Visual Awareness in Shared Workspaces Presentation by Marc Leonard.

Visual Awareness in Shared Workspaces

Presentation by Marc Leonard

Topics

• Workspace Awareness

• Creating Visual Workspace Awareness

• Evaluation Framework for Visual Workspace Awareness

Topics

• Workspace Awareness• Creating Visual Workspace Awareness

• Evaluation Framework for Visual Workspace Awareness

Workspace Awareness

• Up-to-the-moment information about what is happening in the shared workspace

• Gathered in face-to-face settings without direct attention

• Leads participants toward further collaboration in the shared effort

Workspace Awareness Factors

Awareness Element Relevant Questions

IDENTITY Who is participating?

LOCATION Where are they working?

ACTIVITY LEVEL Are they active?

ACTIONS What are they doing?

CHANGES What changes are they making?

Workspace Awareness Factors

Awareness Element Relevant Questions

OBJECTS What objects are they using?

INTENTIONS What are they going to be doing?

EXPECTATIONS What do they need me to do next?

EXTENTS What can they see?

ABILITIES What can they do?

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

Where can they have effects?

Conceptual Framework for WA

Environment

Knowledge Exploration

Action

Interpretperceptual

information Gatherperceptual

informationDetermine

what tolook for next

Determine what to do/what can be done

Perform task,

modifyingshared

environment

Video Clip

Excerpt fromJohn Tang et al.,

Observations on the Use of Shared Drawing Spaces

Topics

• Workspace Awareness

• Creating Visual Workspace Awareness• Evaluation Framework for Visual Workspace

Awareness

Creating Visual Workspace Awareness

• Inherently difficult due to the amount of information required

• Close attention needs to be paid to collection and distribution of WA information

• Attempt to maximize natural WA information gathering techniques

Obstacles for Visual Workspace Awareness in Groupware

• Lack of a physical presence

• Limited view and presentation space

• Interconnectivity issues

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware

• Embodiment (e.g. Telepointers)

• Perceivable actions (e.g. Action Indicators)

• Overviews (e.g. Radar view)

• Detail views (e.g. WYSIWID view)

• Detail-in-context views (e.g. Fisheye view)

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Telepointers

Node 1

Node 2

Gizmo

Spike

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Telepointers

• Form of Embodiment

• Gives participants a sense of:IDENTITY, LOCATION, ACTIONS, ACTIVITY

LEVEL

• Usually extended to give semantic information regarding what tool is being used (OBJECTS, INTENTIONS)

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Action Indicators

Node 1

Node 2

Deleting!!!

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Action Indicators

• Implementation of Perceivable actions

• Makes the unperceivable, perceivable• Eg. Delete key, Menu actions

• Gives users cues about what is happening in the workspace, providing:ACTIONS, CHANGES, IDENTITY (when paired with

telepointers/view rectangles)

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Radar views

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Radar views

• Form of Overview• Scaled down view of global workspace• View rectangles used to give awareness of

other participants, telepointers provide fine-grained awareness of other’s location

• Provides:IDENTITY, LOCATION, INTENTIONS, EXTENTS, SPHERE OF INFLUENCE, ACTIVITY LEVEL

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: WYSIWID views

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: WYSIWID views

• Form of Detail view

• Provides a detailed view of the area surrounding another user’s cursor

• Hard to determine where other’s locations if no prior knowledge of the global context is provided

• Provides: LOCATION, ACTIONS, ACTIVITY LEVEL,

CHANGES, INTENTIONS, EXTENTS

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Fisheye views

Techniques for supporting WA in Groupware: Fisheye views

• Form of Detail-in-Context view

• Provides local detail and global context in continuous seamless presentation space

• Distortions caused can lead to misinterpretations of the workspace data

• Provides:LOCATION, ACTIONS, OBJECTS, EXTENTS

Video Clip

Greenberg and Gutwin,Focus and Awareness in

Groupware

Topics

• Workspace Awareness

• Creating Visual Workspace Awareness

• Evaluation Framework for Visual Workspace Awareness

Evaluation Framework for Workspace Awareness

• Cannot apply standard evaluation frameworks for applications as in HCI

• Need a low cost method to determine usability problems in groupware applications

• Baker, Greenberg and Gutwin propose a Heuristic Framework for evaluating groupware applications

Heuristic Evaluation Framework for Groupware applications

• Based on Nielsen’s Heuristic Evaluation

• Uses heuristics (rules) based on the Mechanics of Collaboration

• Allows for low cost evaluation

• Helps determine usability problems early in the development process

Heuristic 2:Provide the means for intentional and appropriate gestural communication

• Allow for users to be able to gesture• Needed because 35% of all actions in

collaboration are gesturing actions• Types of gestures:

• Illustration• Emblems• Deictic references

• Typical groupware support: Telepointers, avatars, video links

Heuristic 4:Provide consequential communication of shared artifacts (I.e. action feedthrough)

• “unintentional” information given by artifacts in the workspace

• Includes information such as who is manipulating the artifacts

• Typical groupware support: action and process feedthrough, action indicators

Heuristic 6:Management of tightly and loosely-coupled

collaboration• Coupling describes the degree to which people are

working or able to work together• Loosely-coupled describes individuals working

alone on a specific task• Tightly-coupled describes individuals working

together on a specific task• Fluid movement between loosely and tightly-

coupled interactions should be provided• Typical groupware support: Overviews, Detail

views, Detail-in-Context views

Heuristic 7:Allow people to coordinate their actions

• Allow for users to be able to work together without doing rework or valueless work

• People are very good at social coordination, so the application should not enforce a coordination structure

• Typical groupware support: Overviews, telepointers, view rectangles

Visual Workspace Awareness: Summary

• People are information gatherers• WA guides collaborations• Providing WA in groupware is difficult• Various techniques and widgets exist• Combinations of those will provide an

entire WA• HE states rules for GW to provide WA

based on how people collaborate

The End!!!!!!