Section: New Results

Collaboration

Participants : Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Cédric Fleury, Wendy Mackay, Can Liu, Ignacio Avellino Martinez.

ExSitu is interested in exploring new ways to support collaborative interaction, especially within and across large interactive spaces such as those of the Digiscope network (http://digiscope.fr/).

We studied how wall-sized displays support small groups of users working together on large amounts of data. We conducted observational studies showing that users adopt a range of collaboration styles, from loosely to closely coupled and that shared interaction techniques, in which multiple users perform a command collaboratively, support co-located collaborative work. In order to test the effect of such shared interaction techniques, we operationalize five collaborative situations with increasing levels of coupling in a data manipulation task [18]. The results show the benefits of shared interaction for close collaboration: it encourages collaborative manipulation, it is more efficient and preferred by users, and it reduces physical navigation and fatigue. We also identified the time costs caused by disruption and communication in loose collaboration and analyzed the trade-offs between parallelization and close collaboration. Altogether, these findings can inform the design of shared interaction techniques to support collaboration on wall-sized displays.

We are also interested in how to help teams of novice crafters prototype physical objects. To this end, we conducted a study [12] framed around two all-day design charrettes where novices performed a complete design process: ideation sketching, concept development and presentation, fabrication planning documentation and collaborative fabrication of hand-crafted prototypes. This structure allowed us to control key aspects of the design process while collecting rich data about creative tasks, including sketches on paper, physical models, and videos of collaboration discussions. Participants used a variety of drawing techniques to convey 3D concepts. They also extensively manipulated physical materials, such as paper, foam, and cardboard, both to support concept exploration and communication with design partners. Based on these observations, we proposed design guidelines for CAD tools targeted at novice crafters.