From 3D Bimanual Toward Distant Collaborative Interaction Techniques: An Awareness Issue

International audienceThis paper aims to raise the question : "How much 3D bimanual interaction techniques can be useful to the design of collaborative interaction techniques in the field of Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE)?". Indeed, CVE involve the use of complex interaction techniques based on specific collaborative metaphors. The design of these metaphors may be a difficult task because it has to deal with collaborative issues that came from sparse research areas (Human-Computer Interfaces, Human-Human Interactions, Networking, Physiology and Social Psychology). Metaphors for bimanual interactions have been developed for a while essentially because it is a widely spread area of interest for common tasks. Bimanual interactions involve the simultaneous use of both hands of the user in order to achieve a goal with better performances compared to uni-manual interactions thanks to a natural skill that is proprioception. This collaborative aspect could certainly be a helpful entry point in the design of efficient collaborative interaction techniques extended from improved bimanual metaphors. However, the proprioceptive sense cannot be considered in the same way, and additional features must be proposed to be able to collaborate efficiently. Thus, awareness is a key to let CVE be usable and the availability of collaborative feedbacks is essential to extend bimanual interactions toward collaborative ones. In this paper, we based our study on existing work on bimanual and collaborative interaction techniques trying to draw similarities between them. We emphasize common points between both fields that could be useful to better design both metaphors and awareness in CVE

Teaching Ciarán Carson: Classroom Approaches to the Postdigital, Conflict-Zone Text

In recent decades, Belfast writer Ciarán Carson has emerged as one of the most inventive of contemporary literary voices, in part for his unique style of textualizing space. Driven in some ways by the very specific technological challenges of the conflict zone of Troubles-era Belfast, Carson's poetry and prose are marked by what we might describe as tech paranoia—but, in a constructive poetic answer, his texts create new logics for using tech materials, machines, and high-tech spaces in ways that privilege creativity. It is no coincidence, notes literary and technology theorist Katherine Hayles, that "the condition of virtuality is most pervasive and advanced" where centers of power are most concentrated and conflicted intersections most frequently occur. Carson's oeuvre illustrates the point, employing the technology of the printed page to simulate and process the zone of conflict in new, postdigital ways. This article poses Carson's texts as ideal for exploring issues that connect regional identities, technology, and the arts—including highly topical issues around terrorism and nationhood—that are highly relevant for contemporary students of literature

The Management of Distance in Remote-Work Environments: A Deleuzian Approach

The rising incidence of remote work practices over the last decades has introduced radical changes in organizational practices for managing people. Such environments indeed often lead to challenges that are difficult for both employees and managers to overcome. These difficulties are mostly linked to the management of distance, particularly prominent in remote work – physical, temporal, or cultural distances especially. Although several organizational theories have been used to suggest solutions to these specific issues, little attention has been paid so far to philosophical literature; in this research, we use the work of French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to develop a meaningful framework to analyze the management of distance in remote work contexts. This allows us to reconsider and question traditional theories with regard to remote work and global distributed teams, by stressing out manifestations that are significant of the emergence of these specific environments such as the cultural deterritorialization or the formation of more subtle but powerful modalities of control

Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems

The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments

The Effect of Marker-less Augmented Reality on Task and Learning Performance

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have evolved rapidly over the last years, particularly with regard to user interfaces, input devices, and cameras used in mobile devices for object and gesture recognition. While early AR systems relied on pre-defined trigger images or QR code markers, modern AR applications leverage machine learning techniques to identify objects in their physical environments. So far, only few empirical studies have investigated AR\u27s potential for supporting learning and task assistance using such marker-less AR. In order to address this research gap, we implemented an AR application (app)with the aim to analyze the effectiveness of marker-less AR applied in a mundane setting which can be used for on-the-job training and more formal educational settings. The results of our laboratory experiment show that while participants working with AR needed significantly more time to fulfill the given task, the participants who were supported by AR learned significantly more

Managing the entanglement: complexity leadership in public sector systems

Complexity in public sector systems requires leaders to balance the administrative practices necessary to be aligned and efficient in the management of routine challenges and the adaptive practices required to respond to dynamic circumstances. Conventional notions of leadership in the field of public administration do not fully explain the role of leadership in balancing the entanglement of formal, top-down, administrative functions and informal, emergent, adaptive functions within public sector settings with different levels of complexity. Drawing on and extending existing complexity leadership constructs, this article explores how leadership is enacted over the duration of six urban regeneration projects representing high, medium, and low levels of project complexity. The article suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to the tensions inherent in enabling leadership if actors are to cope with the complex, collaborative, cross-boundary, adaptive work in which they are increasingly engage

Theories of ICT Design: Where Social Studies of Technology Meet the Distributed Cognitive Perspective

In this paper we examine the possibility to bridge theory of Distributed Cognition with popular theories of Social Studies of Technology (in particular, Actor-Network Theory and Social Construction of Technology). Responding to a recent call for revisiting the design metaphor, in this paper we aim to obtain more precise terminology for describing the phenomena of ICT design in theoretical terms. We argue that establishing correlations between the two bodies of literature adds new knowledge to a community of scholars caters for betterment of managerial practice in complex design tasks

Effective Computation Resilience in High Performance and Distributed Environments

The work described in this paper aims at effective computation resilience for complex simulations in high performance and distributed environments. Computation resilience is a complicated and delicate area; it deals with many types of simulation cores, many types of data on various input levels and also with many types of end-users, which have different requirements and expectations. Predictions about system and computation behaviors must be done based on deep knowledge about underlying infrastructures, and simulations' mathematical and realization backgrounds. Our conceptual framework is intended to allow independent collaborations between domain experts as end-users and providers of the computational power by taking on all of the deployment troubles arising within a given computing environment. The goal of our work is to provide a generalized approach for effective scalable usage of the computing power and to help domain-experts, so that they could concentrate more intensive on their domain solutions without the need of investing efforts in learning and adapting to the new IT backbone technologies