Research
Thanks to patrick+rheingold...
CatchBob is ein Koordinationsspiel im Freien, das in Dreiergruppen gespielt wird. Ziel des Spiels ist, einen virtuellen Gegenstand auf unserem Campus zu finden und ihn in einem Dreieck zu fangen. Mobile Computer zeigen den Teilnehmern die Positionen ihrer Partner und die Abstände zum Objekt. Mit einem elektronischen Stift können untereinander handgeschriebene Nachrichten ausgetauscht werden.
Jamie's simulation seems very appealing. Jamie's work is related to the study of social relationships found in urban areas, as well as the design of proper system to distribute content within a local community (the distibution will be based on collocation events). To meet this end, he built a computer simulation of to provide the artificial collocation data upon which an information sharing application can be developed.
This is an agent-based simulation where each agent represents a pedestrian moving about the city. The spatial representation is basically a graph: a "semi-realistic street grid upon which the agents will move". Using a grid could take advantage of the space syntax methodology. The complete methodology is described in his 9th month phd report. Since Jamie is dubious about whether or not he should make this document public, I don't describe how he did this.
Why do I blog this? The simulation architecture is really smart. I am interested in this sort of things to simulate the catchbob activity (or a simpler version of this collaborative treasure hunt). Don't know whether it is possible or not. The point would be to have this kind of simulation and to add a collaborative feature on it. I mean, implementing a mutual modeling feature that modify the agents' behavior depending on various components like: each agent's position, common knowledge... (personal traits?)... This said, it's just random thought here, I absolutely don't know how to code this sort of stuff. I'm just dreaming here...
Anyway, this is very stimulating, what do you think about this jamie? :)
Last summer was the UK UbiNet Summer School. There are plenty of documents worth to have a glance at.
UK-UbiNet is an EPSRC funded network of research in the U.K. in the area of Ubiquitous Computing. The community covers many aspects of research into ubiquitous computing, including networks, sensors, distributed systems, interaction, social factors, security and theory. This summer school is mostly aimed at training 1st year PhD students and RAs who are new to the area. It will provide an overview of the current research and topics of interest in the field.
I turned myself into simulation lately. When you're not a tech person, it's hard something that can both fit your needs and be simple. Let's have a look at RePast.
Our goal with Repast is to move beyond the representation of agents as discrete, self-contained entities in favor of a view of social actors as permeable, interleaved, and mutually defining; with cascading and recombinant motives. We intend to support the modeling of belief systems, agents, organizations, and institutions as recursive social constructions.
I might read this book: Geosimulation: Automata-based modeling of urban phenomena by Itzhak Benenson and Paul Torrens. Don't know whether it is highly technical or readable for nontech person like me.
Introduction to Urban GeosimulationFormalizing Geosimulation with Geographic Automata Systems (GAS) System Theory, Geography, and Urban Modeling Modeling Urban Land-Use with Cellular Automata Modeling Urban Dynamics with Multiagent Systems Finale: Epistemology of Geosimulation Bibliography Index
Why do I blog this? It may be great to have a computer model of spatial relations for my phd. I am wondering about the granularity of such geosimulation, more focused on big groups (because of geographical concerns). I am more concerned with small grousp acting in small portion of space. Besides, I don't code :(
I've just hand-crafted a small webpage about our tables experiments... I am looking forward to hear what the students found thanks to the data analysis!
I did not have to time to finish completing my notes after PLAN that we have to set up experiments for the students here (CSCW course). They all designed their table mock up. It's impressive, our corridor looks like a cray place!
I extracted from our PLAN running notes what can be useful to my research
It was really nice to meet so many people there in this small amount of time. I thank Drew and Ben for the organisation. Anybody here knows who stole my socks?
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ! Our lab isis organising a workshop on artefacts and furniture that can support collaboration. Our goal is to have an informal meeting between researchers involved in designing, producing or experimenting with things such as tables for enhancing group interactions, walls or carpets that reflect group interactions... any roomware or tanglibles that might enhance the life of our students in our future learning center. The workshop will include talks and working sessions. It will be held in a small village of the Swiss Alps on June 20th-22nd 2005 (arrival on 19th). The exact place is not fixed yet, but the local airport will be Geneva. Geneva airport has now many low cost airlines operating across Europe.
