Research

[Research] Thursday Workshop

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Here is the outline of our workshop about Spatial Awareness in Collaboration and Group Interaction:

1. Introduction to the topic of “Spatial/Context Awareness and Collaboration” by Mike Sharples 20minutes 2. Paper presentation (7 papers, 5minutes for each) 45 minutes 3. Activity: “context awareness for collaboration: prototype your research ideas” 90minutes
  • presentation of the activity: 4 groups of 5-6 persons (each group should have a leader: one of the papers’ author) have to design the spatial awareness tool of their dream. This device should support collaborative work/learning. A scenario template (description hereafter) and an example will be provided to help the participants.
  • group work: each group has to brainstorm about which idea to realize and the reasons why, following the hereafter template. After 20minutes we will check if there is no overlap between the projects. If there are, we will advise groups to choose another direction or to emphasise a different aspects.
  • physical design of the idea: the group is required to represent their concepts using low tech prototyping techniques and to prepare the presentation.

4. Knowledge sharing: each group present their own project and a knowledge map is built on the wall linking all the key ideas and the connections with other projects/ideas out there 40minutes 5. Discussion, wrapping-ups, exchanging contacts, setting up a possible follow up 30-45minutes

[Research] Coordination Theories

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Few random notes:Malone and Crowston [1994] were the first to propose an interdisciplinary science of coordination, as coordination problems are also addressed, for example, in Computer Science. They claim the existence of dependencies between activities or entities. The goal of coordination is to manage these dependencies in such a way that the activities become parts of a purposeful whole.

According to [Habermas, 1984], coordination becomes an issue only if all participants acknowledge that they are dependent on one another to act in the current situation. Habermas' shared background = Clark's common ground

[MyResearch] Few thoughts after a meeting with Stefano

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I should try to find a model of coordination that articulate:- the difference between activity/action(problem solving level) - the coordination mechanism for each level (activity: clark's coordination key; action: malone and crowston's 3 dependency mechanisms)

Having this could be helpful to discriminate actions/interactions in my data/logs

Before the self-confrontation to the replay tool, ask 2-3 open questions to the group: how was it? did you find it difficult? did you enjoy it? The point would be to gather coordination problems that occured during the game. The participant will also give me insights about what they considered as RELEVANT is their actions + partners' actions.

[Research] Bartlett MSc Virtual Environment Blog

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The MSc Virtual Environments at Bartlett School of graduate studies now has a blog. I am looking forward to read what they deal with.

The MSc/Graduate Diploma Virtual Environments (VE) explores the realm of virtual environments–the creation of functional digital desktop, "augmented" and immersive spaces, building and cities–within an architectural context.

Responding to the impact of virtual worlds and computer technology on the design of the built environment, the course focuses on the development of sophisticated skills and the theoretical basis required by design professionals at the forefront of their fields. The course integrates research undertaken in the Bartlett's VR Centre for the Built Environment into the teaching programme. It is expected that students will contribute to that growing body of knowledge.

They seem to have an interesting course about space:

This module covers the issues of automatic generation of virtual environments and emergent behaviours, including: • Generative modelling • Information Visualisation • Emergent Behaviour in complex systems

[Research] New paper

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I just finished the revised version of a paper submitted to Journal of Multimedia, Tools and Applications. It is called "Collaboration in a Multi-User Game: Impacts of an Awareness Tool on Mutual Modeling". It's actually my masters thesis (ouch ended 2 years ago).

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.

[MyResearch] Meeting with my phd advisor

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My phd outcome should be more than just guidelines: a model, a grammar... How to represent somebody in space: - dot - trace (which length? time past at each point...) - azimuth

My formal model should be: - a standard syntax to represent teams/groups - for instance, it could be interesting to represent how people cross themselves - have a list of spatial group patterns - have a language/grammar to describe people's movement in space

Use "projet laptop"'s data ?

