Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Herbert Clark describes three types of activities : autonomous/participative and joint. Spatial coordination is a subset of all the existing joint activities. Considering lingustics concerns, when problems occur, people use 'coordination keys' (in Clark's terms), We hence could study how spatial coordination is supported, if there is a 'spatial grounding'.

An example of coordination key is, in a moo, when you page somebody, it's written "A magic daemon brings you a message from icon [KRAFTWERK] (aka Nicolas Nova) [15:22:08] He pages, "test" So here we have few contextual information like time, place (though it is virtual it could of interest). This kind of awareness tool is useful because it could help to prevent future "repair".

Possible research agenda : -> discriminate spatial coordination problems (like Catherine Cramton's paper study about dispersed collaboration and corollary problems. -> how people do spatial coordination -> effects of media on spatial coordination (computers, phone...) -> how people repairs problems

In addition, the issue we would like to investigate relates to coordination gains due to mutual awareness of spatial positions.

Others questions to adress : what do the users gains ? do they understand more the domain ? do the interact more or less ? what are the learnign gains ? is there more or less conflicts ?

I also need to find a relevant task where there could be match between space and activity (specific activity or not) like in a hospital (radiology room/scanning room/lift/waiting room/...)