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Wysiwls revised: early experiences with multi-user interfaces
... Since then, there has been an explosion of interest and development of groupware systems ranging from multi-user text editors (Crowley et al. 1990; Ellis et al. 1991), to annotation systems (Cavalier et al. 1991;Neuwirth et al. 1990), sketching programs (Ishii 1990;Ishii et al. 1993;Jacobson and McCanne 1993b;Minneman and Bly 1991;Stefik et al. 1987a), and group support systems (Nunamaker et al. 1991). ...
... Essentially, multi user interfaces require some sense of shared context, but they also should preserve some degree of private control over the fate of the workspace. This has led to relaxed WYSIWIS, or what-you-see-is-not-what-I-see (WYSINWIS), which allows a mixture of public and private windows, and personalized window layouts (Stefik et al. 1987a). However, personalized views of public windows may also cause confusion if one participant points to data that does not appear in another participant's view, causing sudden context switches. ...
... However, notification of other users' activities should not be exceedingly distracting. For example, techniques to display data sharing include graying out portions of the screen to provide a busy signal for data being modified by another group member, and using color to "age" text modifications (transitioning them through a series of colors, such as yellow, orange, red, brown, black) to indicate regions of recent and not-so-recent activity (Ellis et al. 1991; (Stefik et al. 1987a). ...
As integrated services have become available to the desktop, users have embraced new modes of interaction, such as multimedia
conferencing and collaborative computing. In this paper, we provide a survey of past and present research that has influenced
this application area, and describe research directions for the future.
... Shared interfaces allowing multiuser interaction in co-presence on a single device is a challenging Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research field. Though, from the Xerox Parc Colab project in 1986 dedicated to informal group meetings [1] [2], the domain produces relatively few literature in comparison to collaborative systems based on distant personal workstation. The relevance of shared interfaces has been yet precisely identified. ...
... The development of shared interfaces relies on the advent of new display devices , such as large wall-screens or tabletops, and on the development of platforms assuming multiple independent inputs. Thus, in a first attempt to address multiuser application on a single display in co-presence, the Xerox Parc Colab Project (1987 Project ( -1992) [1] proposed a PC network allowing private work as well as control of a shared digital white-board. In 1993, Pederson et al. [2] extended the Xerox Liveboard concept and proposed Tivoli, an electronic white-board application for supporting informal workgroup meetings, using a large screen pen-based interactive display allowing up to three simultaneous pen interactions. ...
... Tivoli strove to provide its users with simplicity of use, easily understood functionalities , and access to computational power to augment informal meeting practices. However, multiuser interaction was not the main focus of [1] [2]. In 1991, also at Xerox Parc, Bier et al. [7] developed MMM, a multiuser editor managing up to three mice simultaneously on the same computer. ...
Shared interface allowing several users in co-presence to interact simultaneously on digital data on a single display is an uprising challenge in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Its development is motivated by the advent of large displays such as wall-screens and tabletops. It affords fluid and natural digital interaction without hindering human communication and collaboration. It enables mutual awareness, making participant conscious of each other activities.
In this paper, we are interested in Mixed Presence Groupware (MPG), when two or more remote shared interfaces are connected for a distant collaborative session. Our contribution strives to answer to the question: Can the actual technology provide sufficient presence feeling of the remote site to enable efficient collaboration between two distant groups?
We propose DigiTable, an experimental platform we hope lessen the gap between collocated and distant interaction. DigiTable is combining a multiuser tactile interactive tabletop, a video-communication system enabling eye-contact with real size distant user visualization and a spatialized sound system for speech transmission. A robust computer vision module for distant users’ gesture visualization completes the platform.
We discuss first experiments using DigiTable for a collaborative task (mosaic completion) in term of distant mutual awareness. Although DigiTable does not provide the same presence feeling in distant and or collocated situation, a first and important finding emerges: distance does not hinder efficient collaboration anymore.
... What I See (WYSIWIS) described by Stefik et al. [231]: WYSIWIS means that the information of the shared application state is presented to all users in the same way. Strict WYSIWIS requires that all users have an identical view of the shared workspace, i.e., each application instance displays the same information in the same way. ...
... The task of synchronization algorithms is to ensure that all local copies of the application's state that are managed by the individual application instances are identical. This is a major requirement for the collaboration of multiple users [14,59,238] and is also expressed by the WYSIWIS principle [231]. In this thesis, we cover synchronization algorithms for consistency control and for the handling of late-join situations. ...
... In particular, collaboration transparent systems try to provide shared use of applications that were originally intended for a single user, following a WYSIWIS ( " what you see is what I see " ) [40] paradigm. Later relaxed variants of WYSIWIS were introduced that allow users to share individual windows rather than the complete desktop, or set an individual non-shared viewpoint for a specific window [39, 29, 20]. This development is mirrored in the DVE area in concepts such as subjective views [38], privacy widgets [8], or even dead reckoning techniques [23]. ...
... This development is mirrored in the DVE area in concepts such as subjective views [38], privacy widgets [8], or even dead reckoning techniques [23]. While users of relaxed WYSIWIS can suffer from a lack of mutual location awareness and have to use tools like telepointers [34, 39], collaborative augmented reality allows users to truly share a 3D space, providing excellent location awareness. Building collaboration aware applications that have true multi-user interface elements should be only " slightly harder " than building conventional applications or application programmers will be reluctant to do so [34]. ...
This paper focuses on the distributed architecture of the collaborative three-dimensional user interface management system Studierstube. The system allows multiple users to experience a shared 3D workspace populated by multiple applications using see-through head mounted displays or other presentation media such as projection systems. The system design is based on a distributed shared scene graph that alleviates the application programmer from explicitly considering distribution, and avoids a separation of graphical and application data. The idea of unifying all system data in the scene graph is taken to its logical consequence by implementing application instances as nodes in the scene graph. Through the distributed shared scene graph mechanism, consistency of scene graph replicas and the contained application nodes is assured. Multi-user 3D widgets allow concurrent interaction with minimal coordination effort from the application. Special interest is paid to migration of application nodes from host to host allowing dynamic workgroup management, load balancing, ad-hoc collaboration, and ubiquitous computing.
