TRATAMIENTO PASIVO

In their 2012 paper on multi-user interfaces, Yuill and Rogers (2012) introduce three main mechanisms for the design of multi-user interfaces: awareness of others,

control over interactions, and availability of information. The paper presents three

different collaborative case studies, each of which is deployed in two different versions, using separate or shared controls and different levels of constraint. The authors stress the importance of those three mechanisms in a non-prescriptive way, leaving the final decision to designers and their requirements. However, the case studies of these publications are all centred on shared interfaces: a table-top, tangibles, and augmented toys. They do not integrate the notions specific to multi- device ecologies, such as the different focal points identified by Coughlan et al. (2012) or issues arising when foci and information are transitioned from a device to another.

2.6.3 TACIT

Benyon and Mival (2015) drafted the TACIT Framework for the design of interactive collaborative environments. TACIT stands for Territoriality, Awareness,

Control, Interaction and Transitions. This Framework was developed at Edinburgh

Napier University, from the observation and experience of using the ICE.

TACIT maps well with multi-device collaborative ecologies. Territoriality is a key issue when several people collaborate with the same space. It covers the physical territoriality conflicts as much as the separation of private and shared information. Awareness of others’ actions is key when working together in a shared space as much as working apart before putting things together in a meeting. Control designates the process by which people decide to control shared technology. Whether someone is in charge, or people use a democratic or synchronous process. Transitions, according to the authors, applies to the digital/analogue transitions in the ICE as a blended space and act like Rogers’ notion of entry point. But the notion of transition can also be applied to the transition of foci from private screens to shared outputs. The notion of Interaction is interesting as it maps to the way people interact with each other as well as technology. However, as per the current

literature, there is not just one way to design the interactive experience of such spaces.

Although both these frameworks offer relevant principles for the design of collaborative environments, it seems TACIT maps out better with the issues relevant to multi-screen instantiations of collaborative device ecologies. They both, however, offer no support for the broader continued activities that accommodate sessions of co-located collaboration.

2.6.4 Activity-Based Computing

Bardram (2005) offers a framework for distributed collaboration in Ubiquitous Computing named Activity-Based Computing (ABC). ABC is an evolution of traditional task management in the context of desktop computers towards a more abstract, goal-driven management of activities, to which several services and sets of data are associated.

Bardram defines activities over three dimensions:

• Task and Material, i.e. a task that needs to be accomplished and the data necessary to accomplish this talk.

• Time and Space, i.e. the activities are persistent over time and can be performed in a distributed manner over many devices.

• Users; activities are collaborative by nature. The awareness of others’ actions is key to understanding the state of an activity.

ABC implementations already generated many practical case studies and publications (Houben and Bardram, 2013; Voida and Mynatt, 2009; Bardram et al., 2006), however it is ReticularSpaces (Bardram, Gueddana, et al., 2012; Bardram, Houben, et al., 2012) that is notable for bringing the concept of ABC to an interactive collaboration room. ReticularSpaces embraces the concept of ABC fully and removes access to applications altogether, requiring the development of a completely bespoke user interface. The approach seems to have a limited deployment ability in a world that adopted many industry standard applications for business or creativity.

2.6.5 McCullough’s Places

ABC offers a high-level view on computing task management by encapsulating them in activities. However, activities in Bardram’s definition are very specific and it seems a more generic classification is needed to define different types of activities that can take place in the ICE. In his book Digital Ground, McCullough (2004) defines eleven types of activities and their associated places at work:

Deliberating (places for thinking) Presenting (places for speaking to groups) Collaborating (places for working with others)

Dealing (places for negotiating)

Documenting (places for referencing resources)

Officiating (places for institutions to serve their constituencies) Crafting (places for skilled practice)

Associating (places where businesses form ecologies) Learning (places for experiments and explanations)

Cultivating (places for stewardship) Watching (places for monitoring)

For example, many activities observed during this thesis project, that took place in instantiations of collaborative spaces, could be identified as deliberating, presenting, collaborating or documenting. They are usually a combination of several of those and some activities, like the collaborative creation of a document or presentation can fall in more than one category (i.e. deliberating and crafting).