Our data are something like a huge table with lines like: "at hour Y, Z was at (x,y)". From this, we could establish a serie of more abstract concepts. We hence need a model to interprete such data (logfile), to translate then into something meaningful.

To build our model, we will focus on how an individual has a representation of others in space (mutual modeling): what is interesting for humans among all thoses spatial patterns.

Data-driven model (experiment-based)

I should list all the "socio-spatial features": position, trajectory, duration, speed, social facts (convergence/divergence toward a person/an object, copresence, synchronicity)... if persons meets on a regular basis at the cafeteria, if they pass by each other in a corridor, asynchronous copresence...

What I mean with socio-spatial features is all the spatial characteristics related to people's behavior in space. In this case, topology or objects are just spatial features.

[MyResearch] List of tasks to study spatial representation

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S. Mecklenbräuker, W. Wippich, M. Wagener, and J. Saathoff. Spatial Information and Actions: , An Interdisciplinary Approach to Representing and Processing Spatial Knowledge. Springer-Verlag, London, UK, 1998. In this paper, the authors describes the connections between spatial information and action. Their point is that previously acquired spatial information (i.e. information about locations along a learned route) can be associated with imagined or symbolically performed actions. However, they have not found any evidence that spatial representations are altered by the formation of these associations. The emphasizes the salience of the actions and their connections to the spatial environment.

They also provide the reader with an interesting list of tasks used to study spatial representations: - studying maps of an environment and drawing a map from memory versus giving a verbal description (Taylor and Tversky, 1992) - distance estimation (Rothkegel, Wender, Schumacher, 1998) - orientation and location estimation judgements (Wender, Wagner and Rothkegel, 1997) - navigation task

[Research] Activity Theory: sketching the structure of the activity

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This picture (taken from Françoise Decortis, Samuel Noirfalise, Berthe Saudelli: Activity theory, cognitive ergonomics and distributed cognition: three views of a transport company. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud. 53(1): 5-33 (2000)) is an interesting example of how to describe an activity according to the Activity Theory. It depicts the structure of the activity, the viewpoint of an entire team of dispatchers (adapted from Engestrom, 1993).

[MyResearch] About the relevance of importing theories in CSCW

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The paper "Activity theory and distributed cognition: or What does CSCW to do with theories?" by C. Halverson discusses a very hot issue that I have to deal with for my phd: what are we doing with all the theories/conceptual framework CSCW/HCI adopted. HCI indeed 'imported' lots of framework: activity theory [engestrom; kuuti; nardi] , actor-network theory [latour], conversation analysis [goffman],coordination theory [Schmidt, nielsen, carstenson], distributed cognition theory [Halverson, hutchins, perry, rogers], ethnomethodology [Button; Hughes et al; randall et al], grounded theory [Strauss], situated action [suchman], and social/symbolic interactionism [Strauss; Star]. The problem is actually that these theories deal with the use and the study of CSCW systems but they poorly address the design of such systems.

By adopting theories from other fields we may be bringing theoretical constructs into focus that are not appropriate for CSCW. For example, activity theory and distributed cognition theory are both theories about cognition. What they can say about group interaction is based on what they say about cognition. That may be OK, depending on how we use the theory. But how do we evaluate their usefulness for us?

She then describes three uses of these theories: - descriptive power: theories are useful to described the world - rhetorical power: theories are useful to talk about the world - inferential power: theories help us to do inferences

She takes the example of Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition to show it can apply to CSCW. She shows that while both AT and DCOG are cognitively based theories they operate very differently. They direct our focus as analysts to different aspects of their respective unit of analyses based on both what they deem as important to analyze (scope of the unit) as well as how they perform the analysis, and how they communicate it.

[Research] Activities between waitresses, waiters and cooks in a cafe-restaurant

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This paper entitled "Cooperative activities with space and time constraints: the case of a cafe-restaurant" by Béatrice Cahour and Barbara Pentimalli deals with the analysis of simple cooperative activities that occur in cafe-restaurant.

