"Who's in charge here?" communicating across unequal computer platforms

ABSTRACT

People use personal data assistants in the field to collect data and to communicate with others both in the field and office. The individual in the office invariably has a laptop or a high-end personal workstation and thus, significantly more computing power, more screen real estate, and higher volume input devices, such as a mouse and keyboard. These differences give the high-end user the ability to represent and manipulate collaborative tasks more effectively. It is therefore useful to know what impact these differences have on work performance and work communications. Four different platform combinations involving a PC and a PDA were used to examine the effect of communicating via heterogeneous computer platforms. The PC platform used a mouse, a keyboard, and a 3-dimensional screen display. The PDA platform used a stylus, soft buttons, and a 2-dimensional screen display. A variation of the Tetris wall-building game called Slow Tetris was used as the subjects' collaborative task. A second factor in the experiment was role asymmetry. One subject was arbitrarily put in charge of the task solution in all of the combinations. An analysis of the solution times found that subjects with mixed platforms worked slower than their homogeneous counterparts, that is, a person in charge with a PC worked faster if his partner had a PC. An in-depth analysis of the communication patterns found significant differences in the exchanges between heterogeneous and homogenous combinations. The PC-to-PDA combination (with the person on the PC in charge of the solution) took significantly more time than the PC-to-PC combination. This extra time appears to come from the disadvantage of having a partner on the PDA who is unable to help in solving the problems. The PDA-to-PC combination took approximately the same amount of time as the PDA-to-PDA combination despite having one team member with a better representation. This member was, unfortunately, not in charge of the solution. The PDA-to-PC heterogeneous combination exhibited more direction giving, less one-sided collaboration, and more takeover attempts than any of the other combinations. Overall, roles were maintained in the partnerships except for the person with the PDA directing the person with the PC.