2.6.6 Design tools

The notion of customer (or user) journey is a more recent addition to the collection of representations available for interaction designers (Howard, 2014; Teixeira et al., 2011). A user journey is a representation of all the ways a user – or customer – will access a service. These different access points to the service are called touchpoints. The main design challenge is to design such touchpoints to provide a coherent user

experience. Take the example of train travel. A person may be made aware of a promotional offer for travel watching a television advert. They can then browse the train operator’s website on their desktop computer to choose different dates and seats and leave it there. A few hours or days later, then can finalise the transaction using a smartphone app and pick up their ticket using a ticket machine at the station. These different touchpoints can be both digital and physical.

Patrício et al., (2011) recommend drawing up a list of touchpoints in order to create a service blueprint. This representation is sequential. It works in theory but in reality, few users will follow the perfect sequence defined by designers. The next chapter in this study will focus on identifying the different activities and touchpoints in the context of technology-supported collaborative meetings. Benford et al., (2009) developed the notion of trajectory and also developed a framework for the design of complex “cultural applications”. The work is influenced by the domain of interactive arts, but it does mention the notion of “hybrid ecology” with a meaning similar to Loke's (2003) device ecologies.

2.7 Methodologies

This section is a brief review of a research methods relevant for this thesis. The research questions lead to three different phases: investigation, design, and evaluation. The next few pages will explain which methods will be selected for pursuing the research project. This chapter does not seek to explain the methodology in detail, as this is described in more detail in relevant chapters. This chapter is more like a high-level rationale of the methodology used.

2.7.1 Ethnography

The first study used a form of ethnographic observation (Lazar et al., 2017a), e.g. an observation of real-world users of rooms such as the ICE or alternatives. The idea was to obtain data showing situated actions (Suchman, 2006) where the influence of the environment is shown on human-machine interactions. Initially, this was meant to be the pilot for a larger-scale study involving industry contacts, however

as access issues arose this became a small set of data used to frame a subsequent study in a more controlled academic environment.

An issue with ethnography can be of an ethical nature, with consent more difficult to obtain from all individuals involved. Institutions may have a procedure of

assumed consent for such situations, involving the listing of participants and a risk

assessment of the implications of the study. In the case of this specific thesis, the main point of interest was how the devices were used, not what was actually discussed at meetings. The procedure of assumed consent was followed, and the assessment showed that confidentiality and data protection risks were negligible. However, a number of approached individuals still refused to take part in the observations.

2.7.2 Semi-Structured Interviews

The follow-up study of the initial observations is using two methods of qualitative data gathering and analysis. Firstly, it is using a model of data collection called

semi-structured interview (Lazar et al., 2017b) which follows a loose structure of

high-level questions and follow-up, more focused questions. However, it allows for the researcher to get off script to discuss specific points more in-depth.

The data analysis stage of the second study followed a structure informed by Strauss & Corbin’s Grounded Theory (Lazar et al., 2017c) using the following structured:

• Transcription of the collected data into a textual form.

• Open coding, i.e. coding interview “nodes” with a number of themes identified as they are being coded.

• The codes used in open coding are then named and grouped into a set of coherent categories.

• Another pass of coding on the data, with the themes in mind, allows for a more comprehensive and thorough coding.

More strict interpretations of grounded analysis require other passes of coding (transversal) however in the case of this study the themes were used to constitute the main backbone of the meeting journey. This methodology is useful when

analysing a set of data without a strong hypothesis or premise, however the result can be affected by a researcher’s own bias.

2.7.3 Focus groups

The main study that led to the drafting of the design principles used the same data analysis method as above, however, the data was collected with the help of two focus groups. The focus groups were recruited among a cohort of postgraduate students with some literacy in the domain of Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design. This is a deliberate action to obtain articulated opinions on a number of specific problems that were presented.