Computer-Supported Collaborative PLAY

Also mentioned by Philip's great blog, Bill Gaver will give a keynote talk which I find relevant at ECSCW:

All W and No P Makes CSCW a Dull Field: 
Supporting Ludic Collaboration by William Gaver (Royal College of Art, London, UK)

CSCW was built on the recognition that work is inherently collaborative. But that doesn’t mean that all collaborations involve work. We also join together to play — and not just at games, but at life more generally. We engage in desultory conversations, gossip, and flirtations, we pursue humorous speculation and casual role-play. Ludic activities such as these are motivated by intrinsic pleasure rather than any particular outcome. But playful interactions do have benefits. They allow us to explore new perspectives, negotiate shared orientations, maintain emotional bonds, and set new directions. Play is important for our lives, and this includes our working lives as well as our private ones. Focusing collaborative technologies too narrowly on work risks missing the benefits of more playful forms of collaboration. The problem is that CSCW, like most domains of HCI, tends to understand successful systems in terms of clear usability and utility, while play is by definition is less well defined and more open to appropriation and interpretation. In this talk, I discuss a number of examples of systems that support “computer supported collaborative playfulness”. Equally importantly, I discuss how embracing ludic activities changes our assumptions about interactive systems, and discuss approaches to designing for and evaluating ludic technologies.

Why do I blog this? that's definitely a claim I agree with, especially because I find this interesting as a researcher and also because I work on project about collaboration and games for companies (there seems to be a lack of applied research in those companies to create guidelines/model/use cases/... for that matter). Besides, CSCW is not just focused on work since there is new emerging field about Computer Supported Collaborative Learning which is already very active for 10 years.

Technorati Tags: bill gaver, game, hci, cscw

Ph.D august meeting: model, mutual model and schedule for 2005-2006

This morning, I had a meeting with my Ph.D advisor to set the boundaries of my research project. Apart from the experimental aspects of the project I already done (the CatchBob! project), Pierre wants me to describe a formal model (the thesis would be defended in computer science, that's why) of the phenomenon we study, namely how Mutual Modeling is deployed to support coordination in spatial task. The use of such a model is to help designers to build better interfaces/analyse data or logfiles and so forth for applications devoted to mobile collaboration (games, firefighters thing...). As for the form of the model, the use of a formal language/data structure (UML, XML, something-ML...) or a graph/table is required. The point is to build this model based on the results of my first (and ongoing) experiment. The second experiment would be designed to illustrate/validate/deploy this model (or to change it).

How to move forward:

• from the first experiment, list all the 'coordination devices/keys' (Clark's theory of coordination) and link them to performance/mutual modeling
• from the interviews/confrontation to the replay tool, distinguish which information are quoted by the users, in terms of: Group Model, Self Model, Mutual Model_A(B), Mutual Model_A(C), the representation of the environment. The idea is to describe the important information used by agents to coordinate.
• this should be based also on Clark's theory of coordination, as well as Sperber and Wilson theory of mutual cognitive environment.

Schedule:

• september/october: model description/formalization
• THEN: pick up the variables we want to test in the second experiment
• Second experiment: january-march 2006 BUT it's going to depend upon whether we keep the same environment (and we add some more complex features) or if we need to have a new one.

How to more forward in the 'mutual modeling' project:

• does the teams with a good MM give more information in terms of the mutual modeling information they used?
• check the interaction asymetry and the quality of mutual modeling (correlation + intraclass correlation)
• in catchbob: list all my variables: useful for corelation/used as coavriables/regression analysis!

Location-Based Mobile Media Course at USC

A new course taught by Julian Bleecker about Location-Based Mobile Media: Maps, Games and Stories at the University of Southern California Interactive Media Division:

Through readings, discussion and presentations of prior art related to the topic, students will design and develop a project that addresses the opportunities presented by locative, mobile and pervasive media concepts.
This course has no set prerequisites, although experience doing concept prototyping for or development of technology applications sufficiently to demonstrate or realize a concept will be necessary to complete the required project.