We analysed the cooperative activities between waitresses, waiters and cooks in a cafe-restaurant at lunch time, when the place is full of clients and the waiters hurry to get their orders produced in a reasonable time. They are then involved in individual activities but also in many collective communications and coordinations. These various interrelated "paths of action" have been videotaped and analysed with the help of actors' point of view; the analysis indicates the characteristics of the "minimized interactions" taking place in this situation of work, with lots of risks, few feedback signs and undetermined addressees necessitating peripheral awareness; it also indicates the characteristics of the "paths of action" with time and space constraints where strategies are used to avoid spatial movements (by using for example the colleagues' paths of action) and where the constant risk to collude a colleague get them to a subtile bodily synchronization.

[Research] A glance at Sperber and Wilson

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Taken from ANALYSE EMPIRIQUE DES COMMUNICATIONS DISTANTES DANS LE CADRE DU CONTROLE AERIEN by Cécile Dumazeau

Ainsi, Sperber et Wilson (1989) préfèrent parler de connaissances « manifestement mutuelles ». D’après eux un fait est considéré « manifeste à un individu à un moment donné si et seulement si cet individu est capable à ce moment-là de représenter mentalement ce fait et d’accepter sa représentation comme vraie ou probablement vraie ». Ainsi, si deux individus A et B ont les mêmes capacités perceptives et cognitives, un même fait sera considéré manifeste par les deux personnes et ces deux personnes pourront facilement déduire que, ayant les mêmes capacités, ce fait est manifeste pour chacune des deux personnes. Ce fait est « Mutuellement manifeste » à A et B. Les interlocuteurs se construiraient ainsi un Environnement Cognitif Mutuel, qui est l’intersection des représentations individuelles dans lequel se situent tous les faits mutuellement manifestes aux deux individus et les faits qui leur permettent de penser qu’ils partagent vraisemblablement ces faits. Il ne s’agit pas donc d’une certitude de partager la connaissance d’un fait mais uniquement, d’une supposition basée sur des heuristiques.

[Research] Workshop about designing, evaluating and using UbiComp

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3rd UK-UbiNet Workshop: Designing, evaluating and using ubiquitous computing systems.

This workshop follows successful workshops in September 2003 and May 2004. This 3rd workshop aims to examine issues and research in the design, evaluation and use of ubiquitous computing systems. It will provide an overview of research in these areas within the UK, and support collaboration between different groups in the research community. (...)The workshop will be held over three days (afternoon of 9th to morning of 11th February 2005) at the University of Bath. The programme will consist of eight sessions covering a series of topics, based on the topics suggested above. Each session will open with an invited overview by a leading researcher in the field, followed by two selected presentations describing research projects in this area. These presentations will describe both research visions and actual experience and the sessions will be completed with a panel discussion. There will also be plenty of time for debate and networking.

[Research] Positioning practices and mobile services

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Alexandra Weilenmann's research agenda:

Location- and position-based services have been pointed out as one of the possible groundbreakers on the mobile market. The starting point for this project is to approach such services from a non-technological perspective, by investigating how people orient to situation, place and position as part of their everyday mobile talk-in-interaction. Using social science methods we analyze naturally occurring mobile phone conversations, and gain detailed insights in how people do positioning. Grounded in this understanding, we develop a number of guidelines for how technology should provide positioning in innovative, relevant, and perhaps fun ways. The next phase of the project is to design and implement prototypes, and evaluate these in realistic settings. The results will be of clear value to service providers, network providers, the research community and of course users of mobile technology.

