Research
Cool research project about interaction design and children in Paris. Why do I blog this? I am interested into the way the guy wants to analyse the activity flow from a temporal perspective, with visualizations.
Use Wi-Fi To Play Access Point Games is a column in extreme tech about using WiFi acces points in mobile games. That's actually what we do in CatchBob.
Briefly, the games described in this article are:
- Foxhunt—Find the hidden access point
- AP-Hunt—Discover the most access points in a set amount of time
- Treasure Hunt—Step through a planned route where each new discovery gives you a clue to the next destination
- Capture the Flag—Find all the "enemy" access points and return to base with your booty, a log file showing their locations
- Virtual Real-Space Tours—Bridge the digital and the real with location-aware content fed to visitors within a matrix of access points. (Not quite a game, but very entertaining!)
Why do I blog this? Clearly it's because I am trying to find ideas for CatchBob 2 with a more complex scenario (less spatial, more cognitively complex); the treasure hunt presented in this article sounds good. It's still to simple but it's a first step.
This picture quickly depicts the two level of the model of inference I am working on. People tend to make inferences/decisions influenced by the position of others in space plus all the affordances of space (cultural meaning + physical settings + topography...). The focus of our work here is also to understand how both are intricately related.
The last issued of Ericsson's ON magazine has an article about coordination of field workers.
when police, fire, rescue and medical personnel can not talk to each toher on the same network, accidents can quickly become tragedies.
Why do I blog this? because it's interesting to strengthen the fact that communication and cooperation are intricately related fo foster better coordination. Now specific applications are not just research project but are applied in real contexts as described in the paper.
In our experiments, we are using a self-confrontation to the replay of the game. Players are shown the path they took and I ask them few questions ranging from very open at the beginning to more specific at the end. The point is to get information about they inferred the partners strategies. As you can see, our methodology is a kind of field experiment. The self confrontation here is not meant to rebuild all the activity as in an explicitation interview.
Brown, B. and E. Laurier (2005) Designing electronic maps: an ethnographic approach (.pdf). To appear in: L. Meng, A. Zipf, T. Reichenbacher (Eds.), Map-based mobile services – Theories, Methods and Implementations. Springer Verlag
While ethnographic methods are an established tool for requirements analysis in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), they have seldom been used for the design of electronic map systems. This chapter presents an ethnographic study of city tourists’ practices that draws out a number of implications for designing map technologies. We describe how tourists work together in groups, collaborate around maps and guidebooks, and both ‘pre-’ and ‘postvisit’ places. These findings have been used in the design of the ‘george square’ system which allows tourists to collaborate around an electronic map at a distance.
I particulary appreciate the definition of a map as a collaborative artifact. From an observatory poitn of view, it's always fun to see people collaborate from the beginning (unfolding the map), the core of the task (finding something on the map) and the end (folding the map). Thsi ritual is fantastic! Besides, this paper is useful since it analyses how people collaboratively make senses of maps. This then gives ideas about how designing locative applications based on maps.
There is now a webpage for Mauro's project:
Communication has suffered from the clearing of spatial references since the invention of the telephone or the radio. Nevertheless, spatial informations are used all the time by the agents-in-relation to reconstitute the context of the messages exchange. The effect is an economy of the whole interchange process. The aim of this research is to understand by which mechanisms this happen. Particularly, the focus will be on the shared knowledge construction. Subsequently, and as a proof technique, a formalisation attempt will frame these possibly uncovered processes into an algorithm. The goal will be to replicate, to some extent, human reasoning and sustain communication exchange when applied to real time interaction. An implementation of this algorithm will be applied, tested and refined in a geographical messaging system developed by an English firm called Proboscis.
Here is what we plan with my phd supervisor for the two next years I'll be working here at EPFL.
Discussion with thomas about task design in experiment:
My question ALWAYS is: Can you abstract from the task? What are are the measures? What are external instruments that - for instance - measure personality, states, an traits, etc. In short: It depends how well the study is conducted. Next to that there are also some methodological issue. What measures, how do you measure, code, etc
Just found this: Monkey Methods which appearrs to be of tremendous interest:
Monkey Methods Research Group is an experimental playground for cool technology that matters to people. Our latest project is a BitTorrent search engine, which we're working on along with a couple other ideas. And what exactly is the method of a monkey?They play with things, like trying to use bananas as guns or phones. At least this is what we did in elementary school.
Our goal is to explore the emerging relationship between people and interactive media Practically speaking, we are a small research group made up of folks from different backgrounds, working on fun projects that explore the way that technology is weaving itself into our daily lives. We call it "futuristic play."
They also have a blog.
I ran across this call for paper: Pervasive Computing in Sports. Submission Deadline: 14 February 2005.
IEEE Pervasive Computing invites articles relating to the use of pervasive computing in sports to enhance the sport (or game) and/or experiences for players, spectators, and/or judges. We hope to span a wide range of sports including single-player, multi-player, and large team sports as well as activities ranging from track and field to indoor team sports to racing. We especially welcome papers that bridge multiple aspects of a system, report on the challenges of integration and deployment, and report on usage experience
Just finished my slides for tomorrow's lecture. I will talk about how the physical environment supports social and collaborative processes. The handout is here. It is basically a pdf files that shows some illustrations of what constitutes a fragment of the literature review of my phd thesis. The picture I used comes from various applications like Uncle Roy All Around You, Can You See Me Now?, Urban Tapestries, Jabberwocky...For those who speak french and who have a broadband connection, the mp3 of the lecture is online here (55Mb!).
