Internet-based support for creative collaboration

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology.This work shows that the sharing of non-deliberate communicative actions is important in creative collaboration and that such non-deliberate communications can be shared over the Internet Problem This work concerns computer support tor designers. Design work typically involves the solution of poorly-defined problems (Goel 1995; Lawson 1990), and it is often necessary during this process for designers to seek help from and to collaborate with others (Fischer 2000; Ancona and Caldwell 1990). Studies have revealed several patterns of collaboration in creative work (John-Steiner 2000; Candy and Edmonds 2002; Mamykina, Candy et al. 2002), the most successful of which typically involve collaborators working closely together rather than one person acting as an assistant to another. The selection of collaborators must go beyond assessing their expertise and must also include their level of enthusiasm, willingness or ability to become deeply involved with the problem. When we meet a person face to face, there are two sorts of information available to us in support of our formation of an impression of that person. People may make what Schutz (1967) describes as “expressive acts", deliberate actions intended to communicate some message or to give some impression. In addition, people make "expressive movements", which while informative to an observer, are unintentional and contribute to what Goffman might describe as the impression that the person "gives off" (Goffman 1959). There are many tools and processes that allow people to publish or display information about themselves for others to see and to send information to one another. That is, to make expressive acts. An area that has not been so thoroughly covered, either in research or in the design of tools, relates to the sharing of expressive movements. The problem that this work addresses is how computer-based tools might be used to support the formation of collaborative relationships. In particular, the concern is with the sharing of expressive movements over the Internet. Methods As part of the work described here, a number of studies have been carried out: • A user evaluation of an online scrapbook tool (WISA) described in (Weakley and Edmonds 2004) and with an extended discussion in (Weakley and Edmonds 2005) as well as in (Weakley and Edmonds 2004) • Three studies of creative collaborations. The first specifically related to requirements for tools to support collaboration (Costello, Weakley et al. 2004; Costello, Weakley et al. 2005). The others reported on experiences of using systems as they are being developed as communication tools while collaborating on a creative work (Turner, Neumark et al. 2004; Weakley, Johnston et al. 2005). • A survey of how people respond to expressive acts (in this case a person's curriculum vitae) compared with expressive movements (a photograph of the same person's bookshelf). • A series of repertory grid interviews investigating how people form impressions of others based on a photograph of their workspace (Weakley and Edmonds 2005). Key Results The studies showed that interpretation of expressive movements can lead to people forming new impressions about one another and that their exchange can support creative work. The survey confirmed that people gain different insight from expressive movements than they do from expressive acts. The interviews shed light on which of the artefacts that people surround themselves with contribute to which sorts of impression about them. A tool that goes beyond the exchange of deliberate expressive acts to include the exchange of expressive movements would be useful. The key aspects of such a tool are described

BRT Impacts at a Neighbourhood Level: Insights from Diepkloof

This booklet contains two research pieces which offer evidence-based perspectives on transport and its relationship to urban form. The first, by Dylan Weakley, explores the relationship between population density and modes of transport in Johannesburg using data from both the Gauteng City Regional Observatory (GCRO) Quality of Life Survey conducted in 2011 and the National Population Census of the same year. The research confirms a clear relationship between density and use of public transport but, mportantly, reveals that this relationship holds across all income groups. The second piece, written by Geoffrey Bickford, helps us understand better the relationship between new transport infrastructure and other urban development processes. It explores the impact that the Diepkloof Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station in Soweto is having on development in adjoining areas. The research confirms that the BRT is having a positive impact on the access of local residents to the wider city but does indicate that the impact of the BRT on the built form of neighbourhoods may be evolving only gradually, and will have to be analysed over a longer period.National Research Foundation, Department of Science and Technology South Afric

Shared Visualizations In Support of Distributed Creative Communities

The paper is concerned with support for distributed groups of creative knowledge workers: in this case designers. We consider requirements that designers have regarding internalisation and externalisation of ideas and concepts as well as requirements relating to collaboration. We review an online system whose facilities for the graphical representation of data were found to be popular. The evaluation was in the context of a group task and the results, including instances of tacit knowledge sharing, have led us to formulate a number of recommendations as to how such systems might be made still more effective for collaborative working

Email as co-habitat in distributed organisations

Email has now become so ubiquitous that it has surpassed its early role as an asynchronous communication tool. Having contributed to the rise of the distributed organisation, email is being used in diverse ways and for purposes for which it was not intended. It is no longer a technology of individual habitats, but one where members of distributed organisations co-habit. This paper charts the study of email management, from early investigations of personal approaches to handling email overload, through to a review of software applications designed to ameliorate this. It suggests that while email has been appropriated for information and knowledge management, there has been minimal analysis of this beyond the individual. Therefore, it presents a case study of a distributed organisation, detailing the process by which email was leveraged for organisational knowledge through the design of an application that enabled visualisation of email data

Extended conformation of putrescine occurring on a center of symmetry in its 1:2 complex with malonic acid

The 1,4-butane diammonium (putrescine) crystalizes with propanedioic acid (malonic monoanions in space group Pcab (1,4-butane diammonium hydrogen propanedioate, C4H14N22+.2C(3)H(3)O(4)(-)). One of the carboxylate moieties of malonic acid is protonated. The asymmetric unit of the crystal contains one molecule of malonic acid and half a molecule of putrescine. All three H atoms of the putrescine amino groups participate in hydrogen bonding

Web-Based support for creative collaboration

This paper considers web-based systems in support of distributed communities involving creative work. It is concerned with the sharing of knowledge that might otherwise remain unspoken, or tacit, amongst those engaged in design tasks. Drawing on the results of the evaluation of a prototype system, pointers for future systems are presented

Toroidal Queens Graphs Over Finite Fields

For each positive integer n, the toroidal queens graph may be described as a graph with vertex set Zn × Zn where every vertex is adjacent to those vertices in the directions (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1), (1,−1) from it. We here extend this idea, examining graphs with vertex set F × F, where F is a finite field, and any four directions are used to define adjacency. The automorphism groups and isomorphism classes of such graphs are found