Abstract
On-site work of emergency service teams consists of highly cooperative tasks. Especially during distributed search and rescue tasks there is a constant mix of routinized and non-routinized activities. Within this paper we focus on the work practices of the German Red Cross Rescue Dog Units who deal with several uncertainties regarding the involved dogs, the fragility of the respective situations as well as issues of using technologies under enormous time pressure. Smart glasses provide possibilities for enhanced and hands-free interaction in various contexts and a number of approaches have already been applied, aiming at efficient use of the respective technological innovation in private and professional contexts. However, the collaborative potential of smart glasses in time-critical and uncertain situations is still unexplored. Our design case study examines how the on-site work of emergency service teams can be supported by smart glasses: Based on examining the work practices of the German Red Cross Rescue Dogs, we introduce ‘RescueGlass’ as a coordinative concept, encompassing hands-free head-mounted display (HMD) application as well as a corresponding smartphone application. Finally, we describe the evaluation of its use in the field of emergency response and management. We show how current features such as ‘fog of war’ or various sensors support the cooperative practices of dog handlers, and outline current technical limitations offering future research questions. Our paper provides an initial design probe using smart glasses to engage in the field of collaborative professional mobile tasks.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Azuma, Ronald (1997). A survey of augmented reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 355–385.
Bristow, Huw W.; Chris Baber; James Cross; James F. Knight; and Sandra I. Woolley (2004). Defining and evaluating context for wearable computing. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), vol. 60, no. 5–6, pp. 798–819.
Carenzo, Luca; Federico Lorenzo Barra; Pier Luigi Ingrassia; Davide Colombo; Alessandro Costa; and Francesco Della Corte (2014). Disaster medicine through Google Glass. European Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 222–225.
Convertino, Gregorio; Helena M. Mentis; Aleksandra Slavkovic; Mary Beth Rosson; and John M. Carroll (2011). Supporting common ground and awareness in emergency management planning. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 18, no. 4, Article 22, pp. 1–34.
Darby, Jason (2009). Going to War: Creating Computer War Games. Boston: Course Technology PTR.
Datcu, Dragos; Marina Cidota; Heide Lukosch; and Stephan Lukosch (2014). On the usability of augmented reality for information exchange in teams from the security domain. In JISIC 2014. IEEE Joint Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, 24–26 September 2014. New York: IEEE, pp. 160–167.
Dörner, Ralf; Wolfgang Broll; Paul Grimm; and Bernhard Jung (eds.) (2013). Virtual und Augmented Reality (VR / AR): Grundlagen und Methoden der Virtuellen und Augmentierten Realität. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Fuentes Fernández, María del Rocío; Carlos Iván Tinajar Bernabe; and Roberto Razo Rodríguez (2014). Red Cross Triage App Design for Augmented Reality Glasses. In MexIHC 2014. Proceedings of the V Mexican Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Oaxaca, Mexico, 3–5 November 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 11–14.
Friberg, Therese; Stephan Prödel; and Rainer Koch (2011). Information Quality Criteria and their Importance for Experts in Crisis Situations. In S. R. Hiltz; M. S. Pfaff; L. Plotnick; and A. C. Robinson (eds.): ISCRAM 2012. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Lisbon, Portugal, 8–11 May 2011. Brussels: ISCRAM Association, pp. 145–154.
Funk, Markus; Robin Boldt; Bastian Pfleging; Max Pfeiffer; Niels Henze; and Albrecht Schmidt (2014). Representing indoor location of objects on wearable computers with head-mounted displays. In T. Terada; M. Inami; K. Kunze; and T. Nojima (eds.): AH ‘14. Proceedings of the 5th Augmented Human International Conference, Kobe, Japan, 7–9 March 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 18–21.
Genaro Motti, Vivian; and Kelly Caine (2014). Understanding the wearability of head-mounted devices from a human-centered perspective. In L. Dunne; T. Martin; and M. Beigl (eds.): UbiComp ‘14. Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, Seattle, WA, 13–17 September 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 83–86. https://doi.org/10.1145/2634317.2634340.
Grabowski, Martha; and Karlene Roberts (2011). High Reliability Virtual Organizations: Co-Adaptive Technology and Organizational Structures in Tsunami Warning Systems. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 18, no. 4, Article 19, pp. 1–23.
