Monthly Archive for June, 2007

for this we pray: enhancing prayers with RFID tags

Published on 6/29/2007 in Diary and Spirituality&Technology. 2 Comments

for this we pray is an art installation inspired by the tradition of lighting candles during prayer. The user can select one of several prayer cards, each with an embedded RFID tag inside, and hold it close to a wall-mounted “srine” reminiscent of a stained-glass window. Once the card is recognized, a light is turned on.

The author, Aya Natalia Karpinska, argues that:

The technology employed brings something new to reading, it ties the writing to an action that enriches the experience. Writing becomes performance. The use of cards is inpsired by the prayer cards I would receive after special Catholic masses as a child, cards with an image of a saint on one side and a lyric or prayer on the other side. These cards are kept in your bag or in your prayer book, wherever you would be likely to happen upon them and reflect once more on the essence of the thought the prayer card communicates. Each of the cards in for this we pray are devoted to a specific intention, each is a fragment, a musing on the role of prayer in the life of a hyper-digital urban atheist such as myself.

For This We Pray

Technology in spiritual formation: an exploratory study of computer mediated religious communications

Published on 6/29/2007 in References and Spirituality&Technology. Closed

Wyche, S. P., Hayes, G. R., Harvel, L. D., and Grinter, R. E. (2006). Technology in spiritual formation: an exploratory study of computer mediated religious communications. In CSCW ’06: Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pages 199–208, New York, NY, USA. ACM Press. [pdf]

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This paper aims at explaining the use of technology in religious life. The author performed a series of intervies with Protestant Ministers. Most pastors responded with a list of duties including educating the laity, preaching, and communication. More in details they reported using thechnological means to organize Bible study groups, for the pastoral care of the laity such as reaching sick parishioners or conunseling those in spiritual or personal crisis.

A good part of the article focus on thechnological enhancement to preaching and presentation. An interesting reported finding is that altough Ministers reported using commercial products for their presentations such as PowerPoint or Keynote, they expressed their misgivings about the fact that these software were designed with generic purposes in mind and that they do not support the peculiarities of spiritual training or presentation.

Some pastors expressed their feelings about the fact that using technology is essential for the church to be ‘contemporary’ but at the same time it is a matter of negotiation: a tradeoff between ‘relevance’ and ‘reverence’, but also a tradeoff between connection and distraction, remoteness and actual encounters. E. G., for spiritual practices solitude might be important.

Finally the authors reported interestingly that parishioners used technological access to spiritual material at work. So, we observe an ‘infiltration’ of domestic life in working settings. This allowed them to practice during the week instead of waiting for Sunday.

On a critical note, focusing the study on a single religion might have somehow biased the results. It might be interesting to broaden the spectrum of analysis to see if the same results apply.

GeoDF: Towards a SDI-based PPGIS application for E-Governance

Published on 6/26/2007 in References. Closed

Zhao, J. and Coleman, D. J. (2006). Geodf: Towards a sdi-based ppgis application for e-governance. In GSDI-9 Conference Proceedings, Santiago, Chile. Military Geographic Institute of Chile. [pdf]

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This paper present a good review of system aiming at supporting Public Participation in decision support. One of the main argument of the paper is that in order to make useful and valid decision while lack of required information, it is important to add community knowledge (Craig et al., 2002). Public participation is a process that “allows those affected by a decision to have an input into that decision” (Smith, 1993).

Geodf-1

Cooperation without (reliable) communication: Interfaces for mobile applications

Published on 6/21/2007 in Concept and References. Closed

Dix, A. (1995). Cooperation without (reliable) communication: Interfaces for mobile applications. Distributed System Engineering, 3(2):171–181. [url]

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The author reviews in this article some factors that make mobile devices less functional, for collaborative purposes, than stationary equivalents.

The aurthor uses a nice visual representation for the CSCW framework (figure 2), explaining what are the relationships between participants and artifacts in a face-to-face cooperative working situation. If the participants are cooperating, then we might expect that their direct communication is about and makes reference to the artefacts on which they are working. In F2F working, these references are very rich.

In remote communication it is often the relationship between communication and action which is lost. Often explicit means are introduced to help. The author refers to ‘group pointers’ as an arrow that can be picked up by one of the participants and then displayed on all the screens.

Annotations supports this link between action and communication in asynchronous applications. The author refers to systems as Quilt (Leland et al., 1988) and Prep (Neuwirth et al., 1992).

Feedthrough (figure 3) is the term that the author uses to define the feedback that is offered when one of the participants act on the artifacts and this action is then visible to the other participant(s). Feedthrough can be seen as a form of communication through the artefact. Feedthrough is usually slower than general feedback, however the author cautions that when these two are too out of step a problem of deictic reference might occur.

Dix Cscwframework 1  Dix Cscwframework 2

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What makes mobile computer supported cooperative work mobile?

