The Lifecycle of a Whiteboard Photo: Post-meeting Usage of Whiteboard Content Captured with Mobile Devices

The traditional dry-erase whiteboard is a ubiquitous tool in the workplace, particularly in meeting spaces where they are a key collaboration tool. Although research on whiteboard use and the development of whiteboard systems have been a staple in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature, there is a lack of how whiteboard content is used to direct actions outside the meeting. In today’s mobile-centric world, knowledge workers capture whiteboard content after a meeting by taking photos of them with mobile devices such as cellphones. This thesis empirically investigated post-meeting practices with whiteboard photos to explore how these practices might be better supported by technology. In particular, this thesis investigated the main post-meeting activities that whiteboard photos support, how people value whiteboard photos, and how they manage them. Nineteen knowledge workers from a variety of professions, companies, and industries across North America who were regular users of whiteboards were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol. A Thematic Analysis of the data revealed that whiteboard photos were primarily used to create superseding documents and were sometimes used as evidence of agreement. Whiteboard photos were used mostly in the short-term, and their value was transient. Also, an analysis of the minute detailed actions that interviewees reported taking with one or two recent whiteboard photos revealed that the typical lifecycle of those whiteboard photos involved a seven-stage lifecycle. Moreover, a memory recall task with six of the interviewees about previous meetings where a whiteboard was used revealed that general characteristics of those meetings were well remembered while characteristics about the whiteboard content were not well remembered. The findings suggested a set of unmet design needs for the development of improved mobile-centric whiteboard capture systems. The suggested design implications include the need for a mobile application that supports quick capture and the effortless transfer of whiteboard photos to productivity-oriented devices, and the need for a desktop application that supports the extraction of whiteboard content to aid users in creating superseding documents

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

Adopting Active Learning Classroom (ALC) Technology and Overcoming Barriers: A Faculty Development Intervention Model for Technology-Enhanced Learning Spaces

The goal of this study was to understand how instructors use technology, and what challenges they face, but also to increase the participants’ understanding of Active Learning Classroom (ALCs) technologies as it applies to their teaching by applying action research methodologies. This study also seeks to lay a foundation for additional research on ALCs, education technology, and the needs of instructors in terms of faculty development in technology. This study investigates a group of 13 faculty members in multiple disciplines teaching in ALCs. Thus far, research on the impact of technology-enriched learning environments like Active Learning Classrooms has typically centered around student learning (Beichner et al., 2007; Frazee, Hughes, & Frazee, 2014; Morrone, Ouimet, Siering, & Arthur, 2014). Less attention has been paid to the faculty development needed for instructors to properly take advantage of these environments The research study addresses three questions: First, how and, for what purposes, do faculty use technology in the ALC? Second, what technology adoption factors and barriers were experienced by instructors in an Active Learning Classroom? Third, using Kolb’s experiential learning theory (1984, 2014), how does a semester-long faculty development intervention program impact instructors’ adoption of Active Learning Classroom technologies? Results indicated that the most frequently used technologies were those that were familiar from traditional (technology-equipped) lecture spaces that faculty had used. Faculty were most comfortable with content delivery tools such as instructor laptops connected to the LCD TVs, the instructor podium, and whiteboards. Additionally, technology adoption factors and barriers to adoption were identified, including time, ease of use, equipment availability, institutional classroom support, peer support, and instructor comfort levels with technology and troubleshooting. Through action research, the newest Active Learning Classroom instructors received the most hands-on training on the classroom hardware during consultations, and the exposure to classroom technologies and troubleshooting tips via an experiential learning framework allowed them to better understand the podium interface, document camera and wall-buttons while having an opportunity to reflect on their teaching

Learning in a digitally connected classroom: Secondary science teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and practices

Despite decades of research surrounding Information Communication Technology (ICT) use in schools, the pedagogical reasoning required to provide meaningful ICT enabled learning opportunities is rarely analysed in the literature. The purpose of this research was therefore to investigate teachers’ pedagogically reasoned practice. This study involved three exemplary Australian secondary science teachers, renowned for their expertise in utilising ICT working in classrooms where students had school issued one-to-one computers and reliable network access. The research utilised qualitative methods, including semistructured interviews, video-based observational data, and an array of lesson artefacts. The study followed a naturalistic multiple-case study design to explore the pedagogical reasoning and actions of these science teachers. The study identified different forms of pedagogical reasoning and action for a digitally connected world. Many aspects of this iterative model bear close resemblance to Shulman’s (1987) original conception of pedagogical reasoning and action. In each case, sophisticated reasoned decision-making drawing upon a range of teacher knowledge bases, most notably technological pedagogical content knowledge took place. The pedagogical reasoning and action model presented demonstrates a backward mapping approach where the use of ICT was directed at supporting the development of scientific content and educational outcomes of the mandated science curriculum. The research also found that these teachers held social constructivist beliefs for the use of ICT and intentionally designed ICT enabled opportunities from a learning affordance perspective. The research also demonstrated a reflexive relationship between the teacher’s beliefs and their pedagogical practices. Teacher activity involved significant preparatory work in the selection and curation of motivating, authoritative and multimodal Internet accessible ICT resources and tools aligned to the mandated science curriculum. In each case, the teachers had purposefully created a customised classroom online presence or website, offering students a flexible learning environment, an uncommon practice at the time of the study. The teachers designed ICT enabled learning opportunities following a guided inquiry model, frequently involving collaborative problem-based strategies. In each case, the students were the dominant users of ICT in the classroom using ICT for discovering knowledge, constructing knowledge and for sharing knowledge. The teachers’ role was predominantly one of orchestration of the learning environment, scaffolding and questioning students as they engaged with guided inquiry-based learning tasks. Ultimately the research revealed the critical role of the teacher in mediating the affordances of ICT for meaningful learning. Overall the findings offer useful insights into how exemplary science teachers’ reason and act about the use of ICT in a digitally connected classroom. An important implication for the development of initial science teacher education programs arose from the study, notably that preservice teachers require ongoing and authentic course opportunities to support the development of the technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge relevant for a digitally connected classroom

