Daniel M. Russell

Social Aspects of Using Large Public Interactive Displays for Collaboration

Large displays have several natural affordances that can simplify small group collaborative work. They are large enough to hold multiple work areas, they are easy to see and can be manipulated directly via touch. When placed into group and public spaces, such displays create pervasively available working surfaces for lightweight, temporary walkup use. The BlueBoard is a large plasma display with touch sensing and a badge reader to identify individuals using the board. The onboard software acts as a thin client giving access to each participants web-based content (e.g., home pages, project pages). The client also has a set of tools and mechanisms that support rapid exchange of content between those present. The overall design of the BlueBoard is one that is easily learnable (under 5 minutes), very simple to use, and permits novel uses for collaboration. Our initial field study revealed a number of social issues about the use of a large pervasively available display surface, yet indicates that a shared public display space truly has distinct properties that lend themselves to sharing content. Extreme learnability & overall simplicity of design makes BlueBoard a tool for collaboration that supports intermittent, but effective use for side-by-side collaboration between colleagues.

Building disappearing computers

A trio of systems illustrates the challenges of designing large displays for use in ubiquitous computing environments that are, indeed, unremarkable.

IM here: public instant messaging on large, shared displays for workgroup interactions

Instant messaging (IM) in the workplace has proven to be a valuable tool for facilitating informal communication. Its benefits, however, are generally limited to times when users are in front of their computers. Because so much work takes place while people are mobile within their workplace, we sought to extend the benefits of IM beyond peoples personal machines and into publicly accessible groupware. We first conducted a study of large display groupware applications (LDGAs) to understand the affordances that large displays offer for groupware, and the factors surrounding their adoption. We developed the IM Here system for shared IM on large displays using the lessons learned from the study. In this paper, we present the findings of our LDGA study, the design of IM Here and the preliminary results of our evaluation of IM as a public resource for workgroups.

Making sense of sensemaking

INTRODUCTION Making sense of the world is a common activity. It happens whenever you confront a new, complex problem. At work, your boss says, “Can you give a presentation next week on how wireless will affect our business?” Or perhaps, you join a new committee, and wonder “Who are these people? Who is in charge? What is our mission? What are we really going to do?” Maybe you move to a new neighborhood, and you try to make sense of the streets, schools, parks, shopping, and neighbors. Or you say to yourself, “I really need to get an updated cellphone--what has been happening with the current set of features, costs, plans and new gadgets?”

Secrets to success and fatal flaws: the design of large-display groupware

Research in the field of large-display groupware applications has yet to yield a killer app, a common look and feel for applications, or a set of broadly applicable design principles. Its therefore difficult to understand what constitutes a successful large-display groupware application and what affects their adoption. Although large-display groupware faces many of the same adoption and use challenges as conventional desktop groupware, how people perceive and interact with large-display groupware yields some unique challenges. Weve built and evaluated several large-display groupware systems that address various workgroups, functions, and environments. This experience has given us broad expertise regarding the social dynamics and technical challenges surrounding large-display groupwares design. To enhance our understanding of these challenges, weve also undertaken a broad survey of existing large-display groupware systems to understand how their purpose, design, and deployment affect the success of their integration into everyday tasks and practices.

WebGazeAnalyzer: a system for capturing and analyzing web reading behavior using eye gaze

Capturing and analyzing the detailed eye movements of a user while reading a web page can reveal much about the ways in which web reading occurs. The WebGazeAnalyzer system described here is a remote-camera system, requiring no invasive head-mounted apparatus, giving test subjects a normal web use experience when performing web-based tasks. While many such systems have been used in the past to collect eye gaze data, WebGazeAnalyzer brings together several techniques for efficiently collecting, analyzing and re-analyzing eye gaze data. We briefly describe techniques for overcoming the inherent inaccuracies of such apparatus, illustrating how we capture and analyze eye gaze data for commercial web design problems. Techniques developed here include methods to group fixations along lines of text, and reading analysis to measure reading speed, regressions, and coverage of web page text.

On the Design of Personal & Communal Large Information Scale Appliances

As large displays become less expensive and more common throughout our working environments, we believe they will become pervasive, much as telephones were the ubiquitous communication devices of the previous generation. When large displays are coupled to an authentication device (e.g., a badge reader) and put on a network, they permit very rapid personal content access. The BlueBoard project explores the design of large displays that can be used as temporary personal access points to personalized content, yet also be used as display surfaces for small groups of people who want to easily share content between themselves. Weve developed several design points that make BlueBoards simple for individual and small group use -- (1) p-cons to refer to a person for information access and exchange, (2) assuring users that information displayed on a BlueBoard is truly transient, (3) providing a basic set of tools for immediate walk-up use, and (4) giving the BlueBoard a sense of where its located for contextually appropriate information display.

Dealing with ghosts: Managing the user experience of autonomic computing

Although the goal of autonomic computing is to make systems that work continuously, robustly, and simply, no one imagines that people can be excluded entirely. Whether it is end users getting their jobs done by interacting with autonomic systems or system administrators maintaining, monitoring, and debugging large-scale systems with autonomic components, humans will always be part of the computational process. As autonomic systems become part of the computing infrastructure, new demands will be placed on all users. How do users understand what autonomic systems are trying to do? How should systems portray themselves to users? How can we design the experience of autonomic computing to amplify user capabilities? This paper presents an analysis of the user experience challenges of autonomic computing and discusses design requirements for user interaction. Our main point is that autonomic computing makes effective design of the user experience even more challenging and critical than it is now. The reason is that autonomic actions taken by the system must be understandable by the user and capable of review, revision, and alteration. Because such actions are often made autonomously, a heavy burden is placed on the ability of the system to explain what it is doing and why.

Large Interactive Public Displays: Use Patterns, Support Patterns, Community Patterns

Large displays have several natural affordances that should make it simple to support collaborative work. They are large enough to hold multiple work areas and are easy for a small group to see collectively. The BlueBoard is a large plasma display with touch sensing and a badge reader to identify individuals using the board. The onboard software acts as a thin client giving access to each participant’s content (e.g., home pages, project pages). The client also has a set of tools and mechanisms that support rapid exchange of content between those present. The overall design of the BlueBoard is one that is easily learnable (under 5 minutes), very simple to use, and permits novel uses for collaboration. Our initial field study revealed a number of social issues about the use of a large interactive display surface, yet indicated that a shared public display space truly has distinct properties that lends itself to sharing content. Extreme learnability & overall simplicity of design makes BlueBoard a tool for collaboration that supports intermittent, but effective use for side-by-side collaboration between colleagues.

The use patterns of large, interactive display surfaces: Case studies of media design and use for blueboard and MERboard

During the past several years we have been developing large, interactive display surfaces for collaboration uses in a variety of work settings. People in small work groups can easily create, annotate and share media with their partners. The Blueboard, developed at IBM Research, is a large display system for groups to use in exchanging information in a lightweight, informal collaborative way. It began as a large, ubiquitously placed display surface for walk-by use in a corporate setting and has evolved in response to task demands and user needs. At NASA, the MERboard is being designed to support surface operations for the upcoming Mars exploration rover missions. The MERboard extends the design to support the collaboration requirements for viewing, annotating, linking and distributing information for the science and engineering teams that will operate two rovers on the surface of Mars. Here we examine differing implementations of the same idea: a collaborative information tool that began from the same design goals, but which grew into somewhat different systems under the evolutionary pressures of the NASA and IBM task environments. Lessons about how media are designed, task requirements for collaborative use, information flow requirements and work practice drive the evolution of a system are illustrated.