... In particular, collaboration transparent systems try to provide shared use of applications that were originally intended for a single user, following a WYSIWIS ( " what you see is what I see " ) [35] paradigm. Later relaxed variants of WYSIWIS were introduced that allow users to share individual windows rather than the complete desktop, or set an individual non-shared viewpoint for a specific window [34, 25, 18]. This development is mirrored in the DVE area in concepts such as subjective views [33], privacy widgets [7], or even dead reckoning techniques [20]. ...
... This development is mirrored in the DVE area in concepts such as subjective views [33], privacy widgets [7], or even dead reckoning techniques [20]. While users of relaxed WYSIWIS can suffer from a lack of mutual location awareness and have to use tools like telepointers [30, 34], collaborative augmented reality allows users to truly share a 3D space, providing excellent location awareness. Building collaboration aware applications that have true multi-user interface elements should be only " slightly harder " than building conventional applications, or application programmers will be reluctant to do so [30]. ...
This paper focuses on the distributed architecture of the collaborative augmented reality system Studierstube. The system allows multiple users to experience a shared 3D workspace populated by multiple applications using seethrough head mounted displays or other presentation media such as projection systems. The system design is based on a distributed shared scene graph that alleviates the application programmer from explicitly considering distribution, and avoids a separation of graphical and application data. The idea of unifying all system data in the scene graph is taken to its logical consequence by implementing application instances as nodes in the scene graph. Through the distributed shared scene graph mechanism, consistency of scene graph replicas and the contained application nodes is assured. Multi-user 3D widgets allow concurrent interaction with minimal coordination effort from the application. Special interest is paid to migration of application nodes from host to host allowing dynamic workgroup management, such as load balancing, late joining and early exit of hosts, and some forms of ubiquitous computing.
... Collaborative computing is characterisable as an endeavour where the emphasis is placed on computermediated collaboration [3,4,20,14]. It is concerned with a group of people (or automated processes working on their behalf) jointly interacting to execute a task (or tasks) related to the group's activities [33,15,42]. Contributions come from a variety of sources. ...
... Beizer's classification contains eight main categories where each category contains errors that will cause program failure on some input if not removed and errors that can be considered as enhancements. Knuth [42] views programming errors from an algorithmic perspective. His definition of an inappropriate action includes non-optimal features as well as actions which cause program failure on some input if not removed. ...
Despite the existence of aids for programming, errors in programming development remain, and often prove very costly. Much more work is required in error management. This paper shows how error classifications can provide useful error management information. A number of error classifications already exist. Along with looking at some of these existing classifications, two classifications of looping errors are presented in this paper. The motivation behind the developed classifications is to relate a task under development to an existing repository of programming information which is stored according to the developed classifications. The relation of such information may assist one or more users working on the same or similar programming tasks.
... Par rapport à notre problématique, ces approches sont assez diérentes, principalement en raison du contexte synchrone. En eet, un éditeur synchrone est basé sur l'idée de wysiwis [64] : ...
Currently, Wikis are the most popular form of collaborative editors. They allow users to concurrently edit and modify a shared set of wiki pages. We anticipate large increasing of amount and complexity of data. To face this problem, some researches have been done to shift from centralized architecture to fully decentralized wikis relying on peer-to-peer networks. However, this approach leads to new problem related to concurrency and the way remote modifications are integrated at each site. To overcome this problem, this thesis introduces the idea of concurrency awareness and proposes two contributions. The first one is to build a concurrency awareness mechanism for a P2P wiki. This mechanism makes users aware of the status of the pages they access regarding concurrency: is it an edited page or a merged page? In addition, in case of merged page, it indicates which region of the page has been merged. This mechanism depends over a concurrency detection mechanism which labels the generated patches by the set of servers. The second contribution deals with the representation of the concurrent history. Our visualisation is based over the classical history visualisation: the local versions are presented at the same order of their creation, and we added the information that present the status of these versions according to the concurrence.
... Such devices are envisaged for smart spaces or fixed intelligent environments that break away from the screen-keyboardmouse metaphor, rather than ad-hoc pervasive computing interactions. In this regard the DiamondTouch is functionally similar to the PARC CoLab project [36], the SmartSkin project from Sony [37], the MIMIO or the BlueBoard from IBM. ...
This paper on technology directions in pervasive and ubiquitous computing and provides a synopsis of global and national research trends upto the start of 2004.
The successful implementation of pervasive computing does not hinge on any particular type of technology but the use of a range of different technologies and end-user applications. Mobile devices, controllers, interfaces, sensors, identity readers and networks all play a role in building a picture of the environmental context that is key for pervasive computing.
Pervasive computing appears to hold significant potential for meeting the latent demand for more intuitive and seamless connections with technology. Its ability to understand changes in context and provide a path for convenient access to information and data in a variety of forms permits a simple and effective technology interface to be constructed. These developments could lead to changes in business models and hence industry structure and potential benefits in accessibility for people with special needs. Yet it also has the potential for increased risks to privacy, identity management and tracking movements.
Pervasive computing offers significant potential to people with special needs. Neuro-electrical interfaces for controlling virtual devices hold tremendous promise for people with mobility difficulties. In addition, an early demand driver for pervasive computing is likely to be in the health area. This would facilitate remote patient monitoring allowing convalescence to be done in the home rather than using expensive hospital facilities. Broadband connections could aid contact with health staff, health monitoring could be performed remotely using wireless connections to local home hubs and extended support communities could be used to provide additional services. Another potential driver is for home security. The current trend towards household renovations could emerge as an extended trend towards further renovations involving the setting up of home network systems that provide pervasive computing technologies, enhanced security services, remote monitoring, and entertainment
... • Workspace awareness involves understanding others' interaction within a shared workspace. To provide an example, WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) systems (Stefik et al., 1987) provide users with a view into the location and focus of attention of others in a multi-user or groupware system. ...
... Separately, VR is also proving it can support collaborative tasks. When used as a medium for telepresence [8] – the feeling of being there – VR has been shown to increase situation awareness [9] and the vividness [10], interactivity [8] and media richness [11], as well as the proprioceptive [12] or kinesthetic [13] properties of remote experiences. These qualities have been shown to enhance collaborative teleoperation scenarios like remote driving [14] and surgery [15], just to cite a few. ...