If you are interest to joir the CAIF workshop, send us (mauro[dot]cherubini[at]epfl.ch) a short bio and an abstract of your current related work that could be presented. We hope you will accept our invitation and we look foward to meet you in June.
Stay tuned!
My running notes are here. The event is pretty cool and provide a SubEthaEdit + IRC backchannel support :) More later (pictures maybe)
A confidential french seminar about mobile and ubiquitous technology dealt with methods to collect cell phone use. I was not there but my radar pointed me on the slides. Rachel Demumieux and Patrick Losquin from France Telecom presented ACIDU (Application de Collecte des Informations des Usages). They say that Orange gives them access to various data like number of SMS/MMS/downloads... But nothing about the use of features (address book, folders, agenda, settings...). This is the reason why they used a symbian client running on the phone that allows them to keep track of various indexes. The presentation of the result is a bit frustrating since they did not elaborate that much on them :( Here are the quantitative results about the usage of the phone feature:
Why do I blog this? I'm into mobile computing analysis; this study is worth in terms of the methodology they adopted to gather information on the client (i.e. installing a piece of software that sniff what's happening when the user interacts with his/her phone). I am a bit disappointed by the fact that I certainly miss information here (the last slides are not enough informative in terms of results decription) but it seems promising!
Presence and Interaction in Mixed-Reality Environments is a call for project in the 6th European Framework Programme (2002-2006).
The objective of the initiative is to create novel systems that match human cognitive and affective capacities and re-create the different experiences of presence and interaction in mixed reality environments. Research should focus on the following:
- Understanding different forms of presence, encompassing aspects of perception, cognition, interaction, emotions and affect. Techniques for measuring presence need to be developed taking into account insights from physio- neuro- cognitive and social sciences. The ethical aspects and the investigation of possible long-term consequences of using presence technologies need to be investigated.
- Designing and developing essential building blocks that capture the salient aspects of presence and interaction based on the understanding of human presence. These blocks should exploit relevant cutting edge software and hardware technologies (e.g. real time display and high fidelity rendering, 3D representation and compression, real-time tracking and capture, light control, haptic interfaces, 3D audio, wearable and sensor technology, biosensors and biosignals, etc.).
- Developing novel systems, able to generate or support different levels and types of presence and interaction in a multitude of situations. The research focus should be on open system architectures for integrating the above building blocks, with open APIs and source authoring tools for programming presence and for designing novel interaction paradigms.
The website is full of interesting material like presentations of different european teams.
A potential project? We discussed this, Mauro, Pierre and I:
Collaborative interactions by map annotation: investigating applications where people use locative media as a tool where the textual or graphical communicatoon is embeeded into a map. In our current work, these space annotations can be synchro (Nicolas' work) or asynchronous (Mauro's work). It can be specific to the locative media or integrate a standard environment (as a blog in Patrick's work). This raises many interesting issues, for instance if the users prefer to use "automatic location" (position by the system) or self-location (I declare where I am - and hence I can lie, or I can also say where I'll be); whether they write pieces where they are or where is the object they refer to. If the use graphics more than text. etc..
The new catchbob scenario is well received by Pierre. He always complained by the simplicity of the task; now he is more convinced. His point is that Bob should be something credible (fire? objects? birds?...) and we have to think about what this task will prove. We can complexify the task with:
Anyway, Pierre was pleased to see that in our experiments, players without the tool self-declare their position. It would be great of we find positive/better results in the condition without the location awareness tool. That led us to think about a new independent variable: the accuracy of the synchronous location awareness tool. An incredible result would be to find that group performance is not affected by the positioning accuracy. I think I'll tackle this issue in the near future. People here at EPFL would be really interested in this kinf of results!