The syllabus is here (.pdf) and its HIGHLY relevant for locative folks. A must-read in those course are those 2 articles: The Geospatial Web: A Call to Action
What We Still Need to Build for an Insanely Cool Open Geospatial Web by Mike Liebhold and A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web by Julian Bleecker.

Day of the figurine, pervasive game

I just discovered this Day of the Figurine thing, which is a new pervasive game project carried out by lots of relevant actors (Blast Theory, Frauhnofer Institute, the Mixed Reality Lab, Sony Net Service). It seems to be a part of the european iPerg project. Here is how it's describe in the IPerG News Letter, August 2005

To participate in Day of the Figurines, the player must first visit a physical place. Here, they find a large scale model of an imaginary town at table height. The model is 1:100 and extends for several metres in all directions. The image is a mix of computer graphics and photographic collage.

The town has identifiable buildings such as the YMCA, the Big Chef, Video Zone, the XXX Cinema and the Battle of Trafalgar Square. There are other features such as a Cemetery, a Gasometer, a canal, a Level Crossing and an Underpass.

To play the game the visitor selects from a display of one hundred plastic figurines. They give the figurine a name, answer a few questions about him or her and then watch as she or he is placed at a random location into the model town. As they leave the space the player is given a small map of the town and a set of rules for the game.

An hour or so later the player will receive their first text message from the game, asking where their figurine would like to go. By replying to the message with the name of a place in the town the player's figurine is set on the path towards that destination. Each hour a turn is executed and the invigilator moves each figure a small distance towards their destination. There are 10 turns a day for 24 days.

Intermittently each player receives text messages to alert them to nearby figurines in the model city, to their figurine's arrival at a destination or to other events in the town. Each destination has a short description. For example, if you arrive at the The One Club you receive the SMS: "Home of the 2 Fs. The lock ins are legendary, the fire escape stairs have seen it all." The goal of the game is "to help others". Texting messages to other players may provide opportunities to do this.

I like the low-tech aspects of the thing:

The project is deliberately targeting low-end phones: it is playable on any phone that is able to receive SMS. Instead the technological focus is on orchestration and management tools. During the long-term test period, 8 players have been given phones that log Cell ID and upload this information to a server. We aim to use this data to assess when players are engaged, when they are most likely to play and how the game fits into their daily activity pattern. We will also carry out phone interviews with selected players at key moments, to study the interaction between game play and daily life.

Coordination according to Herbert Clark

I am currently working on a report about how people infer others' intents/beliefs/knowledge... related to their joint activities. This is related to theories of coordination and how people make assumptions about others'. For that matter, I am going to deal with 3 theories (1 and 2 are from pragmatics and 3 comes from organisational science):

1. Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory + mutual cognitive environment
2. Clark's theory of coordination + common ground
3. Malone and Crowston theory of dependencies

Since I would like to have a visual summary of each of those, I worked on transcribing this stuff into graphs. For Clark's theory, it goes like this:

Evaluating the Deployment of a Location-Enhanced Messaging Service

An article that is going to be presented at Ubicomp that sounds interesting:Control, Deception, and Communication: Evaluating the Deployment of a Location-Enhanced Messaging Service by G. Iachello, I. Smith, S. Consolvo, G. D. Abowd, J. Hughes, J. Howard, F. Potter, J. Scott, T. Sohn, J. Hightower, A. LaMarca.

We report on a two-week deployment of a peer-to-peer, mobile, location-enhanced messaging service. This study is specifically aimed at investigating the need for and effectiveness of automatic location disclosure mechanisms, the emerging strategies to achieve plausible deniability, and at understanding how place and activity are used to communicate plans, intentions and provide awareness. We outline the research that motivated this study, briefly describe the application we designed, and provide details of the evaluation process. The results show a lack of value of automatic messaging functions, confirm the need for supporting plausible deniability in communications, and highlight the prominent use of activity instead of place to indicate one’s location. Finally, we offer suggestions for the development of social mobile applications.

