Video conferencing vs collocated
- can’t talk privately to others
- what happens after the meeting is almost or more important that during
HP Labs — mututally immersive mobile videopresence…
- Live video of the front and sides of the user’s head
- Mounted on a mobile robotic trolley
Issues
- Situation awareness — aware of what’s going on around you
- Non-verbal communication v. important to control the flow
- Research shows that it’s easier to switch between physical & digital artifacts when face to face
Research over the last few years looking to facilitate face to face communication
eSpace — interactions between (travel) agents & customers
- customer appears to be understanding and nodding, but really isn’t getting anything
- a lot of translation going on from information for agent and information for customer _(hey, that’s kinda what Kizoom does :-)-
- changed the workspace to be a side-by-side interaction with three screens
- reduced social awkwardness
- both looked at the screen and occasionally had eye contact
- both took part in creating the itineraries
Theoretical approaches for supporting collocated teams
Multiple entry points
- when each person has their own paper and pen, it becomes easy for people to share
- when there’s only one pad, people fight over the sole entry point
- also at whiteboards — single entry point is the marker
- used mitsubishi diamondtouch + diamondspin s/w: touch-sensitive display table to provide shared workspace with multiple entry points
- saw lots of turn taking and “turn inviting”
- also people who were normally shy could take part more with the physical tasks
Distributed cognition
- traditional approaches to cognition talk about what goes on within a single person’s head
- distributed approach takes the system at large — lots of people with input to the group and output from them
- distrib. cog. tries to chart:
- where the overlaps in knowledge are
- levels of access to information
- this is the approach used by Helen Sharp (Yvonne is now working with her at OU)
- Yvonne shows picture of Kizoom’s bug wall and talks about how central it was to our environment
- (in fact this was probably a breakdown since it just filled up and didn’t get addressed…)
- large interactive surfaces:
- OU waiting for MS Surface (due in November, but now arriving next summer)
- reactable — physical interaction with music software
Dynamo — collocated people sharing & showing digital content
- shared screen with multiple mice & other devices
- can carve out sections of the screen and protect them against others
- can then grant and revoke access to other individual users
- can seal parcels and leave for other users
- deployed into a 6th form classroom
- interaction tended to be a few people using it and others watching as an audience
- not yet deployed into a software company, but if you want it, let Yvonne know
Conclusion & Q&A
Collocated teams will always work better than distributed teams
- but no quantifiable effects here
What’s the value of these technologies over index cards?
- Helen’s research shows that cards have great value that won’t go away
- if developing a product that requires you to interact with digital content, then this tech gives an advantage
- especially if making connections
- people overlook emails and other digital content — posting it on a public space makes people take notice (honeypot effect — they all gather round)
What happens with larger groups?
- Yvonne’s research is mostly with groups of 2-3
- When groups get to 6-7 then group segments and division of labour sets in
- “I’m working on this bit and you can work on that”
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