“There Was No Green Tick”: Discovering the Functions of a Widget in a Joint Problem-Solving Activity and the Consequences for the Participants’ Discovering Process

In recent years, tangible user interfaces (TUI) have gained in popularity in educational contexts, among others to implement problem-solving and discovery learning science activities. In the context of an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration, we conducted a multimodal EMCA-based video user study involving a TUI-mediated bicycle mechanics simulation. This article focusses on the discovering work of a group of three students with regard to a particular tangible object (a red button), designed to support participants engagement with the underlying physics aspects and its consequences with regard to their engagement with the targeted mechanics aspects

ORBIT - Overcoming Breakdowns in Teams with Interactive Tabletops

ORBIT implements and studies a joint problem-solving activity at an interactive tabletop providing participants with the opportunity to develop their collaboration methods by jointly overcoming breakdowns. The design and the research process relies on user-centered design methods and on an ethnomethodological conversation analytic framework. The project will generate scientific knowledge on participants’ collaboration methods and create a powerful collaborative learning tool

Interaction Tangible sur Table, définitions et modèles

International audienceIn recent years, tangible user interfaces, which imply interactions performed with one or several objects, gain more and more interest in research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The tangible object represents a subject or an action. It acts on the system, as an action in classical user interfaces (e.g,. GUI). Interaction on a table, which is a common furniture in everyday life and used in multiple activities (desktop, coffee table, kitchen table, etc.), opens a new way for research and development in HCI. In this article, we present definitions, models, and key issues elicited from the literature that enable understanding and reasoning about the couple within an interactive system. Then, we propose a framework that allows to characterize applications supported by the couple in a domain-independent manner.Depuis quelques années les interfaces tangibles impliquant des interactions réalisées via un objet (ou plusieurs) prennent de plus en plus d’importance dans les recherches en interaction homme-machine. L’objet tangible représente un sujet ou une action ; l’objet agit sur le système, telle une action sur une interface « classique ». L’interaction sur table, c’est-à-dire sur un meuble présent dans la vie courante et utilisé à diverses fins (bureau, table à manger, table de salon, table bar, etc.), ouvre un champ nouveau de recherche et de développement. La mise en exergue, issue de l’état de l’art, des définitions, modèles et problématiques, permet d’abord d’appréhender le couple (table, objet tangible) au sein d’un système interactif. Puis, nous proposons un cadre qui permet de positionner des applications mettant en oeuvre le couple (table, objet tangible). Le cadre est décrit de manière à être utilisé pour positionner des applications indépendamment du domaine

Designing collaborative scenarios on tangible tabletop interfaces - insights from the implementation of paper prototypes in the context of a multidisciplinary design workshop

Within the context of the research project ORBIT (Overcoming Breakdowns in Teams with Interactive Tabletops), we design and study a joint problem-solving activity at an interactive tabletop, that gives participants the opportunity to develop their collaboration methods. To gain design insights for the development of a scenario soliciting participants to collaborate, we set up a multidisciplinary design workshop. During the latter, we explored and discussed three different collaborative scenarios, implemented as paper prototypes. In this paper, we report on first results gained from an exploratory analysis of the video data that was recorded in the context of this workshop

‘How Do We Move Back?’ – A Case Study of Joint Problem-Solving at an Interactive Tabletop Mediated Activity

peer reviewedThe interactive tabletop activity ‘Orbitia’ aims at developing collaborative conduct among participants. We provide a detailed account of how a group of three participants jointly solve a problem in the Orbitia environment. In our conversation analytic case study, we analyze the situated processes at the group level of description to develop a better understanding of how problems are jointly solved in a group at an ITT-mediated activity and to gain design knowledge about inducing such episodes. More precisely, we identified six problem-solving moves: signaling a problem and accounting for it, formulating the problem and converging on a solution, seeking and identifying the competent first agent, co-instructing the first agent, assessing the solution(s), taking up a solution.R-AGR-3358 - CORE17/11632733/ORBIT (01/09/2018 - 28/02/2022) - SUNNEN Patrick4. Quality educatio

Balancing Shareability and Positive Interdependence to Support Collaborative Problem-Solving on Interactive Tabletops

To support collaboration, researchers from different fields have proposed the design principles of shareability (engaging users in shared interactions around the same content) and positive interdependence (distributing roles and information to make users dependent on each other). While, on its own, each principle was shown to successfully support collaboration in different contexts, these principles are also partially conflicting, and their combination creates several design challenges. This paper describes how shareability and positive interdependency were jointly implemented in an interactive tabletop-mediated environment called Orbitia, with the aim of inducing collaboration between three adult participants. We present the design details and rationale behind the proposed application. Furthermore, we describe the results of an empirical evaluation focusing on joint problem-solving efficiency, collaboration styles, participation equity, and perceived collaboration effectiveness