Why do i blog this? the analysis is pretty good and I like this finding:

In the pilot study we had observed that location was often used as a proxy for conveying other messages, such as status, estimated time of arrival (ETA), or reminders. In response to these findings, we introduced the option of responding to a location request with an activity instead of with a place.

Beside, this other recommendation is consistent with what I found:

Don’t Make Automated Functions a Design Priority: Automated features designed to streamline and facilitate communication should not be a design priority. Although the pilot study uggested promising applications for Waypoints, the participants in this study unanimously preferred to maintain control over the messages their phones transmitted. Few participants used Waypoints even for very routine activities (such as leaving work or arriving home). Most participants felt that the time spent sending the message was well worth the gain in precision and purposefulness. This contradicts the mainstream view in the ubicomp community that increasing information overload demands “intelligent” technology to take up the role of an “electronic assistant” for the user. Quite the contrary, the main value participants saw in Reno was the lightweight interaction it afforded, which made it easy to use during interstitial activity (i.e., those times, such as waiting for a bus, between sanctioned activities).

Technorati Tags: lbs, location-based games, mobile phone

Paper about space/place published

My review about how space structures socio-cognitive interactionas has been published in the last issue of on.line journal Psychnology in the Special Issue on Space, Place & Technology (part b): A Review of How Space Affords Socio-Cognitive Processes during Collaboration

This paper reviews the literature about social and cognitive functions of spatial features used when collaborating in both physical and virtual settings. Those concepts come from various fields like social, cognitive as well as environmental psychology or CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work). We briefly summarize the social and cognitive affordances of spatial features like distance, proxemics, co-presence, visibility or activity in the context of physical and virtual space. This review aims at grounding in an explicit framework the way human beings use space to support social interactions. This review can be used as a starting point to design efficient applications that take spatial context into account.

Cite as: Nova N. (2005). A Review of How Space Affords Socio-Cognitive Processes during Collaboration, 3(2), 118-148. Retrieved [month] [day], [year], from www.psychnology.org.

Location awareness information representation

LAIR: Location awareness information representation by Kottahachchi, Laddaga and Look, WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, Volume 2, Issue 8, August 2005, Pages 1144-1149 .

Current location representations model only the geographical aspects of a place. While this is a necessary feature to capture, it is far from sufficient. As a result, many location-aware applications reason about space at the level of coordinates and containment relationships, but have no means to express the semantics that define how a particular space is used. The latter is particularly important in modeling location in the pervasive computing domain. We present LAIR, an ontology that addresses this problem by modeling both the geographical and topological relationships between spaces, as well as the functional purpose of a given space.

Also more information in this paper: A location representation for generating descriptive walking directions

lair (Location Awareness Information Representation), a model of space that can be used to create location-based services. lair can be used to represent not only where a person is, but also what a person is near and what he can do at those nearby places. lair incorporates concepts that people commonly use when thinking about space. Current representations model either the physical relationships between different spaces or the functional purpose of a given space. lair models both of these aspects. (...) lair is an ontology inspired by Ben Kuipers’ TOUR model of a person’s cognitive maps of large-scale spaces

Why do I blog this? the representation of space/place provided in this LAIR model seems interesting, at least in terms of existing ontology of space.

Football analysis with pervasive technologies

I already mentioned that issue of IEE Pervasive Computing journal about sports. I just read the on about football: Computerized Real-Time Analysis of Football Games by Michael Beetz, Bernhard Kirchlechner and Martin Lames IEEE Pervasive Computing, pp. 33-39. The authors present Football Interaction and Process Model (which uses a real-time positioning system), an application that acquires action models, infer action-selection criteria, and identify player and team strengths and weaknesses.

An example of how it works:

The FIPM game analyzer uses player positions to infer player roles: (a) a team’s tactical lineup; (b) motion distances (visualized as the size of the circles) and motion profiles of the players; (c) prototypical preparation of shots. The sequences of ball actions are spatially clustered.