Effective data visualization is a key part of the discovery process in the
era of big data. It is the bridge between the quantitative content of the data
and human intuition, and thus an essential component of the scientific path
from data into knowledge and understanding. Visualization is also essential in
the data mining process, directing the choice of the applicable algorithms, and
in helping to identify and remove bad data from the analysis. However, a high
complexity or a high dimensionality of modern data sets represents a critical
obstacle. How do we visualize interesting structures and patterns that may
exist in hyper-dimensional data spaces? A better understanding of how we can
perceive and interact with multi dimensional information poses some deep
questions in the field of cognition technology and human computer interaction.
To this effect, we are exploring the use of immersive virtual reality platforms
for scientific data visualization, both as software and inexpensive commodity
hardware. These potentially powerful and innovative tools for multi dimensional
data visualization can also provide an easy and natural path to a collaborative
data visualization and exploration, where scientists can interact with their
data and their colleagues in the same visual space. Immersion provides benefits
beyond the traditional desktop visualization tools: it leads to a demonstrably
better perception of a datascape geometry, more intuitive data understanding,
and a better retention of the perceived relationships in the data.
... Separately, VR is also proving it can support collaborative tasks. When used as a medium for telepresence [16] [17] – the feeling of being there – VR has been shown to increase situation awareness [18] and the vividness [19], interactivity [17] and media richness [20] [21], as well as the proprioceptive [22] or kinesthetic [23] properties of remote experiences. These qualities have been shown to enhance collaborative teleoperation [12] scenarios like remote driving [24] and surgery [25], again, just to cite a few. ...
The growing complexity of scientific data poses serious challenges for
an effective visualization. Data sets, e.g., catalogs of objects
detected in sky surveys, can have a very high dimensionality, ~ 100 -
1000. Visualizing such hyper-dimensional data parameter spaces is
essentially impossible, but there are ways of visualizing up to ~ 10
dimensions in a pseudo-3D display. We have been experimenting with the
emerging technologies of immersive virtual reality (VR) as a platform
for a scientific, interactive, collaborative data visualization. Our
initial experiments used the virtual world of Second Life, and more
recently VR worlds based on its open source code, OpenSimulator. There
we can visualize up to ~ 100,000 data points in ~ 7 - 8 dimensions (3
spatial and others encoded as shapes, colors, sizes, etc.), in an
immersive virtual space where scientists can interact with their data
and with each other. We are now developing a more scalable visualization
environment using the popular (practically an emerging standard) Unity
3D Game Engine, coded using C#, JavaScript, and the Unity Scripting
Language. This visualization tool can be used through a standard web
browser, or a standalone browser of its own. Rather than merely plotting
data points, the application creates interactive three-dimensional
objects of various shapes, colors, and sizes, and of course the XYZ
positions, encoding various dimensions of the parameter space, that can
be associated interactively. Multiple users can navigate through this
data space simultaneously, either with their own, independent vantage
points, or with a shared view. At this stage ~ 100,000 data points can
be easily visualized within seconds on a simple laptop. The displayed
data points can contain linked information; e.g., upon a clicking on a
data point, a webpage with additional information can be rendered within
the 3D world. A range of functionalities has been already deployed, and
more are being added. We expect to make this visualization tool freely
available to the academic community within a few months, on an
experimental (beta testing) basis.
... Most have focused on advancing the shared usage of electronic whiteboards and vertically projected screen spaces. Projects like i-Land [17], PARC's Colab [22] and iRoom [13] all explored environments in which tabletops and walls were used in a distributed manner for collaborative and individual activities. These projects cannot be directly applied in classrooms because they assume fairly symmetric relationships between individuals in their work environments and that they all have similar roles and capabilities. ...
Multi-touch interactive tabletops are becoming increasingly affordable and are likely to become commonplace in schools. Despite the significant research exploring collaboration around tabletops, little has been done to integrate multi-touch technology for collaborative learning in classrooms. This paper explores the teachers' requirements and the challenges associated with the use of multi-touch surfaces in classroom conditions. To better understand the potential of multi-touch technology in education, we designed a novel experimental classroom comprising networked multi-touch tables, a wall display, a teacher console and a system incorporating techniques to facilitate teacher-learner interaction and teacher-led activities. The paper also reports on an experiment conducted with twelve groups of school teachers and pupils for the aim of exploring the use of our classroom and the integrated design solutions in practice. The findings confirm the feasibility of the system in supporting the teacher-learner interaction and the control of different aspects of classroom activity.
... We used elastic windows to mitigate the issue of limited screen real estate [3]. Because we did not employ strict WYSIWIS [20] users could reshape the frames according to their personal preferences without effecting their partner's views. The Chat frame provides a means for explicit communication outside the source code in the editor. ...
This paper describes the pedagogical implications of GREWP (Groupware Research in Education and the Workforce Project), a same time dierent place groupware tool built to support synchronous, collaborative coding among small to medium sized groups. GREWP exploits the educational benefits of paired programming while extending the model to allow stu- dents synchronous control of the same code. This eectively drops the constraints of turn taking, and allows for a richer interaction. By recording user activity we were also able to ameliorate the issues of accountability and individual as- sessment common to group work. The result was a powerful tool that can be used to provide interactive lectures, struc- ture classroom activity, and facilitate paired programming during labs. In this paper we present the design, implemen- tation, and deployment of GREWP with an emphasis on how it enhances the classroom experience. In particular, we give a qualitative analysis of how this tool has been used in six small lab courses over the past year.
... However, participants felt that distributed sessions provide better access to information and facilitates parallel work. WYSIWIS ("What You See Is What I See") interfaces allow users to share viewports and undoubtedly play an important role in inter-referential awareness [48]. of the technician"s view [53]; however, these references quickly become stale if the technician changes his viewpoint. A further variation of this is to allow the expert to freeze the current video frame and then annotate over top of it, at the cost of not seeing a current view of the world [15]; this research further recognized the importance of speech when referencing an object, including absolute referencing, relative referencing and deictic referencing. ...
