Visual and interactive tool for product development process enhancement: towards intuitive support of co-located project review

Part 2: PLM EcosystemInternational audienceProduct life management refers to every method or tools which participate to the collaboration of actors involved along the product life. The main topic concerns the organization of this cycle by mastering the evolution between its various phases. Collaboration is a main bottleneck since every phase will involve different experts. The main issue in collaboration is to ensure a good understanding of requirements and constraints of collaborators and to manage conflicts between different experts. Negotiations are expected to solve potential conflicts. This is usually done in project review where the experts must converge towards a common solution. In this paper we investigate the efficiency of a tool formalizing and structuring the project review activity. This tool takes advantage of emerging technologies, here a multi-touch table. We illustrate the discussion with a use case concerning the development of personal computer housing

Applications of Virtual Reality

Information Technology is growing rapidly. With the birth of high-resolution graphics, high-speed computing and user interaction devices Virtual Reality has emerged as a major new technology in the mid 90es, last century. Virtual Reality technology is currently used in a broad range of applications. The best known are games, movies, simulations, therapy. From a manufacturing standpoint, there are some attractive applications including training, education, collaborative work and learning. This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the current research in Virtual Reality and its applications. It describes the current Virtual Reality state-of-the-art and points out many areas where there is still work to be done. We have chosen certain areas to cover in this book, which we believe will have potential significant impact on Virtual Reality and its applications. This book provides a definitive resource for wide variety of people including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students

Using the Java Media Framework to build Adaptive Groupware Applications

Realtime audio and video conferencing has not yet been satisfactorily integrated into web-based groupware environments. Conferencing tools are at best only loosely linked to other parts of a shared working environment, and this is in part due to their implications for resource allocation and management. The Java Media Framework offers a promising means of redressing this situation. This paper describes an architecture for integrating the management of video and audio conferences into the resource allocation mechanism of an existing web-based groupware framework. The issue of adaptation is discussed and a means of initialising multimedia session parameters based on predicted QoS is described

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

Designing to Support Workspace Awareness in Remote Collaboration using 2D Interactive Surfaces

Increasing distributions of the global workforce are leading to collaborative workamong remote coworkers. The emergence of such remote collaborations is essentiallysupported by technology advancements of screen-based devices ranging from tabletor laptop to large displays. However, these devices, especially personal and mobilecomputers, still suffer from certain limitations caused by their form factors, that hinder supporting workspace awareness through non-verbal communication suchas bodily gestures or gaze. This thesis thus aims to design novel interfaces andinteraction techniques to improve remote coworkers’ workspace awareness throughsuch non-verbal cues using 2D interactive surfaces.The thesis starts off by exploring how visual cues support workspace awareness infacilitated brainstorming of hybrid teams of co-located and remote coworkers. Basedon insights from this exploration, the thesis introduces three interfaces for mobiledevices that help users maintain and convey their workspace awareness with their coworkers. The first interface is a virtual environment that allows a remote person to effectively maintain his/her awareness of his/her co-located collaborators’ activities while interacting with the shared workspace. To help a person better express his/her hand gestures in remote collaboration using a mobile device, the second interfacepresents a lightweight add-on for capturing hand images on and above the device’sscreen; and overlaying them on collaborators’ device to improve their workspace awareness. The third interface strategically leverages the entire screen space of aconventional laptop to better convey a remote person’s gaze to his/her co-locatedcollaborators. Building on the top of these three interfaces, the thesis envisions an interface that supports a person using a mobile device to effectively collaborate with remote coworkers working with a large display.Together, these interfaces demonstrate the possibilities to innovate on commodity devices to offer richer non-verbal communication and better support workspace awareness in remote collaboration

An Investigation of Teacher Librarians\u27 Use of Interactive Whiteboard Technology for Literacy Instruction

Although school systems have made investments in technology with the intention of raising student scores on state and national tests, improvements in student achievement have not always followed. The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher librarians\u27 use of interactive whiteboards to improve student literacy. This qualitative case study was guided by the theory of social constructivism, wherein individuals learn through interaction with peers and knowledgeable others. The research questions were focused on how teacher librarians integrated multi-literacies and technological skills into pedagogical goals. Data were collected from a 4-member focus group interview, a questionnaire delivered to a subset of 3 teacher librarians, and public documents of the school system. All data were color-coded and analyzed for emergent common themes. The findings indicated that although the teacher librarians used interactive whiteboard technology to teach multiple literacies and technological skills to students and fellow teachers, 2 of the 4 participants did not use all of the interactive whiteboard tools. Based upon the findings, a professional development project was designed to improve educators\u27 technological and multi-literacies skills in the school system. Recommendations include creating a repository of technology rich lesson plans, and expanding collaboration among educators. Increasing multi-literacies and technological skills may lead to positive social change through the enhancement of students\u27 literacy and technology skills at school and for future employment

Experimental Object-Oriented Modelling

This thesis examines object-oriented modelling in experimental system development. Object-oriented modelling aims at representing concepts and phenomena of a problem domain in terms of classes and objects. Experimental system development seeks active experimentation in a system development project through, e.g., technical prototyping and active user involvement. We introduce and examine "experimental object-oriented modelling" as the intersection of these practices