Supporting Scientific Collaboration in Amplified Collaboration Environments

1. Supporting Scientific Collaboration in Amplified Collaboration Environments Kyoung S. Park

2. Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) • Established in 1973 • Joint Program: Art and Computer Science • First Star Wars film in 1977 • Research: • Visualization • CAVE Research and Development • High-speed Optical Networks • Tele-Immersion • Amplified Collaboration Environments

3. Amplified Collaboration Environment • Amplified Collaboration Environments (ACEs) are distributed war rooms which are enhanced with advanced visualization displays and computation (Leigh02). • Goal is to enhance collaboration among distantly located teams of experts gathered to intensively solve problems. • Human Factors study over ACEs is intended to understand how people work in display-rich environments, which consist of having every wall be an active display.

4. Motivation: Maximally Co-located War rooms • Study of 9 project rooms • Comparison of war room groups with norm showed performance of war room group well above corporate average (Teasley00) • Characteristics of war rooms: • Persistence of information • Spatiality of human interaction and deictic reference • Group awareness • Immediacy of access to information and experts War rooms (Olson&Olson00)

5. The Continuum : Amplified Collaboration Environment for Scientific Investigation • To develop integrated ubiquitous tools and environments for collaborative scientific research in which collaborators can visualize, analyze and solve scientific problems • EVL’s Continuum consists of the number of modular technologies: • Video Conferencing • Immersion • Large Scale Data Visualization and Distribution • Annotation • Wireless Interaction

6. The Continuum at EVL Passive stereo Immersive Display Plasma Touch-screen (annotations) Access Grid Tiled Display (LCD tiles for high resolution, or plasma screens)

7. Access Grid speakers cameras desktop ambient mics • Multi-sites conferencing – http://www.accessgrid.org/

8. Passive Stereoscopic Immersive Display • Tele-Immersion content distribution (Leigh01) • Widespread adoption by GeoWall Consortium for research & education in the Geosciences (Nayak02)

9. Tiled LCD Display • Treat tiled display as a large digital corkboard on which information can be posted permanently for long term collaborative work • SpaceGlider as a remote control of all Continuum displays as if one big screen (Chowdhry02) • Switcher to jump between screens (Leigh02)

10. Collaborative Annotation • Shared persistent whiteboard and flipcharts through plasma touchscreen

11. Continuum Design Study • Iterative improvement of 2 networked Continuum spaces (Park03) • Observe and explore design issues for interaction of lots of displays and multiple simultaneous inputs in ACE • Observe how display-rich environments affect group awareness and parallelism in distance collaboration

12. Study Methods • 1 pilot study and 4 iterative design studies with system configuration variations • Tiled display was main display used • 19 students (all subjects participated in two studies) • A group of 3~4 students performed a set of collaborative scientific tasks: • Web-based search and information fusion • Information visualization of multivariate data • Collaborative brainstorming and design • Measures • Observation; Video recording; Survey; Interview; Logging

13. Initial Use of the Continuum – Pilot Study (Distributed) • Access Grid (full-AG setting; mini-AG setting) • Shared Whiteboard • Focus Display (for group discussion) • Distributed Corkboard Tiled Display with Switcher • 1 Input Control per Site

14. Initial Use of the Continuum – Pilot Study(Co-located) • Shared Whiteboard • Focus Display with KVM switcher • Distributed Corkboard Tiled Display (1x4 format) with Switcher • 1 Input Control per User

15. Pilot Study Observations • Sense of ownership for the resources • Tiled display offered partitioned group workspace while maintaining necessary awareness between distributed users • Tiled display was useful for multiple linked views and side-by-side comparison • Flexible tiled display that can project up to single large high-resolution data visualization • Treat Continuum’s displays as one big screen • Need to provide input control per individual

16. Evaluation of Seamless Distributed Corkboard – Study 1 • Access Grid (full-AG setting; mini-AG setting) • Shared Whiteboard • Seamless Distributed Corkboard Tiled Display using SpaceGlider (to support the illusion of one seamless display) • 1 Input Control per User • Physical Layout

17. Study 1 Observations • Seamless distributed corkboard tiled display • Privacy concern (for locking individual workspace) • Treated as one seamless display; mouse conflicts • Group shared workspace • Public visibility helped group focused work • Casual glancing; but, often checked task progress • Data transfer between displays (copy-and-paste; read-and-write collaboration; use of paper) • Need close-up view • Shared resource sharing over whiteboard • Need more microphones and cameras in mini-AG setting!

18. Evaluation of Seamless Distributed Corkboard with Personal Displays – Study 2 • Access Grid (full-AG setting; improved mini-AG setting) • Shared Whiteboard • Seamless Distributed Corkboard Tiled Display using SpaceGlider (between tiled display and whiteboard) • Tablet w/screen echo (to support close up view)

19. Study 2 Observations • Seamless distributed corkboard with personal displays • Mixed: Tablet as individual workspace and Tiled Display as group workspace • Less casual glancing; task awareness • Public visibility helped mixed focus collaboration • Privacy concern (to focus assigned individual work) • Treated as one seamless display; mouse conflicts • Tablet helped proximity but raised size issue • Users felt no continuity of the workspace • Use of audio/video for shared resource sharing • Increased remote interaction; but, video overload • Read-and-write collaboration over AG

20. Evaluation of Discrete Flexible Tiled Display with Personal Displays – Study 3 • Access Grid (full-AG setting; improved mini-AG setting) • Shared Whiteboard • Discrete Flexible Shared Tiled Display (with different background colors) with Switcher • Tablet w/screen echo • Layout Changes

