Workspace Awareness Support for Multi-Device Environments

The Callout Bubble Study on multi-device classrooms sought to investigate a workspace awareness cue for co-located environments. This section presents related work that guided and inspired the workspace awareness cue design.

Workspace awareness has been researched in depth in work on remote collaboration. Thus, commercial online collaboration tools that support group brainstorming and creative processes such as Google Docs6_{, Mural.ly}7_{, and Padlet}8_{, were examined. The review showed that only a few of them}

provided awareness of collaborators’ actions. In most cases, collaborators only see the updated workspace state after a user makes a change without the information of who did what.

Google Docs showed collaborators’ full names next to their insertion cursors in the document (at the time the tool was surveyed). While an insertion cursor is a popular approach, considering an online free-form canvas used on tablets, students cannot always be associated with an insertion location on the canvas, since there is no fixed structure to the canvas, and there can be media types other than text. Next, the research in remote collaboration is presented to provide insights into designing workspace awareness cues for individual devices.

Telepointers (Roseman & Greenberg, 1996) showed collaborators’ mouse pointers on each other’s workspaces, and they can allow the collaborators to coordinate based on each other’s location.

Mural.ly showed the collaborators’ mouse cursors with the users’ full names. By showing other users’

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mouse cursors, their attention and intended interactions could sometimes be inferred, which made this approach very beneficial. Moreover, Tuddenham and Robinson (2010) as well as Tang et al. (2006) both investigated arm shadows as another form of embodiment for remote tabletop collaboration and mixed-presence collaboration with one remote user and three co-located users, respectively. Since most touch-enabled devices do not support hover, especially the ones typically purchased by schools, the design of a practical workspace awareness cue could not leverage the telepointers. Showing shadows would also require an advanced level of user tracking, making this idea infeasible for this thesis research. However, providing cues to collaborators’ potential attention and interaction can be valuable, so the awareness cue design presented in Chapter 5 sought to incorporate this aspect.

Mini-maps and radar views are frequently used in many work and gaming contexts (Cheung et al., 2012; Greenberg et al., 1996; McClelland et al., 2011). Many multi-player games provide a mini-map with all or part of the game world while marking the game players’ locations or a radar view that is centred on the player while showing the surrounding area. In the Callout Bubble Study, students could view their workspace at a zoomed out level, inferring students’ location may be difficult or inaccurate.

The research in multi-device environments has explored ways to share information and manage information across devices (Dachselt & Buchholz, 2009; Houben et al., 2014; Marquardt et al., 2012; Rekimoto, 1997). However, most work has provided very limited information of other collaborators’ actions on individual devices. For example, Scott et al. (2014) investigated the use of shadow feedback on tabletops during information transfer between tabletop and tablets. The technique provided feedback for users who have information in transit as well as for collaborators to know about this transfer. The awareness information was presented on the shared tabletop, and provided limited suggestions for feedback on personal devices. Marquardt et al. (2012) investigated the use of proxemics as a way to gradually engage users in cross-device transfers. The awareness of a device’s presence was reflected on the large displays and personal tablets in the environment. However, there was limited support of awareness for collaborators’ actions.

A few projects have used colours to provide awareness of user identity and action in a shared wall display (Cheung et al., 2014; Masuko et al., 2015). The WallSHOP allowed people to explore items in a public signage through their individual devices, and they could view detailed information of the products on their personal devices. Coloured dots were used as virtual embodiments for users to keep

track of their own interaction and for people to gain a sense of popular items. However, given the collaborative nature of multi-device classrooms, students need to know the identity of each other, and colours may not be salient enough and may require much cognitive power to process. The Timeline Study also found that the colour coding did not provide quick enough recognition for collaborators. Few work has investigated ways to provide awareness of collaborators’ actions on their personal devices. In many cases, the personal devices are used as a source of private data (Beaudouin-Lafon et al., 2012; Scott et al., 2014), and showing awareness information of other users’ activities on their devices could violate their privacy and conflict with the rationale of using personal devices.