Another example:

Analyses of ball actions. (a) Players’ action profiles. The pie charts show the fractions of passes, dribbles, and shots. (b) Passers and receivers and the number of passes between two players. The number of passes from one player to another is depicted by the width of the corresponding arrow. (c) Spatial distribution of the passes three players made.

Coordination devices/keys

I am currently reviewing papers for a literature review about Mutual Modeling (i.e. process by which people infer the partners' intents, goals, understanding of the situation when involved in a collaborative activity). Here is a review of what Herbert Clark calls 'coordination devices' or 'coordination keys', that is to say mechanism people rely on too coordinate (taken from Common Ground and Coordination in Joint Activity by Gary Klein, Paul J. Feltovich, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David D. Woods in 2004):

Agreement: Coordinating parties can explicitly communicate their intentions and work out elements of coordination. This category includes, in addition to language, diverse other forms of signaling that have shared meaning for the participants, including signs, gestures, and displays.

Convention: Often prescriptions of various types and degrees of authority apply to how parties interact. These can range from rules and regulations to less formal codes of appropriate conduct. These less formal codes include norms of practice in a particular professional community as well as established practices in a workplace. Coordination by convention depends on structures outside of a particular episode of joint activity.

Precedent: Coordination by precedent is like coordination by convention, except that it applies to norms and expectations developed within the ongoing experience of the joint activity. As the process unfolds, decisions are made about the naming and interpretation of things, standards of acceptable behavior and quality (e.g., what is established by this particular surgical team, during the course of a surgical procedure, as the standard for adequate cauterization of a vessel), who on the team tends to take the lead, and so forth. As these arise and develop during the course of the activity, they tend to be adopted as devices (or norms) of coordination for the remainder of the activity.

Salience: Salience has to do with how the ongoing work arranges the workspace so that next move becomes apparent within the many moves that could conceivably be chosen. During surgery, for example, exposure of a certain element of anatomy in the course of pursuing a particular surgical goal can make it clear to all parties involved what to do next. Coordination by salience is produced by the very conduct of the joint activity itself. It requires little overt communication and is likely to be the predominant mode of coordination among long-standing, highly practiced teams.

Why do I blog this? these categories make sense to analyse the data extracted from CatchBob (especially the confrontation of the players to the replay tool). Each of those can be used as categories of coordination keys used in catchbob.

Multitasking, collaboration and distance

An interesting result:

Susan Fussell, Sara Kiesler, Suzanne Weisband, Peter Scupelli, and Leslie Setlock are conducting laboratory studies of the effects of distance on managing multiple projects. They have discovered that when people are engaged in two separate tasks with separate partners, they will tend to favor tasks with nearby collaborators.

Fussell, S. R., Kiesler, S., Setlock, L. D., Scupelli, P., & Weisband, S. (2004). Effects of Instant Messaging on the management of multiple project trajectories. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Computer Interaction. CHI ’04. (pp. 191). April 23-30, Vienna

An ontology of place as a basis for location-based applications

Relevant thesis defence about location-based services by Anna Vallgårda:

An ontology of place as a basis for location-based applications

This thesis attempts to put forward a more enlightened conception of location and thus a step towards better location-based applications. On the basis of an architectural understanding, this thesis sets out to identify and conceptualize an ontology of place. Within the field of location-based computing there is a need for a better understanding of what location is comprised. The need for a more nuanced view of location is substantiated through a review of six existing location models. The review demonstrates that the existing location models focus on efficient data structures for retrieving location information rather than on the modelling of location itself. Through interviewing four architects, this thesis develop an understanding of the structures and properties of place that influence what they believe is the way human beings perceive their presence in place. On the basis of this understanding, the thesis develops an initial proposal for an ontology of place. The ontology is suggested to posses the ability to inform development of location models for location-based applications. As a proof of concept the ontology is used as a source of knowledge in a conceptual design of three different location-based applications.