For successful collaboration to occur, a workspace must support inter-referential awareness - or the ability for one participant to refer to a set of artifacts in the environment, and for that reference to be correctly interpreted by others. While referring to objects in our everyday environment is a straight-forward task, the non-tangible nature of digital artifacts presents us with new interaction challenges. Augmented reality (AR) is inextricably linked to the physical world, and it is natural to believe that the re-integration of physical artifacts into the workspace makes referencing tasks easier; however, we find that these environments combine the referencing challenges from several computing disciplines, which compound across scenarios. This dissertation presents our studies of this form of awareness in collaborative AR environments. It stems from our research in developing mixed reality environments for molecular modeling, where we explored spatial and multi-modal referencing techniques. To encapsulate the myriad of factors found in collaborative AR, we present a generic, theoretical framework and apply it to analyze this domain. Because referencing is a very human-centric activity, we present the results of an exploratory study which
... A student can create or connect to multiple groups, switching from one to another via the tabs at the top of the window. To endorse maximum individual customization of screen real estate and to mitigate the issues that arise from a lack of sufficient display space, we chose not to implement a strict WYSIWIS tool (Stefik, Bobrow, Foster, Lanning, & Tatar, 1997). Instead, we encapsulated the major software pieces in elastic windows (Kandogan and Shneiderman, 1997) that allow the students to resize them to their liking, and according to their particular activity needs. ...
Collaborative learning continues to be a hot topic in education. There are many advantages in creating assignments, which promote collaboration. Progress towards the creation of a detailed model of student collaboration, that can be used to derive effective methods for scaffolding, has been hampered by the lack of precise data. In this paper, we explore online computer-mediated cooperative work as a method of investigating the process of learning. We have developed an experimental platform, GREWPtool, that supports collaboration amongst non- collocated students as they construct simple websites and programs. GREWPtool records a precise history of their interaction, including all keystrokes. In VCR mode, GREWPtool is able to replay the transcript of a group session at variable speeds (both forward and reverse), as well as to search for specific types of events (e.g. a coding event) and tally relevant statistics. In this paper we describe the tool, expound on the advantages and possible applications of this type of technology for other education studies, and discuss how it is being used in a large-scale study of cooperative programming in pre-novices.
... Additionally, one or more large-scale screens may be used to display information of interest to the group as a whole, or as ancillary displays controllable from individual participants' workstations. In Engelbart and English's system [8], Begeman et al.'s Project Nick [9], and Xerox PARC's Colab project [10], participants are seated at workstations arranged around a table, leveraging some of the affordances of table-centred interaction, albeit without an interactive tabletop surface. Project Nick and Colab augmented these workstations with a large-screen display used to display information to the group. ...
Tables have historically played a key role in many real-time collaborative environments, often referred to as "Operation Centres". Today, these environments have been transformed by computational technology into spaces with large vertical displays surrounded by numerous desktop computers. Despite significant research activity in the area of tabletop computing, very little is known about how to best integrate a digital tabletop into these multi-surface environments. In this paper, we identify the unique characteristics of this problem space, and present the evaluation of a system proposed to demonstrate how an interactive tabletop can be used in a real-time operations centre to facilitate collaborative situation-assessment and decision-making.
... We used elastic windows to mitigate the issue of limited screen real estate [3]. Because we did not employ strict WYSIWIS [22] users could reshape the frames according to their personal preferences without effecting their partner's views. The Chat frame provides a means for explicit communication outside the source code in the editor. ...
This paper describes the pedagogical implications of the GREWPtool (the Groupware Research in Education and the Workforce Project), a same time different place groupware tool built to support synchronous, collaborative coding among small to medium sized groups. GREWPtool exploits the educational benefits of paired programming while extending the model to allow students synchronous control of the same code. This effectively drops the constraints of turn taking, and allows for a richer interaction. The result was a powerful tool that can be used to provide interactive lectures, structure classroom activity, and facilitate paired programming during labs. In this paper we present the design and use of GREWPtool with an emphasis on how it enhances the classroom experience. In particular, we give a qualitative analysis of how this tool has been used in six lab courses over the past two years.
... WYSIWIS (what you see is what I see), [12] refers to view the same part of a virtual workspace to different users at different displays. This approach evolved to what is called relaxes WYSIWIS in which users can have different views of the virtual workspace [11]. Most groupware designers take this principle into account when conceiving their groupware applications. ...
This paper explores the possibilities that desktop image sharing might have according three communities with Human-Computer Interaction interest. The study indicates that desktop sharing has mainly been used for remote assistance and that the function is already well known among this community. Half of the communities clearly indicated that sharing the image of the desktop has a strong relation with collaborative work. However, little attention has been put on this area that might have a crucial impact on the interface that we develop today. Different alternatives beyond the remote assistance are given by the respondent of our survey. We also present comDesk, a tool that foresees the importance of supporting a multi screen user by letting manage and control different screens. comDesk presents an alternative to solve some of the problems that we found when sharing a desktop image. Some design possibilities are presented as well.
... Un collecticiel doit pouvoir être manipulé par plusieurs utilisateurs se trouvant dans des lieux et sur des machines distinctes. Il doit aussi offrir des "vues" (Stefik et al., 1987) différentes d'un même objet aux différents utilisateurs. Pour cela, il faut définir des rôles et des règles "sociales" permettant de coordonner les actions effectuées de manière coopérative sur les objets de l'application. ...
Thème 5 : Présentation de cas et de réalisation Sous thème : Systèmes multimédias et multimodaux Communication : orale ou affichée Portée : organisation d'un système informatique et expérimentation dans le domaine du collecticiel et du multimodal Résumé Cet article décrit un environnement informatique — plateforme collecticielle — qui permet de faire collaborer un ensemble d'applications collecticielles et multimodales sur un réseau local. La plateforme est conçue pour les développeurs, l'exploitant du système et bien sûr les utilisateurs des collecticiels. L'architecture est "semi-répliquée" pour faire cohabiter des applications hétérogènes et est constituée d'agents fonctionnels permettant de prendre en compte les problèmes de transport des informations (couche basse), la gestion des ressources multimedia, les communications (couche intermédiaire), les interactions et les règles de collaboration (couche haute). Cette architecture est discutée pour ses aspects liés à la collaboration. Deux collecticiels (ICPdraw et ICPplan) ont été intégrés à la plateforme, qui en montrent l'intérêt. Nous insistons surtout dans cet article sur la gestion des objets et des transactions entre applications dans un tel environnement.