Users of large interactive tabletops and multi-device environments have similar workspace awareness needs due to the distance between users and occlusion of user actions. However, few tabletop systems have explicitly provided cues to support workspace awareness (Conversy et al., 2011; Isenberg, Fisher, et al., 2010). The previously mentioned Cambiera system (Isenberg, Fisher, et al., 2010) and WeSpace system (Wigdor et al., 2009) showed feedback of collaborators’ actions in users’ personal workspaces. The workspace awareness cue in the Callout Bubble Study took a similar approach in the sense that users could see the awareness cue on their personal device. However, the cue was displayed near the objects being manipulated in the shared virtual workspace. Users would only see them if the manipulated objects were within their viewports.

The interactive event timelines presented in the Timeline Study provided a historical view of commands taken by other collaborators, and could be redesigned to support the in-the-moment awareness of user interactions. Similarly, some online collaboration tools, such as Google Docs, provide a revision history where users can see who made what edits at what time. However, browsing a historical log requires students to spend time navigating, which takes their time away from learning activities. Students also have a limited amount of time for the collaborative activities portion of the lesson, and they may not have time to use the timeline. Given this consideration, an awareness cue that requires no or minimal interaction would be more appropriate for the multi-device classroom setting.

Conversy et al. (2011) investigated the use of a digital air traffic control system to replace the traditional paper-based workflow, and a high degree of collaborative effort was required for the safety of the air traffic. The system was designed for two controllers with different roles and responsibilities to work together at the same time. It consisted of two components: a vertical display that shows two

radar views, potentially at different zoom levels; and a tabletop as the main collaborative workspace with the flight status information and functionality to annotate and issue commands. To improve consequential communication, the system required users to directly manipulate flight information on the tabletop. Previous work has shown that direct touch on digital tabletops allows collaborators to more easily observe others’ actions than with mouse pointers (Ha et al., 2006). To support

feedthrough, the system developed by Conversy et al. (2011) displayed highlights on the radar view for flights that were being controlled on the tabletop so that the controller could stay aware of their colleague’s actions no matter where they were looking. For multi-device classrooms, observing each other’s touch interactions on their tablets can be challenging, but could be improved by augmenting these interactions with visual cues to support workspace awareness maintenance. While providing feedthrough can be beneficial, one important design consideration is to ensure that the cues are distinguishable for group work with large numbers of users.

Wallace et al. (2009) compared single-display groupware (with multiple mice) with multiple- display groupware. The participants were collaborating over a scheduling task. One of the project’s goals was to understand the impact of display configuration on communication and awareness. While users in the multi-display groupware condition had more coordination problems, they made fewer errors. The individual devices might have provided a less distracting environment since it was a personalized view without other users’ mouse cursors. The study results showed the benefits of using individual devices at the cost of awareness of collaborators. For the Callout Bubble Study, balancing the potential distractions and awareness was an important investigation area.

While the prior research on workspace awareness has provided insights to inspire and direct the design of the Callout Bubble, they focus on remote contexts. The workspace awareness work on tabletops provides insights into the design for workspace awareness cues for co-located settings. However, prior workspace awareness cues for multi-device environments has mainly investigated information sharing techniques. Further investigation into workspace awareness cues in multi-device environments is still warranted.

Awareness in Student Learning

Since the Callout Bubble Study was in the multi-device classroom context, related work in the domain of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) was examined. Research on supporting workspace awareness has recently gained popularity within CSCL. In Janssen and Bodemar’s (2013)

review of awareness tools in the computer-supported collaborative learning domain, they considered the collaborative spaces as consisting of two overlapping spaces: content space (e.g., cognitive activities, the subject-matter content) and relational space (e.g., collaborator social interaction). However, the research on these two spaces usually aims to evaluate students’ learning progress and performance, which can be difficult to observe and detect, as opposed to students’ interaction with objects in a workspace.

One of the main approaches was to provide students with feedback on their learning progress. Present students with their group mates’ self-created concept maps was shown to be effective for students to share and compare their learning (Engelmann et al., 2009; Molinari et al., 2008). These sharing activities increased discussions and co-manipulation of the concepts in the maps. Another approach was to provide students with results of peer assessments and group members’ participation levels. This was shown to increase students’ level of active contribution (Kimmerle et al., 2007), group performance (Jongsawat & Premchaiswadi, 2009), and group satisfaction (Phielix et al., 2010).

While the CSCL literature provides insights into encouraging students’ collaborative activities in class and motivating learning activities, improving student learning is not the goal of this research. The research presented in this dissertation seeks to provide for students’ workspace awareness to reduce their confusion and frustration while working together in the shared virtual workspace.