The color table : an interdisciplinary design process

Zsfassung in dt. SpracheDer Gedankensprung von grafischen Benutzerschnittstellen (engl.Graphical User Interfaces - GUIs) zu greifbaren Benutzerschnittstellen (engl. Tangible User Interfaces - TUIs) schafft neue Möglichkeiten der Verwendung und definiert neue Bedingungen des Interaktionsdesigns, welche nur schwer in einem detaillierten Framework beschrieben werden können. Diese Dissertationsarbeit untersucht eine komplexe, greifbare Technologie, den ColorTable, und beschreibt dessen Entwicklung anhand eines iterativen Prozesses bestehend aus Design-Evaluierung-Feedback-Redesign in einem Zeitraum von 4 Jahren. Im Rahmen von partizipativen Workshops über reale Stadtplanungsprojekten wurden mehrere Prototypen getestet und evaluiert. Für jeden der Workshops wurden Szenarien und Inhalte vorbereitet, diese in interaktive Funktionen umgeleitet, physische Komponenten für deren Steuerung entwickelt und gestaltet, und alle diese Elemente zu einer greifbaren Benutzerschnittstelle zusammengeführt.Jeder an diesem Prozess beteiligter Bereich wird individuell untersucht und die jeweilige Relation zu anderen Bereichen beschrieben. Die Hauptfragen bezüglich der Entwicklung eines Trackingverfahrens, der Implementierung von Anwendungsfunktionen, der Gestaltung eines Interaktionsraumes sowie der Vorbereitung der realen Verwendung werden identifiziert. Unterschiedliche Prototypen werden verglichen, um so eine reiche Sammlung an Beispielen zu liefern, die veranschaulichen, wie einzelne Lösungen andere Aspekte des Systems beeinflussen. Zusätzlich werden 2 Frameworks vorgeschlagen, die die Facetten der greifbaren Interaktion abstrahieren, um so die Möglichkeiten, Grenzen und Komplexitäten des Gestaltunsprozesses zu verstehen.The step of moving from Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) toward Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) creates a rich set of manipulation possibilities and redefines requirements for interaction design, that can hardly be described within a detailed framework. This thesis seeks to analyze complex tangible technology and describes the development of a tangible user interface, the ColorTable, which is the result of an iterative process of design-evaluation-feedback-redesign within a period of 4 years. Several prototypes have been evaluated within the scope of participatory workshops in the context of real urban planning projects.Each workshop includes preparations of scenarios and content, the translation of these into interactive functions, the design and development of physical components for their manipulation, and the assembling of all those elements to present a tangible user interface being used in a specific context, as response to a specific need.We provide a separate analysis of each domain being involved in the design process and focus on its relation to other domains. We identify the main questions to be addressed while developing a tracking technology, implementing application functions, designing the interaction space and preparing real use of the technologies. Different prototypes are compared to provide a rich set of examples illustrating how different solutions influence design possibilities for other aspects of the interface. It further proposes two frameworks abstracting facets of tangible interaction design in order to understand possibilities, limitations and complexities of the design process.16

"Okay, yes it's true" - Doing discovering work in a tangible-user-interface-mediated joint problem solving physics activity

This paper is a single case analysis of an occurrence of discovery work accomplished by two university students who are jointly engaged in a tangible-user-interface-mediated physics problem solving activity. The latter is a computer simulation of a biker’s applied force and work done to the bike in a changeable landscape. Participants are asked to solve several tasks to eventually find out which factors influence the dependent variables “Force on Pedal” and “Work”. By relying on an ethnomethodological conversation analytic framework to conduct a moment-by-moment video based analysis, we highlight how two students accomplish the interactional work of discovering that a specific factor influences one of the target variables. Also, our analysis points to the need of adapting the described activity to support the triggering of episodes in which participants engage in joint reflections and discoveries

Empirical studies on a tangible user interface for technology-based assessment: Insights and emerging challenges

The assessment of higher order thinking skills should measure knowledge and procedure as well as attitudes and dispositions. It can be considered as multidimensional regarding the cognitive processes involved in solving, for instance, a complex problem. This paper reports on two empirical studies in which a so called tangible user interface (TUI) was used for the assessment. A simple matching item, suitable for measuring recall of factual knowledge, as well as a simulation item with the potential to assess higher order thinking skills are presented. The existing knowledge about using such systems for assessment is limited. We therefore focused on evaluation of the usability, specifically the user experience (UX) and interviewed experts in order to derive a list of tensions and also advantages. A first study showed that the available constructs for evaluating usability and UX need to be adapted to reflect the collaborative problem solving setting. The second study revealed that the majority of participants rated the system positively from the usability and UX perspective. Some tensions mentioned by the experts were related to the first phase of getting used to the system: When should the system start to assess the observed solving strategies? How could the system identify single atomic contributions (i.e. single experiments with the simulation parameters)? How could we include activities outside the interactive surface of the table? The table supports the user to ‘recognise the perspective of others', an important sub-skill of collaborative problem solving - how can the table track these activities? Based on the outcomes of the studies we identified eight topics. We discuss the related tensions for each and the advantages between the new technology and technology-based assessment which will impact the future development of using TUI for assessment as well as the design of assessment models and methods