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Collaboration surrounding beacon use during companion avalanche rescue

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

When facing an avalanche, backcountry skiers need to work effectively both individually and as a group to rescue buried victims. If they don't, death is likely. One of the tools used by each person is a digital beacon that transmits an electromagnetic signal. If buried, others use their beacons to locate victims by searching for their signals, and then dig them out. This study focuses on the collaborative practices of avalanche rescue and the interactions with beacons while backcountry skiing. We conducted interviews with backcountry recreationists and experts, and we observed avalanche rescue practice scenarios. Our results highlight aspects and challenges of mental representation, trust, distributed cognition, and practice. Implications include three considerations for the redesign of beacons: simplicity, visibility and practice.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
      February 2014
      1600 pages
      ISBN:9781450325400
      DOI:10.1145/2531602
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      Published: 15 February 2014

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      Author Tags

      1. avalanche
      2. backcountry
      3. beacon
      4. collaboration
      5. communication
      6. distributed cognition
      7. ski
      8. snowboard
      9. transceiver

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      February 15 - 19, 2014
      Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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      CSCW '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 134 of 497 submissions, 27%;
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      • (2023)Glove Navigator for Skiing in the MountainsProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3631791(509-511)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
      • (2023)Becoming a Speleologist: Design Implications for Coordination in Wild Outdoor EnvironmentsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581545(1-12)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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