Concepts that Support Collocated Collaborative Work Inspired by the ...

Concepts that Support Collocated Collaborative Work Inspired by the Specific Context of Industrial Designers H.Wang, E.Blevis Human-Computer Interaction Design Group School of Informatics Indiana University 901 E 10th Street Bloomington IN 47408 {huwang,eblevis}@indiana.EDU

ABSTRACT

1. INTRODUCTION

Based on a naturalistic study of industrial designers engaged in collocated collaborative design work in a technologically unsophisticated environment, we observed a number of interactions that lead to a number of insights, namely, (1) seating and the shape and orientation of the working surface has an effect on line of sight and eye-contact behaviors, (2) being able to reach objects on the working surface effects an individual collaborator’s ability to become the focus of attention, (3) in collaborative work, people may work on the same document or divide labors to work on different documents simultaneously, (4) supporting the use of conventional artifacts that users are familiar with is as important as supporting the use of informational devices, (5) large workspaces with different privacy levels support both the needs of sharing information and the needs of keeping information private, (6) changes of document orientation socially represents a corresponding change of control and privacy level. From these insights and from other sources in the literature, we describe and illustrate a number of concepts for integrated technologies and environments that can support collocated collaborative work specifically in the context of design work. These concepts are intended as an exercise in divergent design thinking that owes to carefully constructed insights based on observations.

The context of our research is collocated collaborative work by industrial designers. We follow a methodology that we claim is truly human-centered design—that is, we begin with an ethnographic study of a group we care about and not a particular technology or concept. From our observations and a review of the literature, we develop insights about the particular style of collaborative work by our chosen group. From our insights, we develop a number of concepts that support the collaborative work of industrial designers in a manner that is specifically targeted at their working style. The concepts are not necessarily innovative in terms of technology, but rather they are specifically appropriate to the context of collocated collaborative work by industrial designers. They are prescriptions for the application of Design and CSCW knowledge to a particular circumstance. The importance of this work for the CSCW community follows from the recent emergence of big “D” Design as a part of HCI [2]:p.6; this research illustrates the Design principle that “for whom you are designing precedes the question of what you are designing, and what you are designing precedes the question of how you would implement it.”

Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.2 [Design Tools and Techniques]: User interfaces. D.2.10 [Design]: Methodologies.

General Terms Design

Keywords

2. RELATED WORK There are a number of technologies for collocated collaborative work that are described in the CSCW literature. We choose to classify these technologies into five categories, namely horizontal displays, large vertical displays, multiple displays, tangible interfaces, and integrated environments. Horizontal displays. Horizontal displays facilitate face-to-face collaboration, reach, eye-contact and the use of physical objects such as coffee and notebooks [6,11]. Systems in this category include the Personal Digital Historian [12] and the UbiTable [11].

CSCW, HCI, Concept sketching, Ethnography, Naturalistic study, Insight development, Collaborative design.

Large vertical displays. By large vertical displays, we mean primarily wall size devices. Reported in [7,10] is the claim that the greater size and resolution of vertical displays allow for more information to be shared at once. People standing side-by-side in front of a large vertical display are able to view information from similar perspectives [8]. Two important systems in this category are BlueBoard [10] and PostBrainstorm [3].

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Multiple displays. Multiple displays allow more information to be displayed and viewed at once. Although there is small detrimental effect on the performance because of discontinuities of information [14], it has been found that using multiple displays facilitates multi-tasking by partitioning information [1]. The eTable is an example [9].

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Tangible interfaces. Unlike conventional GUI-based groupware, Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) use physical objects as interface tools in the virtual environment. Interesting examples include metaDESK [15] and the Interactive Table [8]. Integrated environments. Some research projects work by integrating multiple displays and interaction devices to create a technology-rich environment for collaboration. Well-known examples include the i-Land project [13] and the iRoom project [5].

3. STUDY To our knowledge, the special context of industrial designers has elsewhere been studied in the literature on CSCW in by Guimretière, Stone, and Winograd [3]. Our findings support the notions of that study in two ways. First, designers tend to use large amounts of visual data and they need large workspaces to present information in the way that does not clutter the workspace, but is still easy to view and manipulate all at once. Second, especially when engaged in activities that involve sketching and annotation, it is imperative that interaction technologies do not impede the dynamic nature of the interactions. Our study differs from [3] in terms of the things we focused on during our observations. First, we focused on observing the interactions between the team members and not just the interactions with particular interactive devices, such as wallsized displays. Second, we focused on enumerating the various kinds of non-technological artifacts and devices and orientations of artifacts and devices that were used in the observed collaboration, in order to better understand what collection of technologies might be used to create a holistic environment that integrates a multiplicity of devices in support of the collaborative activities. Finally, we wanted to understand the differences between private spaces and publicly shared surfaces used in the course of the collaborative activity. Our objective for an observational study was truly humancentered. That is, we wanted to understand how our chosen target group—industrial designers—work now and what design interventions could be proposed that would actually improve their working environment. The particular group being observed was a design team with five team members in the Pratt Institute, a design school in New York. In order to be as unobtrusive as possible, we video-taped the design process instead of being physically present at the meeting. We focused on observing (1) What are the collaborative working activities? (2) How do the collaborators use the workspace? (3) How do the collaborators share information? (4) What motivates the collaborators to be engaged in the meeting and what interrupts the progress of the meeting? (5) Which collaborative activities were specific to context of designers?