Il s'agit d'un cours sur les technologies mobiles (géolocalisation) et comment l'espace physique modifie/permet/contraint/facilite les interactions sociales et la résolution de problèmes.
I just came across the blog of Philip Jeffrey. I already read few papers by him about social behavior in virtual space but I was not aware he had a blog. It seems that he noew move (like I did) in the field of context-aware computing. Unfortunately, the blog is not update since november...
My idea is to do an ethnographic study of students use of space as a place. I could then combine this with an experiment study (p values) that test this empirically. Both studies would complement each other as I look at how people extend themselves into their environment and use technology and artefacts with the environment to perceive space as a place.
The programme of the Pervasive and Locative Arts Network seems pretty impressive. I think I'm gonna attend the event to meet people from this community.
Speakers include Duncan Campbell, Anne Galloway, Matthew Chalmers, Matt Adams, Bill Gaver, Eyal Weizman, Sally Jane Norman, Giles Lane, Usman Haque, Franz Wunschel, Richard Hull, Jo Walsh, Teri Rueb, Minna Tarkka, Tapio Makela, RIXC, Pete Gomes, Saul Albert, Susan Kennard, Michael Longford, Steve Benford, Drew Hemment, Ben Russell
meeting with my phd supervisor: - let's test 9 groups (3 without location awareness, 3 with the synchronous tool and 3 without) and then we can refine the methodology: which independent variables using? are the video useful? what can we get from this?
- a good phd = 2 experiments
- think about the fact that CatchBob2 (there will be another name btw) might be developed by students as diploma work
- find scenarios for catchbob2! higher level, semantically richer, more cognitive demand (pierre still mentioned "la grosse boule") because "Even a dog can play catchbob"
- meeting to check the videos on thursday 27th (january)
- since it is a phd thesis in computational sciences, the focus will be headed towards the testing of a tool (in terms of the interface) and we need a model. The conclusion of the first experiment should inform the design of the second. We have to keep in mind the contribution to the field: it's not the system per se (even though it works really well).
I am wondering about a model of spatial awareness that could be decomposed as: 1. past position of the partner 2. present position of the partner 3. future position of the partner
Thanks to catchbob first experiment, we might find what is considered as relevant by the players (1/2/3) and that (for instance) a channel of communication is fundamental for using those location information.
Another dimension is the way the position is captured: automatically (by the system like the WiFi triangulation we already have) or explicitly described by the players. We should test which are more important in terms of task performance or collaborative processes by having other interfaces like: - a queue: asynchronous interface) - a nose: indication of the direction
Then we have the "location awareness modality" has an independent variable with different factors: - nothing - synchronous location awareness (information about the present: just a dot) - synchronous location awareness + direction (information about the possible future) - asynchronous location awareness (information about the past)
Something like a "100Gb evening” (see paul baron's definition) meeting with stefano mastrogiacomo and francesco cara. - write up your position in a short paper - when you think about the task: is the weight of the task equal (does one participant has to do all the job?) - grounding = process of incrementally adding knowledge into the person's stack of knowledge - list all the coordination keys/devices (cf. herbert clark) in catchbob - model catchbob's task with Clark's term (task, common goal...coordination keys, coordination strategies= keys put together) - I can try to test 2 conditions: one with a 3 minute discussion before the game and another without. Good to test the division of labor, and the importance of a plan before entering into a joint action. - francesco was wondering about whether there could be a "freerider effect" in catchbob. I answered no because: they have to collaborate to complete the task and the reward is the same for all. - what is awareness in catchbob? it is both location awareness (positions) and drawings/comments - a "think aloud" protocol? by individuals? that can be useful to access to players' minds + to enrich the replay - an audio communication channel in the game: so that we can test what information went from the screen to the audio + what goes on what channel + how the "least collaborative effort principle" applies. - allow permanent annotation? to see what they decide to keep as a footprint like in a social navigation system.
Dix, Alan, and Russell Beale: ‘Information requirements of distributed workers,’ in Alan Dix and Russell Beale (eds.): Remote Cooperation: CSCW Issues for Mobile and Teleworkers, Springer-Verlag, London etc., 1996, pp. 113-143.
This chapter concerns two groups of workers: the mobile worker using a portable computer whilst travelling or whilst at clients' premises; and the teleworker, working from home or at neighbourhood work centres. These workers are part of a larger organisation and access shared corporate information, and yet they lack the level of communication which would be expected within a normal office environment. In particular their work is often composed of periods of individual work isolated completely from the central information sources interspersed with relatively high bandwidth communications. The means of the latter may range from direct connection of mobile computers to office machines through communication over telephone lines or email links to transfer of media such as floppy disks. In short their communication with colleagues and corporate data is intermittent.The chapter concentrates on two major areas:
- retrieval - making sure you have the right information when you need it.
- synchronisation - updating shared information in a way which makes sense.
Discussion with my adviser a bout the role of space. If you're asleep in an airplane, you wake up and you don't know where you are. Then check the light on the ground, it can depicts the urban structure/organization. If the repartition is like the picture on the right, it could be the UK; if it's messy like the picture on the left, it might be some latin area.
We ran another test of CatchBob today. Things went pretty well (technically speaking I am impressed by the reliability of the system: the system never crashes!). Today we tried the system without the location awareness tool: players were just aware of their position and not of the whereabouts of their partners. It was interesting to see that the game lasted a bit more and that the players explicitly declared their position by drawing it on the map. The data are so rich, I could not resist to show this one, which is amazingly significant (in terms if the explicitation of the strategy as well as the clarification of the situation).