... They were limited to a small portion of space like a MUD room or a shared whiteboard where all the participants saw exactly the same view of the workspace at all times. While strict WYSIWIS means partners are always looking at the same portion of the workspace, relaxed WYSIWIS lets partners individually look at different portions of the workspace [10, 29]. That is to say, their viewports into the common space can differ. ...
This paper presents an experimental research that focuses on collaboration in a multi-player game. The aim of the project
is to study the cognitive impacts of awareness tools, i.e., artifacts that allow users of a collaborative system to be aware
of what is going on in the joint virtual environment. The focus is on finding an effect on performance as well as on the representation
an individual builds of what his partner knows, plans and intends to do (i.e., mutual modeling). We find that using awareness
tools has a significant effect by improving task performance. However, the players who were provided with this tool did not
show any improvement of their mutual modeling. Further analysis on contrasted groups revealed that there was an effect of
the awareness tool on mutual modeling for players who spent a large amount of time using the tool.
... We designed the virtual space with the objective of allowing one or more remote learners to interact simultaneously over a shared collaborative workspace. The system uses a " what you see is what I see " interaction metaphor [22] in which all participants share the same visual perspective of the shared workspace (same-side configuration). This configuration allows both remote groups to have equal opportunities for interaction, allowing them to make contributions for solving the problem and avoiding territoriality division of the surface [23]. ...
This paper presents a customizable system used to develop a collaborative multi-user problem solving game. It addresses the increasing demand for appealing informal learning experiences in museum-like settings. The system facilitates remote collaboration by allowing groups of learners to communicate through a videoconferencing system and by allowing them to simultaneously interact through a shared multi-touch interactive surface. A user study with 20 user groups indicates that the game facilitates collaboration between local and remote groups of learners. The videoconference and multi-touch surface acted as communication channels, attracted students' interest, facilitated engagement, and promoted inter-and intra-group collaboration— favoring intra-group collaboration. Our findings suggest that augmenting videoconferencing systems with a shared multitouch space offers new possibilities and scenarios for remote collaborative environments and collaborative learning.
... Most have focused on advancing the shared usage of electronic whiteboards and vertically projected screen spaces. Projects like i-Land [17], PARC's Colab [22] and iRoom [13] all explored environments in which tabletops and walls were used in a distributed manner for collaborative and individual activities. These projects cannot be directly applied in classrooms because they assume fairly symmetric relationships between individuals in their work environments and that they all have similar roles and capabilities. ...
The potential of tabletops to enable simultaneous interaction and face-to-face collaboration can provide novel learning opportunities. Despite significant research in the area of collaborative learning around tabletops, little attention has been paid to the integration of multi-touch surfaces into classroom layouts and how to employ this technology to facilitate teacher-learner dialogue and teacher-led activities across multi-touch surfaces. While most existing techniques focus on the collaboration between learners, this work aims to gain a better understanding of practical challenges that need to be considered when integrating multi-touch surfaces into classrooms. It presents a multi-touch interaction technique, called TablePortal, which enables teachers to manage and monitor collaborative learning on students' tables. Early observations of using the proposed technique within a novel classroom consisting of networked multi-touch surfaces are discussed. The aim was to explore the extent to which our design choices facilitate teacher-learner dialogue and assist the management of classroom activity.
... This idea has been exploited before in 2D shared editors and whiteboards, as in [8] [15] and [30]. Tight view coupling is also known as WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See), and has been a widely used paradigm in collaboration [34]. It has, however, been rarely employed in 3D environments. ...
Recent proliferation of computing devices has brought attention to heterogeneous collaborative systems, where key challenges arise from the resource limitations and disparities. Sharing data across disparate devices makes it necessary to employ mechanisms for adapting the original data and presenting it to the user in the best possible way. However, this could represent a major problem for effective collaboration, since users may find it difficult to reach consensus with everyone working with individually tailored data. This paper presents a novel approach to controlling the coupling of heterogeneous collaborative systems by combining concepts from complex systems and data adaptation techniques. The key idea is that data must be adapted to each individual's preferences and resource capabilities. To support and promote collaboration this adaptation must be interdependent, and adaptation performed by one individual should influence the adaptation of the others. These influences are defined according to the user's roles and collaboration requirements. We model the problem as a distributed optimization problem, so that the most useful data--both for the individual and the group as a whole--is scheduled for each user, while satisfying their preferences, their resource limitations, and their mutual influences. We show how this approach can be applied in a collaborative 3D design application and how it can be extended to other applications.
... Since the beginning of groupware-software development, WYSIWIS has been viewed as an essential capability in groupware systems. However, although the WYSIWIS idealization recognizes that efficient reference to common objects depends on a common view of the work at hand, strict WYSIWIS was found to be too limiting, and relaxed versions were proposed to accommodate personalized screen layouts [Stefik et al. 1987]. In subsequent work [Tatar et al. 1991], problems were reported with non-WYSIWIS systems because manipulation and editing processes were private and only results were shared. ...
The effect of communication via heterogeneous computer platforms, having different computing power, was studied. An analysis of solution times found that subjects with mixed platforms worked slower than their homogeneous counterparts. It was observed that a person in charge with a PC worked faster if his partner had a PC, and the PC-to-PDA combination took significantly more time than the PC-to-PC combination. Display disparities can take different forms, as they can result from physical characteristics of display devices, such as size, color resolution, aspect ratio, and spatial distribution.
... Par rapport à notre problématique, ces approches sont assez diérentes, principalement en raison du contexte synchrone. En eet, un éditeur synchrone est basé sur l'idée de wysiwis [64] : ...