Figure 1. Seating orientation and eye contact.

Reach. Everyone needs to be able to reach any place or object on the workspace, and they also need to be able to see what other people are pointing at. In a rectangular table, people seated on the short side have more difficulty reaching the workspace. Therefore, people prefer to sit at the long side if they want to control the meeting in the context of shared collaborative work that focuses on a common artifact of shared external cognition (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Reach and Simultaneity.

Simultaneity. More than one person may gesture towards or alter aspects of the workspace at once. Multiple documents may be present and activities relating to creating or editing documents may be concurrent (Figure 2). Use of physical objects. In the design meeting we observed, people preferred to use physical documents. Digital documents are easy to share remotely, but they may be difficult to use in face-to-face communication. Activities involving non-content oriented physical objects were also observed, such as drinking coffee and eating snacks during the meetings. Large work-surfaces, one concept to a sheet, retrieval and comparison. Designers need large workspaces. They usually work around a large paper sheet on a table or post their sketches on the wall. To make it easy to classify documents, designers tend not to put more than one concept on a single sheet of paper even if there is much unused space. In the design process, designers need to retrieve and compare information that has been recorded on different sheets of paper (Figure 3).

4. INSIGHTS FROM OBSERVATIONS From the study, we developed several insights about what should be taken into account when creating concept systems for collocated collaborative design work: Seating orientation. People make eye contact with their collaborators while talking. In small group collaborations, people may prefer to sit around a table instead of all facing the same direction, in order to make eye contact and to be able to see each others’ facial expressions (Figure 1).

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Figure 3. Large work-surfaces, one concept to a sheet

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Privacy level. People need both shared work-spaces and private spaces (Figure 4). Documents used in the design process have different privacy levels, and the privacy levels of documents can change during the design process. People change the privacy level of documents by moving the documents from their private space to the private spaces of others, or from their private space to the shared workspace.

information displayed on a vertical surface would allow users to all view it from a similar perspective. To overcome the difficulty of reaching different parts of a wall, a MiniNavigator would be used as a control. A touch screen would be mounted on the surface of the table in front of each seat. Contents displayed on the screen would be exactly the same as what is projected on the wall, but the scale would be reduced. Users could easily move a document, make an annotation or point to a specific place by using the MiniNavigator.

3-D Navigator. Insights: reach ,simultaneity, large work-surface, orientation of documents Figure 4. Privacy level.

Orientation of Documents. Orientation of documents is meaningful. Changes of orientation can represent a change in the privacy level of a document. When a document is oriented towards a particular person, that document tends to be under her or his control (Figure 5). When a document is being rotated to be oriented towards another person, the denotation is one of sharing or giving away control to that person.

Figure 5. Orientation of documents.

5. CONCEPTS In this section, we describe and illustrate a number of concepts that owe to the insights we developed from our observations: Multi-user ClearBoard with MiniNavigator. Insights: seating orientation, reach, simultaneity, large work-surface, orientation of documents. Description: Even in collocated collaboration, people may not be able to make eye contact with each other or see other peoples’ facial expressions because of seating orientations. Inspired by the concept of ClearBoard [4], we propose a concept to support people in the need to see the facial expressions and gestures of others during conversation. Images of each team member would be captured by video cameras mounted on the top of the wall display, and then be projected onto the wall. Users could see information displayed on the wall and the facial expressions and gestures of others without shifting their position. Also, having

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Description: In the evaluation stage of product design or architectural design processes, designers build mockups for each concept and evaluate those mockups in different perspectives by rotating the model. The idea of 3D Navigator is to allow designers to view 3D models from various perspectives by using natural gestures. A large tabletop display would be used as the interface. Each file presented on the display would be a palm-size square with a representational drawing of its contents, so that users could know the contents of the file without opening it. At the center of the display, there would be a circular area. When a file is moved into the area, the content of the file would be projected onto the wall. If the file associated with a 3D model is moved into the circle, the corresponding 3D model would be projected onto the wall. Users could navigate the 3D model by using gestures to turn the virtual Lazy Susan and view the model from different perspectives, as in [5]. Team members would enjoy almost the same perspective when navigating

