Monthly Archive for October, 2006

K. N. Purnell, R. T. Solman, and J. Sweller. The effects of technical illustrations on cognitive load. Instructional Science, (20):443–462, 1991. [pdf]

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The effects on cognitive resources of splitting attention between technical illustrations and their descriptors were examined in four experiments with high school students of good to very good reading ability. Experiment 1 looked at the effect of having descriptors incorporated within technical illustrations and found that there was an observable advantage for combined formats over split formats. In Experiments 2,3 and 4 the combined form of presenting a technical illustration was superior to having the descriptors for the technical illustration in an adjacent key. Attempts to obtain increases in the advantage for the combined format with reinforcement failed to demonstrate any reliable result. These data suggested that the format of technical illustrations which required students to integrate mentally disparate sources of information imposes a heavy cognitiveload. It was concluded that the format of technical illustrations was superior when descriptors were contained within the diagram as cognitive resources were not required to integrate the descriptors and the diagram.

The results of this work show that technical material consisting of mutually referring, disparate sources of information that cannot be understood in isolation should be integrated into a unitary entity. Using this solution, the authors found both memory of those elements and the ability to make inferences beyond those elements to be facilitated compared to the frequently used structures that incorporate distinct sources of information. In the picture below, the experimental material used with the split key, on the left, and with the combined key, on the right.

Tags: information visualization, learning technology, maps, pedagogy, cognitive science

O. W. Bertelsen and S. Bodker. Cooperation in massively distributed information spaces. In Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work ECSCW’01, Bonn, Germany, 16-20 September 2001. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [pdf]

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Common information spaces are often, implicitly or explicitly, viewed as something that can be accessed in toto from one (of many) location. Our studies of wastewater treatment plants show how such massively distributed spaces challenge many of the ways that CSCW view common information spaces. The studies fundamentally challenge the idea that common information spaces are about access to everything, everywhere. Participation in optimisation is introduced as an important feature of work tied to the moving around in physical space. In the CSCW literature, peripheral awareness and at a glance overview are mostly connected with the coordination of activities within a control room or in similar co-located circumstances. It is concluded that this focus on shoulder to shoulder cooperation has to be supplemented with studies of cooperation through massively distributed information spaces.

This study reports an interesting field study where some of the classical CSCW concepts are reconsidered, as for instance the notion of peripheral awareness that usually is conceived as local and immediate (”at a glance”), while in the study the authors found evidences of this awareness embedded in how people move about in the plant. The observed users were able to identify the location of each other in the plant despite the fact that they could not see and hear each other.

This study fundamentally challenge the idea that common information spaces are about access to everything, everywhere. The overview created by the wastewater workers cannot be retrieved from any central position in the plant; neither it can be separated from being physically present in particular parts of the plant.

The authors conclude that the watewater plant, in contrast to many cases described in the CSCW literature, and in contrast to such ideal cooperation devises as common artifacts, reveals a continuum of places of which many are geographycally fluent: “spaces of understood reality”, spaces that are dealt with through movement, and movement as a precondition for learning, participation and experimentation.

Tags: Computer Supported Collaborative Work, ethnography, geography, human computer interaction, interaction design, location awareness

P. Dourish. Re-space-ing place: “place” and “space” ten years on. In Proceedings of the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW06), Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 4-8 2006. Association for Computing Machinery. [pdf]

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This paper elaborate further Harrison and Dourish’s paper on how place is the social product of space. The author stress out how, due to recent technological development, this idea needs to be reconsidered and adjusted.

First of all, the initial paper seems to suggest that space is perceived before place emerges. This is called the layer-cake model. His current view would see exacly the contrary, being space a social product just as much as place: the conceptual resources that we have at hand when we talk about space are the products of particular kinds of social practice.

The second point contained in the article follows from the first point: space and place are the products of emboided social practice. Therefore the question is not what feature of the space are conductive to the creation or emergence of place but what are the relationship between spatiality and practices and how multiple spatialities might intersect.

This second point is suggested by the power geometry: “… the production of space is conditioned by one’s access to and legitimacy within that space. Encounters with space occur within specific contexts, and the spatialities that result reflect those contexts.

Tags: geography, human communication, human computer interaction, power geometry, Computer Supported Collaborative Work, ubiquitous computing