Socio-technical lifelogging: deriving design principles for a future proof digital past

Lifelogging is a technically inspired approach that attempts to address the problem of human forgetting by developing systems that ‘record everything’. Uptake of lifelogging systems has generally been disappointing, however. One reason for this lack of uptake is the absence of design principles for developing digital systems to support memory. Synthesising multiple studies, we identify and evaluate 4 new empirically motivated design principles for lifelogging: Selectivity, Embodiment, Synergy and Reminiscence. We first summarise 4 empirical studies that motivate the principles, then describe the evaluation of 4 novel systems built to embody these principles. The design principles were generative, leading to the development of new classes of lifelogging system, as well as providing strategic guidance about how those systems should be built. Evaluations suggest support for Selection and Embodiment principles, but more conceptual and technical work is needed to refine the Synergy and Reminiscence principles

Co-located Collaborative Information-based Ideation through Embodied Cross-Surface Curation

We develop an embodied cross-surface curation environment to support co-located, collaborative information-based ideation. Information-based ideation (IBI) refers to tasks and activities in which people generate and develop significant new ideas while working with information. Curation is the process of gathering and assembling objects in order to express ideas. The linear media and separated screens of prior curation environments constrain expression. This research utilizes information composition of rich bookmarks as the medium of curation. Visual representation of elements and ability to combine them in a freeform, spatial manner mimics how objects appear and can be manipulated in the physical world. Metadata of rich bookmarks leverages capabilities of the WWW. We equip participants with personal IBI environments, each on a mobile device, as a base for contributing to curation on a larger, collaborative surface. We hypothesize that physical representations for the elements and assemblage of curation, layered with physical techniques of interaction, will facilitate co-located IBI. We hypothesize that consistent physical and spatial representations of information and means for manipulating rich bookmarks on and across personal and collaborative surfaces will support IBI. We hypothesize that the small size and weight of personal devices will facilitate participants shifting their attention from their own work to each other and collaboration. We evaluated the curation environment by inviting couples to participate in a home makeover design task in a living-room lab. We demonstrated that our embodied cross-surface curation environment supports creative thinking, facilitates communication, and stimulates engagement and creativity in collaborative IBI

Designing for Cross-Device Interactions

Driven by technological advancements, we now own and operate an ever-growing number of digital devices, leading to an increased amount of digital data we produce, use, and maintain. However, while there is a substantial increase in computing power and availability of devices and data, many tasks we conduct with our devices are not well connected across multiple devices. We conduct our tasks sequentially instead of in parallel, while collaborative work across multiple devices is cumbersome to set up or simply not possible. To address these limitations, this thesis is concerned with cross-device computing. In particular it aims to conceptualise, prototype, and study interactions in cross-device computing. This thesis contributes to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)—and more specifically to the area of cross-device computing—in three ways: first, this work conceptualises previous work through a taxonomy of cross-device computing resulting in an in-depth understanding of the field, that identifies underexplored research areas, enabling the transfer of key insights into the design of interaction techniques. Second, three case studies were conducted that show how cross-device interactions can support curation work as well as augment users’ existing devices for individual and collaborative work. These case studies incorporate novel interaction techniques for supporting cross-device work. Third, through studying cross-device interactions and group collaboration, this thesis provides insights into how researchers can understand and evaluate multi- and cross-device interactions for individual and collaborative work. We provide a visualization and querying tool that facilitates interaction analysis of spatial measures and video recordings to facilitate such evaluations of cross-device work. Overall, the work in this thesis advances the field of cross-device computing with its taxonomy guiding research directions, novel interaction techniques and case studies demonstrating cross-device interactions for curation, and insights into and tools for effective evaluation of cross-device systems

The Meeting Journey: Supporting the Design of Interaction Within Co-located, Collaborative Device Ecologies

The combination of personal and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technologies with augmented "smart" spaces designed for collaborative work offers new design challenges for the HCI community. This thesis looks at how BYOD technologies can integrate with such spaces in the context of cross-channel collaboration, from a user experience (UX) perspective. In addition to this, the work looks at how BYOD technologies can replace smart spaces entirely and form space-agnostic collaborative device ecologies. A series of qualitative empirical studies were undertaken that led to the development of the concept of a meeting journey. The meeting journey is an abstract representation of the different steps, tools and activities undertaken by users in the context of a co- located collaborative activity aimed to inform the design of such systems. The meeting journey helped define a series of design principles for collaborative device ecologies. Whilst the longitudinal aspects of collaboration have been well covered by work in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and supported by a number of commercial products, the UX of co-located ad hoc meetings have not. Such meetings are still characterised by difficult and awkward interactions due to different technologies, levels of computer literacy and processes. The concept proposed to improve the desirability of collaborative device ecologies following the design principles previously defined is based on a hybrid approach, built on an extensible framework nicknamed “OIL”. The sharing activities specific to ad hoc collaborative meetings are delegated to a consistent user interface, whilst the ecology retains a platform-agnostic philosophy as to which applications and devices are used by the participants. The final part of the thesis relates the development of a proof-of-concept hybrid system inspired by OIL, and its evaluation using desirability metrics. This leads to a discussion of the possibilities of extensions to the proof of concept, including support for more steps of the meeting journey, a broader set of functionalities, and a broader range of issues such as security and data ownership