21. Study 3 Observations • Discrete flexible tiled display with personal displays • Full-screen used for group discussion and personal uses (helped size problem) • Users can still work on Tablet while full-screen • Fewer mouse conflicts; no seamless display • Putting displays together helped copy-and-paste • Provided less public visibility; less casual glancing • Privacy concern (for personal thing - email) • Still copy-and-paste; read-and-write collab.over AG • Shared resource turn-taking over whiteboard • Finished faster; More casual interaction with remote users; Increased WB usages; Higher user satisfaction

22. Evaluation of Presentation-model Display with Personal Displays – Study 4 • Access Grid (full-AG setting; improved mini-AG setting) • Shared Whiteboard • Presentation-model Display(to provide more privacy by sharing only single individual’s workspace at a time) with Switcher • Tablet w/screen echo

23. Study 4 Observations • Presentation-model display with personal displays • Provided more privacy but no casual glancing • ‘Show me’ pattern by less visibility • Wanted distributed corkboard back! to glance other’s work (i.e. awareness) and to display data side-by-side (i.e. resolution issue) • No privacy concern • No mouse conflict by no control sharing • Disappeared read-and-write collaboration over AG • Shared resource sharing over Presentation Display • Quality degraded; Limited interaction with remote users; Decreased WB usages; Low user satisfaction

24. Discussion: Summary of Study Design System Configurations

25. Discussion: Communication • Audio • Overhearing –> provide microphones next to all displays • Collaboration halts by audio fails; but not easily repaired by using text chat • Video • How to position/angle camera? • Multiple video sources useful? • Wall-size video display useful? • How to arrange multiple video sources in the display?

26. Discussion: Shared Workspace • Multiple users interaction over group workspace • Ownership pattern –> Need locking • Turn-taking pattern –> Need identification • Individual/Group Workspace • Public workspace provides information fully visible and supports group awareness • Presentation-model display (Private->Public) showed visibility problem • Individual workspace needed to be visible for collaborative work! • Need close up display for individual focus work • Group co-reference should always be visible

27. Discussion: Display-rich Environment User Interface • Seamless vs. Discrete Display • SpaceGlider is good for 1 user;but, many collisions for multiple users (mainly by accidental intrusion) • Switcher avoids collisions between multiple users;but, not scalable to many tiles • Data Transfer between Displays • Copy-and-paste (only with search task) • Move windows between displays (only with seamless display) • Used various channels (e.g. tablet, paper, verbal) • Putting displays closer together helped copy-and-paste

28. Discussion: Parallelism/Awareness • Task Parallelism • Task types (Mixed-focusvs. Group focused work) • Group work styles (Divided work vs. Work together) • Provide individual workspace • Need awareness when user’s working in parallel • Group Awareness • Shared resource sharing awareness –> Need identification • Task awareness –> Need group coordination tool • Awareness by overhearing and casual glancing • Overhearing and displaying spatiality of human interaction over AG

29. Conclusions • Lessons learned: • Provide individual workspace for parallel work • Maximize visibility to enhance group awareness and interaction for distributed teams • Provide close up display for focus work • Support easy transition between individual work and group work • Group co-reference should always be visible • Improvements: • Need identification for shared resources sharing • Need coordination tool

30. Future Directions • Further human factors research on Amplified Collaboration Environments (ACEs) • Exploring design issues of shared workspace • Long distance collaboration – e.g. EVL and TRECC • Exploring organizational or social factors • Research on intensive computing and data mining over ACE • Developing advanced visualization and collaboration technology to support ACE

31. Building a Collaborative Bridge – The Continuum @TRECC

32. Varrier : Tiled Auto-Stereoscopic LCD Display • Use barrier strip material in front of LCD to create autostereoscopic image. • 4 horizontal pixels to create 1 stereoscopic pixel- oversampling to reduce aliasing. • Use low-latency tracking to eliminate pseudo-stereo.

33. References • Park, K., Renambot, L., Leigh, J., Johnson, A., The Impact of Display-rich Environments for Enhancing Task Parallelism and Group Awareness in Advanced Collaborative Environments, In Workshop on Advanced Collaboration Environments, Seattle, WA, June 22-24, 2003. • Leigh, J., Johnson, A., Park, K., Nayak, A., Singh, R., Chowdry, V., Amplified Collaboration Environments, In the proceedings of VR Grid Workshop, November 26, 2002, Daejun, Korea, pp. 77-85. • Park, K., Cho, Y., Krishnaprasad, N., Scharver, C., Lewis, M., Leigh, J., Johnson, A., CAVERNsoft G2: A Toolkit for High Performance Tele-Immersive Collaboration, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology 2000, Oct 22-25, 2000, Seoul, Korea, pp. 8-15. • Park, K., Kapoor, A., Leigh, J., Lessons Learned from Employing Multiple Perspectives In a Collaborative Virtual Environment for Visualizing Scientific Data, Proceedings of ACM CVE 2000, San Francisco, CA, 09/10/00-09/12/00, pp. 73-82. • Park, K., Kenyon, R., Effects of Network Characteristics on Human Performance in a Collaborative Virtual Environment, Proceedings of IEEE VR `99, Houston, TX, 03/13/99 - 03/17/99.

34. Thank You • For more information: • www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/continuum • This work is supported in part by: • The National Science Foundation • The Office of Naval Research through the Technology Research Education and Commercialization Center (TRECC) • Microsoft Corporation