Hayes, Gillian R. (2011). The relationship of action research to human-computer interaction. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 18, no. 3, Article 15, pp. 1–20.
Heard, Jefferson; Sidharth Thakur; Jessica Losego; and Ken Galluppi (2014). Big Board: Teleconferencing Over Maps for Shared Situational Awareness. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 51–74.
Hearn, Gregory N.; Jo A. Tacchi; Marcus Foth; and June Lennie (2008). Action Research and New Media: Concepts, Methods and Cases. New York: Hampton Press.
Heath, Christian; and Paul Luff (1992). Collaboration and Control: Crisis Management and Multimedia Technology in London Underground Line Control Rooms. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 69–94.
Hertzum, Morten; and Jesper Simonsen (2015). Visual overview, oral detail: The use of an emergency-department whiteboard. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), vol. 82, pp. 21–30.
Hevner, Alan R.; and Samir Chatterjee (2010). Design Research in Information Systems: Theory and Practice. New York: Springer.
Hevner, Alan R.; Salvatore T. March; Jinsoo Park; and Sudha Ram (2004). Design science in information systems research. MIS Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 75–105.
Hu, Grace; Lily Chen; Johanna Okerlund; and Orit Shaer (2015). Exploring the Use of Google Glass in Wet Laboratories. In B. Begole; J. Kim; K. Inkpen; and W. Woo (eds.): CHI EA ‘15. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 18–23 April 2015. New York: ACM Press, pp. 2103–2108.
Ishimaru, Shoya; Kai Kunze; Koichi Kise; Jens Weppner; Andreas Dengel; Paul Lukowicz; and Andreas Bulling (2014). In the blink of an eye: combining head motion and eye blink frequency for activity recognition with Google Glass. In T. Terada; M. Inami; K. Kunze; and T. Nojima (eds.): AH ‘14. Proceedings of the 5th Augmented Human International Conference, Kobe, Japan, 7–9 March 2014. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 15–18.
Johnson, Steven; Madeleine Gibson; and Bilge Mutlu (2015). Handheld or Handsfree? Remote Collaboration via Lightweight Head-Mounted Displays and Handheld Devices. In D. Cosley; A. Forte; L. Ciolfi; and D. McDonald (eds.): CSCW ‘15. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Vancouver, Canada, 14–18 March 2015. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1825–1836.
Kipper, Greg; and Joseph Rampolla (2012). Augmented Reality: An Emerging Technologies Guide to AR. Waltham: Elsevier.
Klinke, Harald; and Lars Stamm (2013). Bilder der Gegenwart: Aspekte und Perspektiven des digitalen Wandels. Norderstedt: Graphentis Verlag.
Kwon, Gyu Hyun; Tonya L. Smith-Jackson; and Charles W. Bostian (2011). Socio-cognitive aspects of interoperability: Understanding communication task environments among different organizations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 18, no. 4, Article 20, pp. 1–21.
Leue, M. C. Claudia; Timothy Jung; and Dario tom Dieck (2015). Google glass augmented reality: Generic learning outcomes for art galleries. In I. Tussyadiah and A. Inversini (eds.): Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2015. Cham: Springer, pp. 463–476.
Lewin, Kurt (1958). Group Decision and Social Change. New York: Holt; Rinehart and Winston.
Ley, Benedikt; Volkmar Pipek; Christian Reuter; and Torben Wiedenhoefer (2012). Supporting improvisation work in inter-organizational crisis management. In J. A. Konstan; E. H. Chi; and K. Höök (eds.): CHI ‘12. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, Texas, 5–10 May 2012. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1529–1538.
Ley, Benedikt; Thomas Ludwig; Volkmar Pipek; Dave Randall; Christian Reuter; and Torben Wiedenhoefer (2014). Information and Expertise Sharing in Inter-Organizational Crisis Management. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 23, no. 4–6, pp. 347–387.
Liu, Sophia B. (2014). Crisis Crowdsourcing Framework: Designing Strategic Configurations of Crowdsourcing for the Emergency Management Domain. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 23, no. 4–6, pp. 389–443.
Ludwig, Thomas; Christian Reuter; and Volkmar Pipek (2013). What You See Is What I Need: Mobile Reporting Practices in Emergencies. In O. W. Bertelsen; L. Ciolfi; A. Grasso; and G. A. Papadopoulos (eds.): ECSCW 2013. Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Paphos, Cyprus, 21–25 September 2013. London: Springer, pp. 181–206.