More is more. Insights: seating orientation, reach, simultaneity, use of physical objects, large worksurface, privacy level Description: The designers we observed prefer large worksurfaces. Also, they used private work-spaces in addition to shared work-spaces. The concept “More is More” uses multiple displays to create a large workspace and also provides different privacy levels. The system would allow at most six people to sit around a table. Each seat would be equipped with a screen and an input device. When a user lifts the screen to be vertical, she or he would create a private work-space. When a user converts the screen to the horizontal position, the information displayed on the screen would be seen by people sitting next to or in front, but may not be seen by all team members. This mode would constitute a semi-private workspace. People sitting next to each other could share information by dragging files across the borders of their personal displays to another’s display. There would be a large shared work-space at the center of the table. Users could share digital files by dragging files from the semi-private work-space across the border to the shared work-space, and vice versa.

ConverTable. Insights: seating orientation, reach, simultaneity, use of physical objects, privacy level Description: In a design studio, designers work individually in their own workspace. To have a meeting, they have to bring physical files, sketches, or laptops and gather round a large table to share information. Inspired by the concept of CommChair [13], the concept of ConverTable is a technologyembedded furniture system that can be easily converted from individual mode to collaborative mode according to users’ needs and contexts. It would support designers in the use of both physical and virtual work-spaces. The surface of a ConverTable would be composed of a physical workspace and a convertible workspace. Designers could draw sketches or take notes on the physical workspace, and could convert half of the physical working area into a virtual workspace by simply raising the screen. The ConverTable would be equipped with wheels which would help users to not only change their working position, but also their working mode. To change the working mode from individual to collaborative, designers would not have to be bothered by bringing files and devices with them. They would just simply move their own ConverTable to a common space and convert the screen to the horizontal position. After the meeting, they could move to a personal space to continue their work without changing seats or computers.

6. SUMMARY Using truly human-centered methodologies, we conducted a study of collocated collaborative work by industrial designers, developed insights about what was observed, and described and illustrated several concepts that could support such work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

5. Johanson, B., Fox, A. and Winograd, T. The Interactive Workspaces Project: Experiences with Ubiquitous Computing Rooms. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2002. Volume 1(2): p. 67-74. 6. Kruger, R., Carpendale, S. and Greenberg, S. Collaborating over Physical and Electronic Tables. In Poster in ACM CSCW '2002 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 2002. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA: ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. 7. Mandryk, R., Scott, S. and Inkpen, K. Display Factors Influencing Co-located Collaboration. In Poster in ACM CSCW '2002 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 2002. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA: ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. 8. Omojola, O., et al., An installation of interactive furniture. IBM Systems Journal, 2000. Volume 39(3 & 4): p. 861-879. 9. Rodden, T., et al. Designing novel interactional workspaces to support face to face consultations. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2003. Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA: ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. 10. Russell, D. M. Large interactive public displays: Use patterns, support patterns, community patterns. In Workshop on Public, Community and Situated Displays at CSCW 2002. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. 11. Shen, C., Everitt, K. and Ryall, K. UbiTable: Impromptu Face-to-Face Collaboration on Horizontal Interactive Surfaces. In The Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. 2003. Seattle, Washington USA. 12. Shen, C., et al. Sharing and building digital group histories. In Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 2002. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA: ACM Press New York, NY, USA. 13. Streitz, N.A., et al. i-LAND: An interactive Landscape for Creativitiy and Innovation. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1999. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: ACM Press New York, NY, USA.

7. REFERENCES

14. Tan, D. S. and Czerwinski, M. Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Displays. In OZCHI 2003 Conference for the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the Ergonomics Society of Australia. 2003. Brisbane, Australia.

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15. Ullmer, B. and Ishii, H. The metaDESK: models and prototypes for tangible user interfaces. In Proceedings of the 10th annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. 1997. Banff, Alberta, Canada: ACM Press New York, NY, USA.

We gratefully acknowledge William Hazlewood, Youn-kyung Lim, Yvonne Rogers, and Martin Siegel.

2. Grudin, J., Crossing the divide. ToCHI, 2004. 11(1). 3. Guimbretière, F., Stone, M. and Winograd, T. Fluid interaction with high-resolution wall-size displays. In Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. 2001. Orlando, Florida, USA: ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. 4. Ishii, H., Kobayashi, M. and Arita, K. Iterative design of seamless collaboration media. Communications of the ACM, 1994. Volume 37(8): p. 83-97.

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