Other points:
Students finally begins to build one of the table they designed for the cscw course:
Scratchnotes taken in the train between Lausanne and Geneva:As we saw earlier today, there are some problems:
Solutions:
To be decided:
Then:
Today was the 6th experiment with CatchBob. We now have: 4 groups without the location awareness tool and 2 groups with the tool. That means 6 groups then 18 participants. I still need to have 2 or 3 more groups with the tool to do some basic statistics. Then I will have some insights about individual behavior towards the catchbob environment. Of course I have plenty of data. The general pattern is that groups with the location awareness tool are slower. I don't know if the distance is significant. I have to specify which data could be analysed individualy and in groups.
Individual data: nasa tlx/number of refresh/number of messages/number of zone searched Group Data: time/path/backtracking/overlap
The general feeling after this experiment (and the others of course) is that:
What should we do? well it's a pain to change one more time all the stuff around but it seems that we need it. The most important thing is the task I think. I would like to keep a balance between the task we have already and something more complicated. The main problem here is the ending condition, the exploratory part is OK but the end sucks. Here are few ideas to refine the task:
Anyway, whether we choose the mobile bob or another form with dispersed users on the field, it will foster more coordination among the group because they will have either to reshape what they should do, and communicate more, walk a bit more... I like the mobile bob idea (the position of the virtual artifact changes one or two times) because it's a nice way to force the group to change/reshape/re-stat its strategy. Besides, to meet this end, they will have to communicate WITH the tool.
T. Nilsen, S. Linton, J. Looser. Motivations for AR Gaming (.pdf). In Proceedings Fuse 04, New Zealand Game Developers Conference, Dunedin, New Zealand, 26-29 June 2004, pp 86-93.
In Augmented Reality (AR), interfaces consist of a blend of both real and virtual content. In this paper we examine existing gaming styles played in the real world or on computers. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these mediums within an informal model of gaming experience split into four aspects; physical, mental, social and emotional. We find that their strengths are mostly complementary, and argue that games built in AR can blend them to enhance existing game styles and open up new ones. To illustrate these ideas, we present our work on AR Worms, a re-implementation of the classic computer game Worms using Augmented Reality. We discuss how AR has enabled us to start exploring interfaces for gaming, and present informal observations of players at several demonstrations. Finally, we present some ideas for AR games in the area of strategy and role playing games.
Why do I blog this? This paper is interesting because it explains why augmented reality games worth it. It is basically because of the feeling of immersion they provide: physical, social, emotional and mental. This might be useful to discuss the relevance of using games in HCI.
Here are four tables our students made up. They had to design a proper shape that should support collaboration among a group (made of 4 persons). We managed to produce them, and now they will have to test this setting with a specific activity. The one-hour session will be videotaped and they will have to analyse the data.
Concerning the analysis, there are 3 options:
The point is to conclude with: Pros and cons regarding to your table design + Suggestions for design a CSCW table (included groupware)
Here is the kind of question they should adress for the synthetic part:
Does the leader occupy a more central position? What’s the position of the ‘left over’ if any? Are some chairs moves away from the table? Do they exchange objects? What’s the orientation of bodies and chairs? Do they sit where you expected them to sit?
Do they move often their laptops for re-organizing their own space Do they move their laptops or fold its screen to facilitate interaction? How often do their turn their laptop to show its screen on the same-side partner or to another-side partner ? How much time is spent looking at the laptop versus looking at each other ?
Is there some ‘dead’ zone versus an ‘interaction’ zone’? What are the objects present on the table, which one are often used? Do they share or exchange some objects? What do they draw on the table? Where do they draw? Who draws? Where do they put the other objects on the table (documents, mugs,..) ? Is there useless space? Is there a ‘focus’ area? Are there different phases in using the table space?
- catchbob 2 scenario- catchbob analysis to be reshaped (individual + group) - listen to catchbob mp3s - catchbob log parser: number of message + backchannel/overlap - catchbob nasa tlx capture + analysis - catchbob images: qualitative analysis on HypeResearch - catchbob paper for UbiMob - catchbob paper for E-CSCW - email for cscw course: I won't be here next week - meeting: list of people to see at PLAN, London - computational model? what about repast (ask salembier) - improve report for abell - meeting: find a date in march for meeting in Paris: EDF, France Telecom, Ubi Soft