[MyResearch] Well I think this is my phd research plan

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I finished writing my phd research plan, it is here (.pdf). The provisional title is Analysing the Impacts of Location-Awareness on Mobile Collaboration

Location-based services recently happened to be one of the new cutting edge technology in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. This project focuses on its collaborative uses: how group of people benefits from knowing others’ whereabouts when working together on a joint activity. For that matter, we plan to design a collaborative mobile environment in which we will test how a location awareness tool modifies the group interactions and communications, the way they perform a joint task as well as how they rely on this spatial information to coordinate. Series of experiments will be ran on this platform so that we could figure out how location awareness impacts group collaboration. We also aim at developing a computational model in the form of a XML framework to describe groups’ interactions in space. This model will enable the analysis and parsing of the data collected so that we could find and visualize patterns, do comparisons and explicitly represents which spatial features are meaningful and relevant for mobile collaboration. From all the results, this PhD will put forward guidelines for the design of efficient location-based services. This proposal emerges from previous research in virtual environment that show the importance of location information in group collaboration.

[Locative Media] Chris' location tool

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Chris now displays his current location (+ location history) on hiy blog thanks to a nice hack involving horrible acronyms involving the letter 'g' like GPS or GSM . mmmh I 'm joking, it's actually very smart and simple:

The setup is this - Pretec BluetoothGPS (that also has a nifty data logger, which isn't used here), GSM Tracker, a Nokia 6600, and a custom written server program on my webserver

He's also displaying his data with RDF and RSS which is interesting (for people who want do do computation or other strange manipulation with them). Moreover, what is perhaps more interesting, is his conclusion:

A bigger question is why publish this information in public. I must admit I'm not overly happy with giving everyone access to this data, but then again, this kind of service is the near-future that designers like myself have been preaching for years. It will cause privacy problems, it will cause social embarassment, it may change the way I live. Unless I try it myself, I will never know what unexpected consequences publishing this information will have.

That is indeed true even though I would have the same privacy concerns. The point is for whom this kind of person is this meaningfull. I actually do not know Chris so it's not very relevant for me apart that I can discover what he's doing. However, for anne, it's different since they are familiar:

What I find curious is how knowing this immediately makes me think of Chris shielding me from the London rain this past spring, and I smile. It's such a lovely way to draw out a series of movements and memories in space and time.

That leads me to my own research: what are the inference people make about other's location. Here we have a concrete example which is more related to affective (friends' memories) than problem-solving tasks (for people who don't understand why I talk about. problem solving, I will just say that my phd deal with the effects of location awareness in collaborative problem solving).

[Research] Thursday Workshop

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Here is the outline of our workshop about Spatial Awareness in Collaboration and Group Interaction:

1. Introduction to the topic of “Spatial/Context Awareness and Collaboration” by Mike Sharples 20minutes 2. Paper presentation (7 papers, 5minutes for each) 45 minutes 3. Activity: “context awareness for collaboration: prototype your research ideas” 90minutes
  • presentation of the activity: 4 groups of 5-6 persons (each group should have a leader: one of the papers’ author) have to design the spatial awareness tool of their dream. This device should support collaborative work/learning. A scenario template (description hereafter) and an example will be provided to help the participants.
  • group work: each group has to brainstorm about which idea to realize and the reasons why, following the hereafter template. After 20minutes we will check if there is no overlap between the projects. If there are, we will advise groups to choose another direction or to emphasise a different aspects.
  • physical design of the idea: the group is required to represent their concepts using low tech prototyping techniques and to prepare the presentation.

4. Knowledge sharing: each group present their own project and a knowledge map is built on the wall linking all the key ideas and the connections with other projects/ideas out there 40minutes 5. Discussion, wrapping-ups, exchanging contacts, setting up a possible follow up 30-45minutes

[Weird] Dog thong to prevent from gassy discharges

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The dogone seems really appealing!

The Dogone - Dog Gas Neutralizing Pad is a comfortable and least intrusive means for deodorizing gassy discharges in a thong design. This will eliminate pet odors and dog odors from flatus or flatulence.

Uses our famous activated charcoal cloth (washable and reusable)! A starter hole is placed in the cloth in order to help you locate the suggested tail hole. Carefully measure tail and cut-out hole to proper size. Elastic straps are used for flexibility. Suspender clips are used to make the garment totally adjustable. They also provide quick release for allowing the dog out to do his business.

[Prospective] Which model to create and support innovation?