Why do I blog this? Judging from the abstract, it seems to be a pertinent piece of research about location-based services. Unfortunately it's in danish, but anyway... the author is there, blog in english and may publish in english about it ;) I like this idea of interviewing 'place' specialists (like architects) to derive a model of place.

Visit at the Institute For The Future (IFTF)

Yesterday, I visited the Institute For The Future in Palo Alto, California. I was actually invited my Alex Pang to present my current research about location awareness and collaboration. I met people like Mike Liebhold, Jason Tester with whom I exchange about pervasive gaming and Marina Gorbis. The place is really great and dynamic. The way it works (staff/interns/affiliate members/invited persons) make it very valuable. And being at the center of the Bay Area, close to Stanford helps a lot to gather interesting and meaningful people. For instance, yesterday, Douglas Engelbart was there.

The IFTF is a not-for-profit forecast think-tank. For that matter, they have research projects about what will happen in the future with regards to specific theme like healthcare, science/technology and society, and video games (mostly pervasive gaming). They produce valuable report (focusing on specific topics + "map of the decade"). Alex was really kind to answer to all my questions (I was so curious :) ) about things work here, what they do, how they conduct their research project, about what topics, with which persons/partners, how the validation is done...

The environment is very nice, nothing like cubicles or horrible look-alike office spaces. For instance here, tables are made of doors, and some people use IKEA chairs designed for kids.

As for my talk, it had been well received. The conclusion of my experiment interested them because it's an example of when we automate a certain process (in this case, displaying automatically the location of others), we can loose things at the end (less communication, less strategy planning/reshaping... in catchbob). The most critical person towards the results was certainly Mike Liebhold. Because of his background and research in GIS/context-awareness, he thinks this game is a too poor situation to generalize; he would like to see some REAL-USERS (like firefighters, emergency crews, the army...) using this sort of application to see whether we can replicate the results. I agree with that statement but I replied using the following points:

• first and foremost, it was a pre-experiment before others, even if the results are interesting we may have to reproduce them in another context to validate the hypotheses
• second, sometimes in research, especially for people with an experimental science background, we have to make (tough) choices and simplify situations to control variables, that's what happened with catchbob
• third, having 2 groups of 30 real-user is both difficult in terms of organization and efficiency (we would have a commitment that all the systems works, what if it's not the case?). Beside, lots of those professionals operated with a command and control room that receives information coming from the field and dispatch orders. It's something I am not interested in, my focus is directed towards decentralized groups working on the field.

Alex was also wondering about an equivalent of technorati/del.icio.us for location awareness, I mentioned Plazes which I found highly relevant and powerful. The location awareness thing reminded him a similar application in the last Harry Potter volume. Besides, Alex took notes about the presentation on Future Now.

Technorati Tags: innnovation, iftf

Tacticle graphics conference

Via the excellent doors of perception, I ran across this interesting conference: Tactile Graphics

Tactile Graphics is an international conference on diagrams, maps and pictures which are touched rather than looked at. Topics for discussion include spatial cognition and tactile perception, tactile signage, tactile-audio diagrams. Principal users are for blind and partially sighted children and adults in education, work and life activities. Birmingham, UK, on 1-2 December 2005. Call for abstracts closes 8 August.

Why do I blog this? there might be results or techniques to transfer into tangible computing research. The past edition seemed interesting ( and ) and some material is available online.

Technorati Tags: cognition, interface, pervasive, pervasive gaming, tangible interaction

Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

!Holiday post! (via), Constance Steinkuehler has published her phd dissertation entitled Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach. I just skimmed through the document bu I am looking forward to read it more carefully. Here is how she describes her research:

My research investigates the forms of learning, thinking, and socially interacting that MMOGs recruit from those who play. My dissertation (currently in progress) is an online cognitive ethnography of MMOGs that characterizes the emergent culture of MMOGaming and how participation is constituted through language and practice both within the game (e.g., virtual social interaction & joint activity) and beyond (e.g., the creation of fan fiction & websites). What does it mean to be literate in this social space? How does one become a member of this community? And what import does participation have for the (on- and off-screen) identities of its members?