REFERENCES

• 1: Wendy S. Ark , D. Christopher Dryer , Ted Selker , Shumin Zhai, Representation Matters: The Effect of 3D Objects and a Spatial Metaphor in a Graphical User Interface, Proceedings of HCI on People and Computers XIII, p.209-219, January 1998
• 2: M. Billinghurst , H. Kato , S. Bee , J. Bowskill, Asymmetries in Collaborative Wearable Interfaces, Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, p.133, October 18-19, 1999
• 3: Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1978. Universals in language: Politeness phenomena. In Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, E. N. Goody, Ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 56--289.
• 4: Stuart K. Card , Thomas P. Moran , Allen Newell, The keystroke-level model for user performance time with interactive systems, Communications of the ACM, v.23 n.7, p.396-410, July 1980 [doi>10.1145/358886.358895]
• 5: Clark, H. H. and Brennan, S. E. 1991. Grounding in communication. In Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine and S. D. Teasley, Eds. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC. 127--149.
• 6: Cohen, J. 1960. A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20, 1, 37--46.
• 7: D. C. Dryer , C. Eisbach , W. S. Ark, At what cost pervasive? a social computing view of mobile computing systems, IBM Systems Journal, v.38 n.4, p.652-676, Dec. 1999
• 8: Saul Greenberg , Carl Gutwin , Mark Roseman, Semantic Telepointers for Groupware, Proceedings of the 6th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OZCHI '96), p.54, November 24-27, 1996
• 9: Jon Hindmarsh , Mike Fraser , Christian Heath , Steve Benford , Chris Greenhalgh, Fragmented interaction: establishing mutual orientation in virtual environments, Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.217-226, November 14-18, 1998, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/289444.289496]
• 10: Matt Jones , Gary Marsden , Norliza Mohd-Nasir , Kevin Boone , George Buchanan, Improving Web interaction on small displays, Proceeding of the eighth international conference on World Wide Web, p.1129-1137, May 1999, Toronto, Canada
• 11: Tomonari Kamba , Shawn A. Elson , Terry Harpold , Tim Stamper , Piyawadee Sukaviriya, Using small screen space more efficiently, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.383-390, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/238386.238582]
• 12: Kraemer, H. C. 1982. Kappa coefficient. In Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences, S. Kotz and N. L. Johnson, Eds. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 352--354.
• 13: Robert E. Kraut , Mark D. Miller , Jane Siegel, Collaboration in performance of physical tasks: effects on outcomes and communication, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.57-66, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240190]
• 14: Krokoff, L. J., Gottman, J. L., and Hass, S. D. 1986. Validation of a global rapid couples interaction scoring system. Behav. Assess. 11, 65--79.
• 15: Landis, J. and Koch, G. G. 1977. The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33, 159--174.
• 16: Charlotte Linde, Who's in charge here?: Cooperative work and authority negotiation in police helicopter missions, Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.52-64, September 26-28, 1988, Portland, Oregon, United States [doi>10.1145/62266.62271]
• 17: Logitech, Inc. 2002. Magellan 3D-Space Mouse (Classic), Documentation. Available online at http://www.vrdepot.com/magelpg.htm.
• 18: Luff, P., Gilbert, N., and Frolich, D., Eds. 1990. Computers and Conversation. Academic Press, London.
• 19: MacKenzie, I. S. 1992. Fitts' law as a research and design tool in human computer interaction. Hum. Comput. Interact. 7, 1, 91--139.
• 20: MacKenzie, I. S. and Soukoreff, R. W. 2002. Text entry for mobile computing: Models and methods, theory and practice. Hum. Comput. Interact. 17, 2/3, 147--198.
• 21: Ivan Marsic, An architecture for heterogeneous groupware applications, Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering, p.475-484, May 12-19, 2001, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• 22: I. Marsic , A. Krebs , B. Dorohonceanu , M. Tremaine, Designing and Examining PC to Palm Collaboration, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'02)-Volume 1, p.47, January 07-10, 2002
• 23: Rosenthal, R. and Rosnow, R. L. 1985. Contrast Analysis: Focused Comparisons in the Analysis of Variance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
• 24: SavaJe Technologies. 2002. Java-based operating system for wireless devices. Documentation available online at http://www.savaje.com.
• 25: Sillars, A. 1986. Procedures for coding interpersonal conflict: The verbal tactics coding scheme (VTCS). Department of Communication Studies, University of Montana, Missoula, MT.
• 26: Anthony Steed , Mel Slater , Amela Sadagic , Adrian Bullock , Jolanda Tromp, Leadership and Collaboration in Shared Virtual Environments, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality, p.112, March 13-17, 1999
• 27: M. Stefik , D. G. Bobrow , G. Foster , S. Lanning , D. Tatar, WYSIWIS revised: early experiences with multiuser interfaces, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.5 n.2, p.147-167, April 1987 [doi>10.1145/27636.28056]
• 28: Deborah G. Tatar , Gregg Foster , Daniel G. Bobrow, Design for conversation: lessons from Cognoter, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.34 n.2, p.185-209, Feb. 1991 [doi>10.1016/0020-7373(91)90041-5]
• 29: Weiss, R. L., Hops, H., and Patterson, G. R. 1973. A framework for conceptualizing marital conflict: A technology for altering it, some data for evaluating it. In Critical Issues in Research and Practice: Proceedings of the Fourth Banff International Conference in Behavior Modification, F. W. Clark and L. A. Hamerlynck, Eds. 309--115.
• 30: Weiss, R. L. and Summers, K. L. 1983. The marital interaction coding system-III. In A Sourcebook of Marriage and Family Assessment, E. E. Filsinger, Ed. Sage Publishers, Beverly Hills, CA. 85--115.
• 31: Williams, E. 1977. Experimental comparisons of face-to-face and mediated communication: A review. Psycholog. Bull. 84, 963--976.
• 32: Wynn, E. H. 1979. Office Conversation as an Information Medium. Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Distributed applications

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces

  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Synchronous interaction; Computer-supported cooperative work; Evaluation/methodology; Collaborative computing

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
Collaboration differences, heterogeneous computing, media effects, mobile computing