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Interesting new debate in France: a think tank-like mission lead by J.L. Beffa (CEO of Saint Gobain) was asked by the French government to think about different way to create and support innovation. They published a report in which they promote the japanese and scandinavian models rather than the american one. Using private/public mixed funding they want to accelerate 'transfer' between universities and private companies... going back to the 60s with big projects like Ariane, Airbus, the TGV and so on... Well nothing new under the sun, but it's always nice to have this kind of debate.

[Weird] The Simspons turned to be true: tomacco

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Via fab, it seems that reality has imitated "The Simpsons."

Now a "Simpsons" fan in Oregon has crossed a tomato plant with a tobacco plant to create a new bit of weirdo flora he calls a tomacco (pronounced tuh-MACK-o). His inspiration: a 1999 episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer gets rich by creating a tomato-tobacco hybrid that tastes nasty but is wildly addictive. "I knew it was scientifically possible," said Rob Baur,

[Space and Place] Collaborative Photography in a Rio Favela

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What a nice project! The author bought 20 camera and gave them to kids in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio. The webiste shows the picture they took. Cheap collaborative photography!

I was thinking about how much the kids enjoyed using my camera, and wouldn't it be interesting to see what they photographed on their own, if they had their own cameras. And so The Plan was formed. A few of us from the hostel spent the next several hours buying out the disposable camera inventory of every street-side camera store we could find.

[Research] Coordination Theories

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Few random notes:Malone and Crowston [1994] were the first to propose an interdisciplinary science of coordination, as coordination problems are also addressed, for example, in Computer Science. They claim the existence of dependencies between activities or entities. The goal of coordination is to manage these dependencies in such a way that the activities become parts of a purposeful whole.

According to [Habermas, 1984], coordination becomes an issue only if all participants acknowledge that they are dependent on one another to act in the current situation. Habermas' shared background = Clark's common ground

[Prospective] Freegan: a step toward bruce sterling's distraction proles

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Accoridng to newsday (via), a freegan is:

"Freegan" comes from the term vegan - a person who does not eat meat or animal products for health or ethical reasons. Freegans take it one step further by eating food thrown away by stores and restaurants, to avoid waste and limit their impact on the environment. They say that by not buying food, they're boycotting a capitalist consumer society that needlessly slaughters animals and harms the environment by mass-producing nonessential food, much of which ends up in landfills.

That reminds me the proles in Bruce Stlering's novel Distraction who create/recycle their own food...

[MyResearch] Few thoughts after a meeting with Stefano

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I should try to find a model of coordination that articulate:- the difference between activity/action(problem solving level) - the coordination mechanism for each level (activity: clark's coordination key; action: malone and crowston's 3 dependency mechanisms)

Having this could be helpful to discriminate actions/interactions in my data/logs

Before the self-confrontation to the replay tool, ask 2-3 open questions to the group: how was it? did you find it difficult? did you enjoy it? The point would be to gather coordination problems that occured during the game. The participant will also give me insights about what they considered as RELEVANT is their actions + partners' actions.

[Research] Bartlett MSc Virtual Environment Blog

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The MSc Virtual Environments at Bartlett School of graduate studies now has a blog. I am looking forward to read what they deal with.

The MSc/Graduate Diploma Virtual Environments (VE) explores the realm of virtual environments–the creation of functional digital desktop, "augmented" and immersive spaces, building and cities–within an architectural context.

Responding to the impact of virtual worlds and computer technology on the design of the built environment, the course focuses on the development of sophisticated skills and the theoretical basis required by design professionals at the forefront of their fields. The course integrates research undertaken in the Bartlett's VR Centre for the Built Environment into the teaching programme. It is expected that students will contribute to that growing body of knowledge.

They seem to have an interesting course about space:

This module covers the issues of automatic generation of virtual environments and emergent behaviours, including: • Generative modelling • Information Visualisation • Emergent Behaviour in complex systems

[Research] New paper

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I just finished the revised version of a paper submitted to Journal of Multimedia, Tools and Applications. It is called "Collaboration in a Multi-User Game: Impacts of an Awareness Tool on Mutual Modeling". It's actually my masters thesis (ouch ended 2 years ago).

This paper presents an experimental research that focuses on collaboration in a multi-player game. The aim of the project is to study the cognitive impacts of awareness tools, i.e. artifacts that allow users of a collaborative system to be aware of what is going on in the joint virtual environment. The focus is on finding an effect on performance as well as on the representation an individual builds of what his partner knows, plans and intends to do (i.e. mutual modeling). We find that using awareness tools has a significant effect by improving task performance. However, the players who were provided with this tool did not show any improvement of their mutual modeling. Further analysis on contrasted groups revealed that there was an effect of the awareness tool on mutual modeling for players who spent a large amount of time using the tool.