity-centric exploration in multi-device collaborative search

Collaborative and co-located information access is becoming increasingly common. However, fairly little attention has been devoted to the design of ubiquitous computing approaches for spontaneous exploration of large information spaces enabling co-located collaboration. We investigate whether an entity-based user interface provides a solution to support co-located search on heterogeneous devices. We present the design and implementation of QueryTogether, a multi-device collaborative search tool through which entities such as people, documents, and keywords can be used to compose queries that can be shared to a public screen or specific users with easy touch enabled interaction. We conducted mixed-methods user experiments with twenty seven participants (nine groups of three people), to compare the collaborative search with QueryTogether to a baseline adopting established search and collaboration interfaces. Results show that QueryTogether led to more balanced contribution and search engagement. While the overall s-recall in search was similar, in the QueryTogether condition participants found most of the relevant results earlier in the tasks, and for more than half of the queries avoided text entry by manipulating recommended entities. The video analysis demonstrated a more consistent common ground through increased attention to the common screen, and more transitions between collaboration styles. Therefore, this provided a better fit for the spontaneity of ubiquitous scenarios. QueryTogether and the corresponding study demonstrate the importance of entity based interfaces to improve collaboration by facilitating balanced participation, flexibility of collaboration styles and social processing of search entities across conversation and devices. The findings promote a vision of collaborative search support in spontaneous and ubiquitous multi-device settings, and better linking of conversation objects to searchable entities

Reducing the effect of network delay on tightly-coupled interaction

Tightly-coupled interaction is shared work in which each person’s actions immediately and continuously influence the actions of others. Tightly-coupled interaction is a hallmark of expert behaviour in face-to-face activity, but becomes extremely difficult to accomplish in distributed groupware. The main cause of this difficulty is network delay – even amounts as small as 100ms – that disrupts people’s ability to synchronize their actions with another person. To reduce the effects of delay on tightly-coupled interaction, I introduce a new technique called Feedback-Feedthrough Synchronization (FFS). FFS causes visual feedback from an action to occur at approximately the same time for both the local and the remote person, preventing one person from getting ahead of the other in the coordinated interaction. I tested the effects of FFS on group performance in several delay conditions, and my study showed that FFS substantially improved users’ performance: accuracy was significantly improved at all levels of delay, and without noticeable increase in perceived effort or frustration. Techniques like FFS that support the requirements of tightly-coupled interaction provide new means for improving the usability of groupware that operates on real-world networks

An analysis framework for CSCW systems

Software toolkits are under development to help construct applications that support group-working. Toolkit developers adopt different approaches to group-work support in order to tackle different issues and a toolkit is commonly characterised by the approach adopted. It is difficult to compare toolkits because of this lack of apparent commonality and it is difficult to decide which toolkits meet specific application requirements. [Continues.

Improving groupware design for loosely coupled groups

Loosely coupled workgroups are common in the real world, and workers in these groups are autonomous and weakly interdependent. They have patterns of work and collaboration that distinguish them from other types of groups, and groupware systems that are designed to support loose coupling must address these differences. However, they have not been studied in detail in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and the design process for these groups is currently underspecified. This forces designers to start from scratch each time they develop a system for loosely coupled groups, and they must approach new work settings with little information about how work practices are organized. In this dissertation, I present a design framework to improve the groupware design process for loosely coupled workgroups. The framework has three main parts that add a new layer of support to each of the three stages in the general groupware design process: data collection about the target work setting, analysis of the data, and system design based on the analysis results. The framework was developed to provide designers with support during each of these stages so that they can consider important characteristics of loosely coupled work practice while carrying out design for the target group. The design framework is based on information from CSCW and organizational research, and on real-world design experiences with one type of loosely coupled workgroup—home care treatment teams. The framework was evaluated using observations, interviews, and field trials that were carried out with multidisciplinary home care treatment teams in Saskatoon Health Region. A series of field observations and interviews were carried out with team members from each of the home care disciplines. The framework was then used to develop Mohoc, a groupware system that supports work in home care. Two field trials were carried out where the system was used by teams to support their daily activities. Results were analyzed to determine how well each part of the design framework performed in the design process. The results suggest that the framework was able to fill its role in specializing the general CSCW design process for loosely coupled groups by adding consideration for work and collaboration patterns that are seen in loosely coupled settings. However, further research is needed to determine whether these findings generalize to other loosely coupled workgroups

Can We Work Together?