Ludwig, Thomas; Christian Reuter; and Volkmar Pipek (2015). Social Haystack: Dynamic Quality Assessment of Citizen-Generated Content during Emergencies. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 21, no. 4, Article 17, pp. 1–27.
Lukosch, Stephan; Mark Billinghurst; Leila Alem; and Kiyoshi Kiyokawa (2015a). Collaboration in Augmented Reality. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 515–525.
Lukosch, Stephan; Heide Lukosch; Dragoş Datcu; and Marina Cidota (2015b). Providing Information on the Spot: Using Augmented Reality for Situational Awareness in the Security Domain. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 613–664.
Mann, Steve (2012a). “GlassEyes”: The Theory of EyeTap Digital Eye Glass. Supplemental material for “Through the Glass, Lightly.” IEEE Technology and Society, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 10–14.
Mann, Steve (2012b). Through the Glass, Lightly [Viewpoint]. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 10–14.
Mann, Steve (2014). Wearable Computing. In M. Soegaard and R. F. Dam (eds.): The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd ed. Aarhus: The Interaction Design Foundation.
McNaney, Rísin; John Vines; Daniel Roggen; Madeline Balaam; Pengfei Zhang; Ivan Poliakov; and Patrick Olivier (2014). Exploring the acceptability of google glass as an everyday assistive device for people with parkinson’s. In CHI ‘14. Proceedings of the 2014 annual ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto, Canada, 26 April - 1 May 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 2551–2554.
Mendonça, David (2007). Decision Support for Improvisation in Response to Extreme Events: Learning from the Response to the 2001 World Trade Center Attack. Decision Support Systems, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 952–967.
Mentler, Tilo; Janosch Kappel; Lutz Wünsch; and Michael Herczeg (2016). Photo-enriched Documentation during Surgeries with Google Glass: An Exploration Usability Study in a Department of Paediatric Surgery. I-Com Journal of Interactive Media, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 171–178.
Muensterer, O. J. Oliver J.; Martin Lacher; Christoph Zoeller; Matthew Bronstein; and Joachim Kübler (2014). Google Glass in pediatric surgery: an exploratory study. International Journal of Surgery, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 281–289.
Nilsson, Susanna; Björn J. E. Johansson; and Arne Jönsson (2011). Cross-organizational collaboration supported by Augmented Reality. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 17, no. 10, pp. 1380–1392.
Parslow, Graham R. (2014). Commentary: Google glass: A head-up display to facilitate teaching and learning. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 91–92.
Paton, Douglas (2003). Stress in disaster response: a risk management approach. Disaster Prevention and Management, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 203–209.
Pipek, Volkmar; Sophia B. Liu; and Andruid Kerne (2014). Crisis Informatics and Collaboration: A Brief Introduction. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 23, no. 4–6, pp. 339–345.
Poelman, Ronald; Oytun Akman; Stephan Lukosch; and Pieter Jonker (2012). As if Being There: Mediated Reality for Crime Scene Investigation. In CSCW ‘12. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Seattle, Washington, 11–15 February 2012. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1267–1276.
Ramirez, Leonardo; Tobias Dyrks; Jan Gerwinski; Matthias Betz; Markus Scholz; and Volker Wulf (2012). Landmarke: an ad hoc deployable ubicomp infrastructure to support indoor navigation of firefighters. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (PUC), vol. 16, no. 8, pp. 1025–1038.
Randall, David; Richard Harper; and Mark Rouncefield (2007). Fieldwork for Design: Theory and Practice. London: Springer.
Reuter, Christian; Thomas Ludwig; and Volkmar Pipek (2014). Ad Hoc Participation in Situation Assessment: Supporting Mobile Collaboration in Emergencies. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 21, no. 5, Article 26, pp. 1–26.
Reuter, Christian; Thomas Ludwig; Therese Friberg; Sylvia Pratzler-Wanczura; and Alexis Gizikis (2015a). Social Media and Emergency Services? Interview Study on Current and Potential Use in 7 European Countries. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM), vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 36–58.
Reuter, Christian; Thomas Ludwig; Timo Funke; and Volkmar Pipek (2015b). SOMAP: Network Independent Social-Offline-Map-Mashup. In L. Palen; M. Büscher; T. Comes; and A. L. Hughes (eds.): ISCRAM 2015. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Kristiansand, Norway, 24–27 May 2015. Brussels: ISCRAM Association, pp. 100–109.
