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Toward understanding the importance of gesture in distributed scientific collaboration

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Abstract

In this paper, we explore the importance of gesture in distributed, scientific collaboration. In particular, we are interested in the impact that distance has when remote collaborators are working together with digital artifacts that are complex (and often visual) in form, such as data that results from complex scientific simulations. We call this artifact-centric collaboration. In order to understand such collaborations, we performed a longitudinal ethnographic study of a group of collaborating scientific researchers. We observed a single research group during its regular research meetings, performing over 18 h of observations spanning a 5-month period. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of two meetings where artifact interaction is prominent, one where all participants are collocated and the other where participants are distributed. Our analysis consists of a detailed coding of the artifact-centric interactions in both meetings as well as an analysis of these interactions. We conclude the paper with a summary of our findings, including a set of guidelines that can be used to inform the design of collaboration software that supports distributed, artifact-centric collaboration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Brian Corrie & Margaret-Anne Storey

Authors
  1. Brian Corrie
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  2. Margaret-Anne Storey
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Correspondence to Brian Corrie.

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Categories and Subject Descriptors

H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces–computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative computing.

H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces–input devices and strategies, interaction styles

General Terms

Performance · Experimentation · Design · Human Factors

Brian Corrie is a part-time Ph.D. student at the University of Victoria. His research interests are in advanced collaborative environments, computer graphics, scientific visualization, virtual environments (VE), and coupling computational simulation to visualization. Brian is also the Collaboration and Visualization Coordinator for the WestGrid Collaboration and Visualization group and Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences. Over the last 10 years, Brian has held a number of applied research positions. These include positions as the Project Leader for the Collaborative VE project at the Australian National University, the Technical Leader at the Virtual Environment Technology Centre at the National Research Council of Canada, and the Focus Area Leader for the Immersive and Collaborative Environments Research Program at the New Media Innovation Centre in Vancouver. He is currently combining these experiences with his research to explore advanced collaborative environments.

Margaret-Anne Storey is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, a Visiting Scientist at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Toronto, and a Canada Research Chair in Human-Computer Interaction for Software Engineering. Her research passion is to understand how technology can help people explore, understand, and share complex information and knowledge. She applies and evaluates techniques from knowledge engineering and visual interface design to applications such as reverse engineering of legacy software, medical ontology development, digital image management, and learning in Web-based environments.

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Corrie, B., Storey, MA. Toward understanding the importance of gesture in distributed scientific collaboration. Knowl Inf Syst 13, 143–171 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-006-0062-2

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