The challenges of ambient collaboration

ABSTRACT

Collaborative capabilities are a hallmark of a new generation of networked applications. While traditional collaboration puts the computer in the foreground to help users interface through personal computing portholes, ambient collaboration reverses this paradigm by placing the machine in the background and enabling users to synergistically share a workspace with focus on mutual presence and tasks rather than tools. Although various ambient collaborative systems have been deployed in recent years, the field itself lacks a conceptual framework, in particular in contrast with legacy collaborative technologies. We introduce a simple systematics and roadmap for ambient collaboration to identify opportunities and challenges unique to this class of computing.

REFERENCES

• 1: Gregory D. Abowd , Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.7 n.1, p.29-58, March 2000 [doi>10.1145/344949.344988]
• 2: Benford, S., Bowers, J., Fahlen, L., Mariani, J., and Rodden, T. Supporting Cooperative work in Virtual Environments. The Computer Journal, 37:8, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• 3: Bly, S.A., Harrison, S.R., Irwin, S. Media Spaces: Video, Audio, and Computing, CACM, No. 1, Vol. 35, Jan. 1993.
• 4: Joëlle Coutaz , James L. Crowley , Simon Dobson , David Garlan, Context is key, Communications of the ACM, v.48 n.3, March 2005 [doi>10.1145/1047671.1047703]
• 5: Catherine Durnell Cramton, The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration, Organization Science, v.12 n.3, p.346-371, May 2001 [doi>10.1287/orsc.12.3.346.10098]
• 6: Thomas Erickson , David N. Smith , Wendy A. Kellogg , Mark Laff , John T. Richards , Erin Bradner, Socially translucent systems: social proxies, persistent conversation, and the design of “babble”, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.72-79, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.302997]
• 7: William W. Gaver, The affordances of media spaces for collaboration, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.17-24, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.371596]
• 8: Grudin, J. Why groupware applications fail: Problems in design and evaluation. Office: Technology and People, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1989, 245--264.
• 9: Jackson, R., and Winn, W. Collaboration and Learning in Immersive Virtual Environments. Proc. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning '99.
• 10: H. Lieberman , T. Selker, Out of context: computer systems that adapt to, and learn from, context, IBM Systems Journal, v.39 n.3-4, p.617-632, July 2000
• 11: University of California at Berkeley, Recovery Oriented Computing: A New Research Agenda for a New Century, Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, p.247, February 02-06, 2002
• 12: Röcker C., Prante Th., Streitz N. A., and van Alphen, D. Using Ambient Displays and Smart Artefacts to Support Community Interaction in Distributed Teams, Proc. OZCHI 2004, Australia, Nov. 2004.
• 13: Daniel M. Russell , Norbert A. Streitz , Terry Winograd, Building disappearing computers, Communications of the ACM, v.48 n.3, March 2005 [doi>10.1145/1047671.1047702]
• 14: Weiser, M. The Computer for the 21st Century, Scientific American, Sept. 1991, 94--104.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.0 GENERAL
      Subjects: System architectures

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

  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Collaborative computing

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Reliability

Keywords:
ambient media, contextual computing, tetherless group workspaces, ubiquitous collaboration