Récemment, les wikis sont devenus les outils d'édition collaborative les plus populaires. Ils doivent maintenant faire face à une forte augmentation en quantité et complexité des données gérées en nombre d'utilisateurs. Pour répondre à ce problème, le passage d'une architecture client/serveur vers une architecture décentralisée sur réseau pair-à-pair est une voie possible. Elle pose cependant des problèmes liés à la concurrence des mises à jour sur des sites distants. Ce document décrit deux contributions à cette problématique. La première contribution propose un mécanisme totalement décentralisé pour la conscience de la concurrence dans une édition collaborative sur réseaux P2P. Son rôle est de permettre aux visiteurs d'un wiki d'avoir conscience du statut d'une page vis-à-vis de la concurrence - s'agit-il d'une page éditée ou fusionnée ? - et dans le cas d'une page fusionnée, d'avoir une vision des zones de la page touchées par la fusion. Ce mécanisme repose sur un détecteur de concurrence dont le principe consiste à étiqueter les patchs échangés entre les serveurs. La deuxième contribution porte sur la visualisation d'un historique concurrent. La visualisation proposée se base sur la visualisation linéaire classique: chaque site affiche la séquence locale de versions dans l'ordre où elles sont apparues, et complète cet historique avec des informations permettant de repérer les états édités et fusionnés et les parties concurrentes dans l'histoire.
... The process of selection of criteria is also viewed as an argumentation process in our model. Stefik et al. [12] postulate that much of the dispute and misunderstandings in group meetings about design proposals are due to three major causes: owned positions, unstated assumptions and unstated criteria. Our approach provides a framework that mitigates these problems as follows: ...
For each of the stakeholders involved in large-scale, complex and
distributed software development processes, some useful support can be
provided by recording the argumentation among team members. We describe
a system that supports argumentation based on the ARBAS language. A
variety of support mechanisms for the capture and use of software
development process knowledge are discussed. These include support for
the capture, retrieval and replay of process knowledge as well as
mechanisms to maintain the consistency of it
... Computer conferencing is concerned with allowing multiple users of workstations to exchange information and work together, with some level of connectivity maintained between workstations during the conference [6,7,10,21,22]. These conferences may be multi-media, including video or facsimile links as well as audio, although the audio is probably the primary channel [12]. ...
Workstation utility may be enhanced by the addition of audio and
telephony functions for a number of applications, such as voice mail,
multi-media documents, and computer conferencing. The requirements of
these applications are outlined, and an audio server architecture, using
a personal computer with a disk and speech-processing board as a server
dedicated to the workstation, is presented. The functional interface
between client and server is described, as well as the motivation for
this specific server approach with particular emphasis on user interface
considerations. Experience with the audio server architecture is
reported and it is contrasted with alternate architectures
... Since the beginning of groupware-software development, WYSIWIS has been viewed as an essential capability in groupware systems. However, although the WYSIWIS idealization recognizes that efficient reference to common objects depends on a common view of the work at hand, strict WYSIWIS was found to be too limiting, and relaxed versions were proposed to accommodate personalized screen layouts [Stefik et al. 1987]. In subsequent work [Tatar et al. 1991], problems were reported with non-WYSIWIS systems because manipulation and editing processes were private and only results were shared. ...
This paper investigates the performance and communication patterns that take place when collaborators use unequal computer platforms for conducting their collaboration. We are envisioning a scenario where a person in the field has some form of a Personal Data Assistant (PDA) that contains a shared environment with another individual. This second individual in the dyadic communication is either located in the field, and thus, is equipped with the same form of display platform, a PDA, or in the office with a high-end workstation (we are calling this a PC). If the two individuals are communicating on the same type of platform, we say that the platforms are homogenous. If they are using different platforms, we say that the platforms are heterogeneous
... Collaboration is an important skill for young children to learn. Educational research has found that working in pairs or small groups can have beneficial effects on learning and development, particularly in early years and primary education [10, 14, 15]. Technology offers an opportunity to support and facilitate collaborative learning in many respects [1, 9]. ...
We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves. Keywords Children, Single Display Groupware (SDG), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Education, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). INTRODUCTION Collaboration is an important skill for young children to learn. Educational research has found that working in pairs or small groups can have beneficial effects on l...
Performing a large scale job always involves some teamwork. Therefore, for several years, there has been a growing need regarding computer assistance for this kind of collaborative task. The most complete solutions existing today are collaborative virtual environments (CVE). However, the use of these tools is still uncommon because of the "distant" aspect of the collaboration in CVEs: In a real use case, co-workers are mostly located in the same place. Such a situation is called "colocation". Therefore, large companies choose another working method called "war room": a physical space allowing simultaneous and non-linear work using multiple working surfaces. This thesis aims at providing a hardware and software platform dedicated to collocated collaboration and focused on project review activities. After having analyzed the notion of space, and observed socio-cognitive behavior of collocated coworkers, we present a computer-aided platform inspired from war rooms. This work emphasizes on the users' competence diversity by implementing a paradigm called "channels". These channels offer multiple heterogeneous representations of virtual objects in the war room. This work is completed by the definition of a method for changing a classical CVE platform (SPIN|3D) into a computer-supported war room. This transformation involves notably the insertion of several abstraction levels for data; thanks to software architecture we call MnVO. The resulting platform is finally used for two prototypes: The first one provides distributed collaboration activity upon a virtual vehicle. The second one relies on the channels technology and provides an urbanism project review scenario.
Both the issues of “knowledge management” and “mobility” have received much attention recently. The interest in these issues is often motivated by the fact that work, in many organizations, has become “knowledge intensive” and “mobile.” However, so far these issues have been explored separately. The thesis is a collection of six papers that address these issues from an informatics perspective. Informatics can be described as a theory and design oriented study of information technology use, an artificial science which focuses on the intertwined complexity of people and information technology as its subject matter. The scope of this thesis is delimited to the design of co-operative technologies. The overall research question is: how can we provide mobile workers with timely knowledge? Here, timely knowledge means knowledge that is relevant for the task at hand. The thesis contains empirical studies of mobile work, technologies for knowledge systems, and the design and validation of prototype systems. The studies mainly consist of observations of mobile service electricians and mobile news journalists. They show that current perspectives on knowledge management do not adequately accommodate mobile work. Furthermore, implications for design are derived. Technologies to capture and measure text and hyperlink data are developed and refined to be used in knowledge systems. The design implications and the technologies serve as base for the design of three knowledge systems. One of them has been validated in several workshops and under real working conditions of mobile news journalists. The final contribution is a generalized technological architecture, designed to be easily adapted to several mobile work settings and emerging mobile technologies. The architecture is derived from the summation of previous results and the first practical implementation is in the domain of mobile news journalism.
Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are 3D spaces in which users share virtual objects, communicate, and work together. To collaborate efficiently, users must develop a common representation of their shared virtual space. In this work, we investigated spatial communication in virtual environments. In order to perform an object co-manipulation task, the users must be able to communicate and exchange spatial information, such as object position, in a virtual environment. We conducted an experiment in which we manipulated the contents of the shared virtual space to understand how users verbally construct a common spatial representation of their environment. Forty-four students participated in the experiment to assess the influence of contextual objects on spatial communication and sharing of viewpoints. The participants were asked to perform in dyads an object co-manipulation task. The results show that the presence of a contextual object such as fixed and lateralized visual landmarks in the virtual environment positively influences the way male operators collaborate to perform this task. These results allow us to provide some design recommendations for CVEs for object manipulation tasks.
Cognoter is a program helps a cooperating group of people to organizing their thoughts for a presentation, e.g., a paper or talk. It is designed for use in the Colab, an experimental laboratory created at Xerox PARC to study computer support of cooperative real-time group problem-solving. Cognoter provides a multi-user interface and a structured meeting process. An annotated graph of ideas is built up by the group in three stages: brainstorming for idea generation, ordering for idea organization, and evaluation for choosing what will be finally be presented. Interesting aspects of Cognoter include direct spatial manipulation of ideas and their order relationships, support of parallel activity, and incremental progress toward a total ordering of ideas.
As application domains emerge, they often bring with them a variety of new interaction techniques. Augmented Reality (AR)
is a technology that attempts to seamlessly integrate virtual artifacts into the physical world. Though many of the interaction
challenges in AR parallel those found in purely virtual environments, the inclusion of the physical world forces us consider
new scenarios. This chapter will discuss some of the user interface (UI) challenges in collaborative AR environments– or those with more than one participant. For these environments to be successful, it is critical that they
support referential awareness. The reader may question why this is an important item to consider when designing such systems. After all, people collaborate fairly well in the physical
world through gestures, such as pointing, and through deictic references (e.g. “this one” or “those”). One might therefore believe that re-integrating the physical world back into the digital one would make referencing easier.
However, consider a multi-user environment that contains hundreds of artifacts that are similar in appearance – with participants
geographically separated; one can see that things become complex quickly. Or, consider how one might reference virtual objects
that are embedded within physical ones, such as during augmented surgery. References may be made at arbitrary depths, such
as physically to the patient’s skin or virtually to the volumetric data (e.g. a CAT scan) embedded within.
Not all Group Support Systems are identical, as is demonstrated by their software implementations. We discuss two existing implementations of group support tools and the process models underlying them. We demonstrate that fundamental to both processes is the merging or integration of individual data. Based on this and other empirical research, the Shared Context Model (SCM) of cooperative work is adopted and we show that it supports existing processes and others. We expect that groups will find merging their work easier with the SCM. This model is presented and embedded in the architecture and implementation of four group tools. Because these tools are destined to be used by dispersed groups, synchronously or asynchronously, an object-based communication and control mechanism is incorporated. Finally, as graphics and multi-tasking have been shown to be increasingly important, the tools are implemented in Microsoft Windows for personal computers attached to local area networks.
This paper presents the methodological framework for the Group Decision Support System named SCDAS. The system supports a group of decision makers working together on selecting the best alternative from a given, finite set of alternatives. The framework utilizes aspiration-led and quasisatisficing paradigms for eliciting user's preference, and the achievement function for ranking alternatives. Possible implementation of the system within the framework of a computerized teleconferencing system is discussed. Also, previous experience in applying the SCDAS system is presented.
In some collaborative manipulation activities – for example, medical experts making a diagnosis based on a D reconstruction
of a human organ – remote participants may tailor their views on the shared object to their particular needs and task. This
implies that each user has her viewpoint on the object. Awareness of viewpoint is then necessary both to coordinate each other
and to understand remote users’ activities. This work investigates how to provide the remote viewpoint awareness in a 3D collaborative
desktop in which multiple shared objects can be independently positioned and manipulated to accomplish a common single activity.
Preliminary results of ergonomic evaluations of the proposed metaphors are also provided.
Currently, the Web environment provides support mostly for single-user browsing and authoring. Even though the WebDAV project proposed first solutions, there is still no adequate support for cooperative work that deals with the unreliability of such a distributed environment. We present the PINtildeAS infrastructure which provides means for supporting cooperative work on the Web. Using groupware applications that are built employing the services of this infrastructure, several users can access and modify replicated shared entities in a consistent and controlled way. PINtildeAS provides suited features, such as: user identification, multi-site user definition, user and entity naming, shared entity replication, storage, consistency, and automatic distributed updating. We propose seamless extensions to standard Web services that can be fully integrated within the Web environment. Moreover, the innovative PINtildeAS features provide reliable support for temporarily disconnected and nomadic work.
RESUME Cet article porte sur le couplage des activités collaborati- ves et vise à étendre sa définition existante à travers une démarche expérimentale et exploratoire. En effet, nous faisons l'hypothèse que le couplage est caractérisé par neufs degrés répartis dans un espace à deux dimensions. Pour cela, nous adoptons le point de vue de la multimo- dalité pour aborder cette notion pour des systèmes inte- ractifs multiutilisateurs. Aussi, nous avons développé deux applications, dont l'une est détaillée dans cet arti- cle, pour mener nos expérimentations afin de mettre en évidence l'existence de ces neufs degrés. Cette première phase expérimentale semble confirmer une partie de nos hypthèses. ABSTRACT This paper is about the coupling of collaborative activi- ties and the goal of this work is to refine the existing definition of coupling, based on an experimental and ex- ploratory approach. Indeed, we suppose that the coupling may be characterized with nine degrees in a two dimen- sion space. To do this, we have considered multimodal interfaces applied to groupware interfaces. Then, we have developed two applications, which one is detailed in this paper, in order to experimentally highlight the ex- istence of these nine degrees. This first step seems to confirm our hypothesis.