Why do I blog this? I an really interested in hearing more about research in MMORPG and how it relates to socio-cognitive issues.

Technorati Tags: game, hci, cognition, MMORPG

Scotland Yard Mobile Game

Live Action Scotland Yard (L.A.S.Y.) is a game created by Canadian designer Joel Friesen. The scenario is pretty simple: a 'Mr X' dresses in a bright yellow t-shirt, and then takes to the public transport systems of Toronto, Canada, pursued by three more people, 'detectives', in red shirts. The 'criminal' has to give clues to those chasing every third stop he makes.

One guy named Mr. X runs around Toronto’s transit system in a bright yellow shirt, while three or more guys in red shirts try to find him using the clues he gives at every third stop he makes. The three detectives are coordinated by dispatchers who tell the detectives where they think Mr. X might be and how best to block him off. Mr.X’s dispatcher is relaying information about the detectives whereabouts and tries to keep him away from them. The game ends when a time limit has been reached or X is caught.

You need:


• A fully charged Cell phone with unlimited weekend minutes
• A Monthly or Day Pass for the TTC
• Sunscreen



Here are the rules: Scotland Yard is played by 6 or more people, half of the players are in the field, and the other half are dispatchers. Teams are paired up, one dispatcher with a field agent. Each pair is in contact with each other using a cell phone. One agent in the field is chosen to be “Mr. X” while the rest are detectives. (...) More about the rules here

Why do I blog this it's somehow like a hide-and-seek/treasure hunt/first-person shooter with a bit of technological flavor (a cell phone). I do think this sort of game is ten times more funny than crappy mobile games already on the market. In this context, the technology is just used to 'support' coordination among teams. This is exactly the kind of situation I would like to study (comparing for instance situations with location-awareness tool and situations without). It's cheap, doable, what if we do something like this on the EPFL campus????

Technorati Tags: game, lasy, mobile game, mobile phone

Field experiment critique in CatchBob

Reading Lucy Suchman's "Plans and Situated Actions", I was wondering about the notion of "plan". In our experiment with CatchBob!, people tell use what they did during the game, explaining why they did this and that; how come they explored the campus in some areas, why did they communicated like this, etc. Somehow they explain us the plan they had. The most important critique here, based on Suchman's view is that fact that people do not really have plans; the plan is just a reconstruction of what they did a posteriori. Suchman argues that human beings don't really function using plans (i.e. a scripted behavior, explicating specific activities). Instead, she claims that the behavior is based on 'situated actions': "the view that every course of action depends in essential ways upon its material and social circumstances. Rather than attempting to abstract action away from its circumstances and represent it as a rational plan, the approach is to study how people use their circumstances to achieve intelligent action." (p. 50). What is important is the goal the users had in mind and which mean they use to achieve it.

In CatchBob, in terms of information input players used to achieve the goal, I found the following 'coordination keys' (would say Herbert Clark, a pragmatic linguists):

• Knowledge about the partners (ce que Clark appel Common Ground initial)
• Speech/Communication acts
• Verbalisations: announcement, orders, questions, acknowledgement
• Self-declared positioning/trajectory
• Location awareness (+ signal)
• Knowledge about the environment
• Topology + Schelling Point (subset)
• Representation of the wireless network
• Grounded Plan (accepted by the group)

I use the player's verbalisations after the game to gather information about this.

Paper for WMTE 2005 accepted

My full paper for the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education WMTE 2005 has been accepted. That means that I'll go to Japan in november, yipee!

‘Location is not enough!’: an Empirical Study of Location-Awareness in Mobile Collaboration by Nicolas Nova, Fabien Girardin and Pierre Dillenbourg

Abstract: There is an ever growing number of mobile learning applications based on location-awareness, However, there is still a lack of information concerning how it might impact socio-cognitive processes involved in collaboration. This is what the following empirical study aimed to address. We used a mobile and collaborative game, running on Tablet PCs, to test two conditions. On one hand, groups could see the positions of each member; while in the other location-awareness was not provided. All users could use the Tablet PC to communicate through annotations. We found no differences between the two conditions with regard to the task performance. Neither were there any differences in terms of cognitive workload. However, players without the location-awareness indications had a better representation of their partners’ paths. They wrote more messages and better explicated their strategies. The paper concludes with remarks about how this can be taken into account by mobile learning practitioners.