Rolland, Jannick P.; Frank Biocca; Felix Hamza-Lup; Yanggang Ha; and Ricardo Martins (2005). Development of Head-Mounted Projection Displays for Distributed, Collaborative, Augmented Reality Applications. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 528–549.
Sánchez, Jesús M.; Álvaro Carrera; Carlos Á. Iglesias; and Emilio Serrano (2016). A Participatory Agent-Based Simulation for Indoor Evacuation Supported by Google Glass. IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 1360–1377.
Schafer, Wendy; Craig H. Ganoe; and John M. Carroll (2007). Supporting Community Emergency Management Planning through a Geocollaboration Software Architecture. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 16, no. 4–5, pp. 501–537.
Schnier, Christian; Karola Pitsch; Angelika Dierker; and Thomas Hermann (2011). Collaboration in Augmented Reality: How to establish coordination and joint attention? In S. Bødker; N. O. Bouvin; V. Wulf; L. Ciolfi; and W. Lutters (eds.): ECSCW 2011. Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Aarhus, Denmark, 24–28 September 2011. London: Springer, pp. 405–416.
Semaan, Bryan; and Gloria Mark (2011). Technology-mediated social arrangements to resolve breakdowns in infrastructure during ongoing disruption. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 18, no. 4, Article 21, pp. 1–21.
Starner, Thad (2013). Project Glass: An Extension of the Self. IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 14–16. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2013.35.
Strauss, Anselm L. (1987). Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.
Tönnis, Marcus (2010). Augmented Reality. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Turoff, Murray; Starr Roxanne Hiltz; Connie White; Linda Plotnick; Art Hendela; and Xiang Yao (2009). The past as the future of emergency preparedness and management. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM), vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 12–28.
Tursi, Gianluca; Martina Deplano; and Giancarlo Ruffo (2014). AIRCacher: Virtual Geocaching Powered with Augmented Reality. In HT ‘14. Proceedings of the 25th ACM conference on Hypertext and social media, Santiago, Chile, 1–4 September 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 330–332.
Twidale, Michael; David Randall; and Richard Bentley (1994). Situated evaluation for cooperative systems. In CSCW ‘94. Proceedings of the 1994 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Chapel Hill, NC, 22–26 October 1994. New York: ACM Press, pp. 441–452.
van Krevelen, Rick; and Ronald Poelman (2010). A Survey of Augmented Reality Technologies, Applications and Limitations. The International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 1–20.
Weiser, Mark (1999). The computer for the 21st century. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 3–11.
Wilson, J.; and Patricia Wright (2009). Head-mounted display efficacy study to aid first responder indoor navigation. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, vol. 223, no. 3, pp. 675–688.
Wu, Leslie; Jesse Cirimele; Jonathan Bassen; Kristen Leach; Stuart Card; Larry Chu; … Scott Klemmer (2013). Head-mounted and multi-surface displays support emergency medical teams. In A. Bruckman; S. Counts; C. Lampe; and L. Terveen (eds.): CSCW ‘13. Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, San Antonio, Texas, 23–27 February 2013. New York: ACM Press, pp. 279–282.
Wulf, Volker; Markus Rohde; Volkmar Pipek; and Gunnar Stevens (2011). Engaging with practices: design case studies as a research framework in CSCW. In S. Fussell; W. Lutters; M. R. Morris; and M. Reddy (eds.): CSCW’ 11. Proceedings of the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Hangzhou, China, 19–23 March 2011. New York: ACM Press, pp. 505–512.
Zimmerman, John; Jodi Forlizzi; and Shelley Evenson (2007). Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In M. B. Rosson and D. Gilmore (eds.): CHI ‘07. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, San Jose, Calif., 30 April - 3 May 2007. New York: ACM Press, pp. 493–502.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Jan-Oliver Huhn for his contribution to the implementation of RescueGlass as well as David Maslim for his contribution in the design of PEASI.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Reuter, C., Ludwig, T. & Mischur, P. RescueGlass: Collaborative Applications involving Head-Mounted Displays for Red Cross Rescue Dog Units. Comput Supported Coop Work 28, 209–246 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-018-9339-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-018-9339-8