In this paper, the issue of group-based cooperative decision support is examined. The notion of a group as an essential element for management in a cooperative context is discussed. Viewpoints, or interfaces that are tailored to the requirements of user tasks, are explained, and group viewpoints are introduced. An analysis of what groups participate in the hospital management task is illustrated, and task-specific viewpoints for these groups are established. Examples of two decision dialogues, the first between members of a group, and the second between members of different groups, are presented. First, the environmental elements of cooperative decision-making are established. Then interface elements that are required to support cooperative decision-making are put in place. The phases of a computer-mediated group decision are then outlined. The process of cooperative medical diagnosis is then considered in the light of the theoretical development, and the specific interface of the medical environment is established. Finally, a review of the adequacy of the entire approach is conducted, and a possible implementation platform is considered.
Cet article pose les problèmes généraux, concepts et principes concernant les interfaces homme-machine multimodales :
- l'usage et l'adéquation des modes de communication ;
- le contexte d'interaction : concurrent, alterné, composé, parallèle ;
- la gestion des événements bas niveaux (cohérence, chronologie, redondance, etc.) ;
- la fusion des informations ;
- leur interprétation (coréférence) ;
- les niveaux d'abstraction et de représentation.
On situe quelques uns de ces points à travers une taxonomie des interfaces.
On aborde le difficile problème de la coréférence entre les modes, placé dans une perspective de fusion d'informations auquel on propose une solution. Une application multimodale de conception de dessin ICPdraw est décrite pour en illustrer le propos. ICPdraw est construit sur une architecture en couches comprenant :
- des cartes de reconnaissance et de synthèse dédiées ;
- des serveurs d'événements ;
- un gestionnaire des modes ;
- un contrôleur de dialogue ;
- une interface de communication avec le noyau fonctionnel de l'application.
Video-mediated communication (VMC) is currently the prevalent mode of telecommunication for applications such as remote collaboration, teleconferencing, and distance learning. It is generally assumed that transmitting real-time talking-head videos of participants in addition to their audio is beneficial and desirable, enabling remote conferencing to feel almost the same as face-to-face collaboration. However, compared to being face-to-face, VMC still feels distant, artificial, cumbersome, and detached. One limitation of standard video-collaboration that contributes to this feeling is that the 3D context between people and their shared workspace given in face-to-face collaboration is lost. It is therefore not possible for participants to tell from the video what others are looking at, what they are working on, or who they are talking to. Video Collaborative Virtual Environments (video-CVEs) are novel VMC interfaces which address these problems by re-introducing a virtual 3D context into which distant users are mentally "transported" to be together and interact with the environment and with each other, represented by their spatially controllable video-avatars. To date, research efforts following this approach have primarily focused on the demonstration of working prototypes. However, maturation of these systems requires a deeper understanding of human factors that emerge during mediated collaborative processes. This thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of human factors. It investigates the hypothesis that video-CVEs can effectively support face-to-face aspects of collaboration which are absent in standard video-collaboration. This hypothesis is tested in four related comparative user studies involving teams of participants collaborating in video-CVEs, through standard video-conferencing systems, and being face-to-face. The experiments apply and extend methods from the research fields of human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and presence. Empirical findings indicate benefits of video-CVEs for user experience dimensions such as social presence and copresence, but also highlight challenges for awareness and usability that need to be overcome to unlock the full potential of this type of interface.
Highlighting text is a common feature in most single-user editors. It provides users with a mechanism of communication and collaboration between the author and readers by emphasizing some important text. This feature is also necessary and even more valuable in multi-user collaborative editors. However, it is non-trivial to extend this feature from the single-user environment to the multi-user collaborative environment because of the following challenges: 1) the need to differentiate highlights by different users, 2) the need to tackle inconsistency problems caused by concurrent operations, and 3) the need to provide a flexible undo facility with the capability of undoing any highlighting operation at any time. In this paper we systematically address these issues and offer our solutions, which have been implemented in the REDUCE (real-time distributed unconstrained collaborative editing) system.
This paper focuses on the distributed architecture of the collaborative augmented reality system Studierstube. The system allows multiple users to experience a shared 3D workspace populated by multiple applications using see-through head mounted displays or other presentation media such as projection systems. The system design is based on a distributed shared scene graph that alleviates the application programmer from explicitly considering distribution, and avoids a separation of graphical and application data. The idea of unifying all system data in the scene graph is taken to its logical consequence by implementing application instances as nodes in the scene graph. Through the distributed shared scene graph mechanism, consistency of scene graph replicas and the contained application nodes is assured. Multi-user 3D widgets allow concurrent interaction with minimal coordination effort from the application. Special interest is paid to migration of application nodes from host to host allowing dynamic workgroup management, such as load balancing, late joining and early exit of hosts, and some firms of ubiquitous computing
Tempus Fugit/Interview is a computational fluid dynamics visualization application for which processing is distributed between high performance graphics workstations and supercomputers. Facilities are provided in the application for more than one user to view shared images creating a cooperative visualization environment. The way in which the computation is partitioned between the supercomputer and the workstations is critical to the capability of the application to present simultaneous, identical, animated images of fluid dynamics to more than one user. Keywords: Scientific Visualization, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Distributed Graphics 1. Introduction The increased capabilities of supercomputers have been used to dramatically increase the size and complexity of numerical simulations of fluid flow [16]. As the size of the simulations increase, the size of the flow solution data also increases and can result in immense data sets representing the physical characteri...
The present paper explores the importance of designing shared browsing user interfaces to support sociability. In particular, several shared browsing interfaces were empirically tested for the extent to which they helped people achieve a sense of shared understanding--or common ground--while surfing the web. We found a) that people generally preferred a shared browser to an unshared browser when shopping online together, and b) that user interface features that enhanced common ground had a greater impact on enjoyment than did features affecting ease of use or functionality. These results suggest that web designers need to take into account supporting sociability when considering the tradeoffs in their user interface designs.
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