People have a versatility to adapt to various situations in order to communicate with each other regardless of a person's disability. We research separate computer interfaces to support remote synchronous collaboration in two situations. First, a deaf person collaborating with a hearing person uses a shared workspace with video conferencing, such as the Facetop system. Second, a blind person collaborating with a sighted person uses our loosely coupled custom shared workspace called Deep View. The design features of the respective interfaces accommodate the disability of a deaf person or a blind person and enable communication with a person without a disability. The interfaces expand the ways in which people with disabilities participate in a collaborative task to a level of detail not possible without our interfaces. The design features of our user interfaces provide alternative channels for the collaborators with disabilities to communicate ideas or coordinate actions that collaborators without disabilities would otherwise do verbally or visually. We evaluate the interfaces through three user studies where collaborators complete full fledged tasks that require managing all aspects of communication to complete the task. Throughout the research we collaborated with members of the Deaf community and members of the blind community. We incorporated the feedback from members of these communities into the implementation of our interfaces. The members participated in our user studies to evaluate the interfaces

A Taxonomy of workgroup Computing Applications

The goal of workgroup computing is to help individuals and groups efficiently perform a wide range of functions on networked computer systems (Ellis, Gibbs, & Rein, 1991). Early workgroup computing tools were designed for limited functionality and group interaction (Craighill, 1992). Current workgroup computing applications do not allow enough control of group processes and they provide little correlation between various workgroup computing application areas (Rodden and Blair, 1991). An integrated common architecture may produce more effective workgroup computing applications. Integrating common support functions into a common framework will avoid duplication of these functions for each workgroup computing application (Pastor & Jager, 1992). Over 50 research and commercial workgroup computing applications were analyzed to understand and discover their distinctive characteristics and fundamental structure. Using the specified methods, a detailed section of a workgroup computing taxonomy was synthesized for each of 11 workgroup computing functional areas. The detailed taxonomy was the consolidation of all the hierarchical structures. The taxonomy formed the basis for developing an integrated workgroup computing architecture and a set of workgroup computing Application Programming Interface (API) specifications. The results of this study support the hypothesis that the available workgroup computing literature and application documentation would provide sufficient information to develop a comprehensive workgroup computing taxonomy. By comparing workgroup tasks with workgroup computing functional areas, it was possible to derive a common set of workgroup computing management and support tasks that were based on the detailed workgroup computing taxonomy. Common workgroup computing management and support tasks formed the basis for a1! Integrated workgroup computing architecture. Finally, 86 new API specifications were written for common workgroup computing management and support functions. This study can be used by workgroup application developers to determine which common workgroup computing functions should be integrated into future workgroup applications. Implementing the results of this study in future workgroup computing systems will lead to flexible and integrated systems that are easier to use and more transparent to workgroup members. Workgroup computing researchers can use this study to identify workgroup computing functions that should be included in their research areas

Vers une vision systémique du processus de l'explication : récit d'une recherche sur l'intégration de la pédagogie, de l'ingénierie et de la modélisation

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Designing for the Cooperative Use of Multi-user, Multi-device Museum Exhibits.

This work explores software-based museum exhibits that allow groups of visitors to employ their own personal mobile devices as impromptu user interfaces to the exhibits. Personal devices commandeered into service in this fashion are dubbed Opportunistic User Interfaces (O-UIs). Because visitors usually prefer to engage in shared learning experiences, emphasis is placed on how to design software interfaces to support collaborative learning. To study the issue, a Design-Based Research approach was taken to construct an externally valid exemplar of this type of exhibit, while also conducting more traditional experiments on specific features of the O-UI design. Three analyses, of – (1) museums as a context, (2) existing computer-based museum exhibits, and (3) computer support of collaborative processes in both work and classroom contexts – produced guidelines that informed the design of the software-based exhibit created as a testbed for O-UI design. The exhibit was refined via extensive formative testing on a museum floor. The experimental phase of this work examined the impact of O-UI design on (1) the visual attention and (2) collaborative learning behaviors of visitors. Specifically, an O-UI design that did not display any graphical output (the “simple” condition) was contrasted against an O-UI design that displayed multi-element, dynamically animated graphics (the “complex” condition). The “complex” O-UIs promoted poor visual attention management, an effect known as the heads-down phenomenon, wherein visitors get so enmeshed with their O-UIs that they miss out on the shared context, to the detriment of group outcomes. Despite this shortcoming, the “complex” O-UIs better promoted goal awareness, on-task interactions between visitors, and equity in participation and performance. The tight output coupling (visitors see only one shared display) of the “simple” O-UI condition promoted emergent competition, and it encouraged some visitors (especially males) to become more engaged than others. Two design recommendations emerge: (1) incorporating devices with private displays (O-UIs with output) as interfaces to a single large display better promotes collaboration (especially equity), and (2) O-UIs with “complex” displays may be used in museum exhibits, but visitors would benefit from mechanisms to encourage them to direct their attention to the shared display periodically.Ph.D.Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61771/1/ltoth_1.pd