[MyReserach] Introduction to experimental pragmatics

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I. Noveck & D. Sperber eds. Experimental Pragmatics, Palgrave): Introduction

How does our knowledge of language on the one hand, and of the context on the other permit us to understand what we are told, resolve ambiguities, grasp both explicit and implicit content, recognize the force of a speech act, appreciate metaphor and irony? These issues have been studied in two disciplines: pragmatics and psycholinguistics, with limited interactions between the two. Pragmatics is rooted in the philosophy of language and in linguistics and has spawned competing theories using as evidence a mixture of intuitions about interpretation and observations of behavior. Psycholinguistics has developed sophisticated experimental methods in the study of verbal communication, but has not used them to test systematic pragmatic theories. This volume lays down the bases for a new field, Experimental Pragmatics, that draws on pragmatics, psycholinguistics and also on the psychology of reasoning. Chapters in this volume either review pioneering work or present novel ways of articulating theories and experimental methods in the area. In this introduction we outline some core pragmatic issues and approaches and relate them to experimental work in psycholinguistics and in the psychology of reasoning. We then briefly present one by one the chapters of this collection.

[MyResearch] Notes from a meeting with Stefano

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stefano discusses why he was moving away from clarks' theory of grounding. In sum, he said that in the pragmatic are of psycholinguistics there are 2 school:- 'code' school: derived from cybernetics/shannon. Clark is part of that - 'inference' school: sperber, wilson, lakoff, grice...

The 'inference' school criticized the grounding theory since they state that a common ground is not necessary for communication (the rely on studies on communication between locutors of different culture/language). They state that: - common ground does not exist and it is not needed - communication is based on inferences

Communication according to them is: - X acts (according to his beliefs) - Y infers a meaning from this

This needs 2 levels: - the intention of emitter's communication must be obvious, there are special techniques human beings use to show the communication intent. this is how the commmunication can be opened - sending the content, which is understood by the receiver according to his knowledge (his 'library').

This school relates communication to action, that is why they are close to 'distributed cognition' theory (cognition is not only on people's mind, artifacts are important since people can infer meaning from them and rely on them for cognitive task like memory).

- read stuff about cognitive aspects of communication (sperber and wilson's book 'relevance...'), read overviews because we juste need the mechanism, - check what is done at 'institut jean nicod' - check francesco cara's work

There are three zones: - action theory (and its subset activity theory): nardi, engeström, suchman - distributed cognition (subset: situated cognition and spatial cognition): properties of objects and the way they express meaning: Hutchins and others. problem: lack of methodology (maybe we should chek theureau). This theory does not take communication into account. - relevance/inference theory: sperber, wilson, grice

Our concern will be to connect those 3 zones

We need to have strong ideas about: - action - communication - context - role of artifacts in the activity - role of artifacts in communication

-- References: 'Mutual Knowledge': collection of papers, argument betwenn Clark and Sperber. Moeschler and reboul 'la pragmatique aujourd'hui'

-- stefano's phd tricks: - read introductory books to get the general idea of a field, to have a 'map' of the big names, the communities... - write glossaries that can even incorporate different definitions for a single term (since we are into multidisciplinary fields, terms have several definitions) - write regular 'checkpoints' (like... evrey 6 months, to be sent to phd supervisor, friends, authors...) with: my current beliefs (and why I state that)/what I want to prove/where I am stuck (with the reason)

[Research] Cultural differences in the CSCW world

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This old paper (1994) entitled "CSCW: History and Focus" by Jonathan Grudin tackles the issue of CSCW research agenda and its history. it also shows the differences in emphasis in the US, Europe, Japan.

European contributions to CSCW are often driven by philosophy or social, economic or political theory. Some European contributions to CSCW are explicitly grounded in the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Elias, Marx, Vygotsky or others. (This does not characterize all European computer science or informatics, much of which is more formal.) The result may be a broad formulation of system requirements or an implementation of a platform to support a range of applications that in concert are to provide organizational support.

The distinct European CSCW also reflects cultural norms in European countries, such as greater national homogeneity, co-determination laws, stronger trade unions, and more extensive social welfare. At the risk of oversimplifying, greater cultural homogeneity can lead to the acceptance of a welfare state, which in turn can lead to a systems development focus on skill augmentation (in contrast to automation) that is justified on humanitarian but also economic grounds: Workers losing automated jobs must be indirectly supported anyway. The Scandinavian participatory or collaborative design approach reflects these priorities.