Technorati tags: wmte, wmte2005

GeoGeny Positioning Solution

Yesterday, Fab and I had a meeting with CPR group who did this GeoGeny solution. It as in Montreux during the Jazz Festival

The GeoGeny interface was conceived by CPR Group (Switzerland) Inc by calling upon different telecommunications technologies (GPS, GSM, GPRS, SMS). (...) Used for the first time on a large scale during the Montreux Jazz Festival 2003, GeoGeny considerably facilitated the security forces command centre’s job for the duration of the festival.

Security professionals, all subjects who have to react as quickly as possible in the field, civil defence, the army, the police and private investigators need reliable and effective solutions to manage their teams. GeoGeny is a geo-relational system that is used by the protection service which protects people and goods. GeoGeny ensures that these demanding trade bodies have proven know-how at their disposal as well as equipment and software that is as pragmatic as it is efficient.

The Montreux Jazz Festival’s security forces’ command centre is benefiting from the advantages of GeoGeny for the second consecutive year. The positioning of police cars and firemen, ambulances, life guards and those patrolling on foot is shown on a central screen. All the above mentioned bodies are permanently linked up to the command centre, by GMS, GPRS and SMS. Knowing perfectly what’s happening in the field, the operator manages their forces and sends orders with optimum efficiency.

Some terminals, worn on a belt, are additionally equipped with an alarm button that offers maximum security to isolated workers and to those who are carrying out risky jobs. This allows them to be connected directly and discreetly to the post operator, thus further guaranteeing that they will get prompt help if there’s a problem - wherever they happen to be.

Here is the device, called Secufone, it's designed and manufactured by a joint venture between them and another swiss cell-phone company: Precisa: Why do I blog this? even though the situation they develop technology for a rather centralized (control room) than decentralized (I am more focused on spatial coordination in decentralized settings), it's interesting to see how it looks like. I would be happy to check their logfiles (even anonymized!) to see how poeople use such tools, especially self-declared positions (through SMS) versus GPS automatic positioning. There would be a lot to learn from this in terms of users' acceptance, users' reactions to the technology (how do they behave if they cannot be positionned or if they cannot communicate?). It seems that they use such information to improve their design, as one of interns told us.

Automatic corpus analysis

This morning at EPFL, we had a very interesting talk by Carolyn Rosé (Carnegie Mellon University) about automatic corpus analysis. There is a summary of this work in a paper she wrote for CSCL 2005: Supporting CSCL with Automatic Corpus Analysis Technology:

Process analyses are becoming more and more standard in research on computer-supported collaborative learning. This paper presents the rational as well as results of an evaluation of a tool called TagHelper, designed for streamlining the process of multi-dimensional analysis of the collaborative learning process. In comparison with a hand-coded corpus coded with a 7 dimensional coding scheme, TagHelper is able to achieve an acceptable level of agreement (Cohen's Kappa of .7 or more) along 6 out of 7 of the dimensions when we commit only to the portion of the corpus where the predictor has the highest certainty. In 5 of those cases, the percentage of the corpus where the predictor is confident enough to commit a code is at least 88% of the corpus. Consequences for theory-building with respect to automatic corpus analysis are formulated. Potential applications as a support tool for process analyses, as real-time support for facilitators of on-line discussions, and for the development of more adaptive instructional support for computer-supported collaboration are discussed.

Why do I blog this? coding corpus is both time-consuming and tedious (I like this quote: "Between the training and the coding itself, one quarter of the total duration of the research project was used for the coding of collaborative processes"). Automatic could support coding of natural language corpus data, it would facilitate and potentially improve quantitative process analyses.