Published on 6/21/2007 in References. Closed

Schrott, G. and Gluckler, J. (2004). What makes mobile computer supported cooperative work mobile?  towards a better understanding of cooperative mobile interactions. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 60(5-6):737–752. [pdf]

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The authors aims at comparing coworkers interacting using mobile devices and stationary computers. Thez sets the following questions: a) do mobile messages fiffer from stationary messages with regard to frequency and time? b) underwhat conditions do users prefer mobile over stationary communications? and c) Do people use different technologies to relate to different people?

Apart from indipendence of location, mobile collaborative work presents the same strategies and content of stationary collaborative work. However given the limits of mobile technology, mobile communication is not yet capable of entirily replacing stationary communication.

The authors asked a group of student to develop a product together interacting over stationary and mobile emails. The monitored the messages exchanges and used social network analysis techniques to indentify differences between the media.

They found that mobile messages differed from stationary messages in terms of size and that the use of mobile emails prevailed over stationary emails under conditions of stress.They found also that the social structure of mobile communication corresponded with the structure of stationary communication. This indicates that mobile communication technologies support existing communication relations rather than creating new relations.

Sna Mobilecomm

A great collection of psychological maps

Published on 6/21/2007 in Diary. 2 Comments

This collection is quite unique. Probably these different contributions were assembled for an art exhibit. Psychological Maps were studied by Stanley Migram in his seminal work on how Parisian’s people represented Paris. Maps are always distorted around social places: locations which have a special meaning for that person. The map below is particularly representative, it was titled: “my “heart” is somewhere here”.

Psychological Map

Copyright notice: the present content was taken from the following URL, the copyrights are reserved by the respective author/s.

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FixMyStreet: a good example of Location-Based Map annotation commons

Published on 6/20/2007 in Diary and Links. Closed

FixMyStreet is a Location-Based Annotation platform where users report problems with the street system around where they live. Once in a while when enough complaints are filled, the system sends them all together to the council responsible for these particular streets. Complaints could also ranked socially so that most urging problems are sent first.

Fixmystreet

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Definite reference and mutual knowledge: Process models of common ground in comprehension

Published on 6/12/2007 in References. Closed

Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., and Paek, T. S. (1998). Definite reference and mutual knowledge: Process models of common ground in comprehension, ,. Journal of Memory and Language, 39(1):1–20. [pdf]

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This paper argues that when language users disambiguate definite references they do not follow the cooperative principle as suggested by Grice (1975), or the relevance principle as suggested by Sperber & Wilson (1986), or the optimal design principle as defined by Clark, Schreuder, & Buttrick, 1983). Instead the authors present evidences that speakers follow a Perspective Adjustment Model:

Our model assumes the operation of two processes during comprehension: A fast, un-restricted search that interprets the definite reference by assigning a referent with no regard to mutual knowledge. This process is coupled with a monitoring and adjustment process that is sensitive to considerations of common ground. It uses the meta-knowledge that an entity is mutually known and attempts to correct violations of common ground. In contrast to the unrestricted search, the adjustment process is relatively slow — mainly because it activates higher level, meta-knowledge memory structures. The model assumes that the two processes proceed not in a strict serial fashion but instead in cascades (McClelland, 1979).

The results of this work account for the fact that there is no definite reference: even if the common knowledge between the speakers is fully explicit and readily available in the interaction this does not guarantee that the speakers will use it for disambiguating references during the collaboration process.

References:

Clark, H. H., Schreuder, R., & Buttrick, S. (1983). Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 245 – 258.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic Press

McClelland, J. L. (1979). On the time relations of mental processes: An examination of systems of processes in cascade. Psychological Review, 86, 287 – 330

Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1982). Mutual knowledge and relevance in theories of comprehension. In N. Smith (Ed.), Mutual knowledge. London: Academic Press.

Audience Design in Meaning and Reference

Published on 6/7/2007 in References. Closed

Clark, H. H. and Murphy, G. L. (1982). Language and Comprehension, chapter Audience Design in Meaning and Reference, pages 287–299. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, The Nederlands.

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The speaker’s goal is to be understood. Clark and Murphy define audience design as the attitute a speaker has in tailoring the spoken utterances for particular listeners, whith whom the speaker shares momentary thoughts and beliefs. In this article, Clark also defines how references in conversations are dynamic. Also audience design presupposes design assumptions: a listener cannot identify the referent without making essential use of the design assumption.

To decode the utterance, the listeners apply specific heuristics, which are based on the shared context: community membership, physical co-presence or linguistic co-presence.

We argue that the speaker designs each utterance for specific listeners, and they, make essential use of this fact in unserstanding the utterance. We call this property of utterances audience design. Often listeners can come to a unique interpretation for an utterance only if they assume that the speaker desined it hust so that they could come to that interpretation uniquely. We illustrate reasoning from audience design in the understanding of defenitive reference, anaphora, and word meaning, and we offer evidence that listeners actually reason this way. We conclude that audience design must play a central role in any adequate theory of understanding.

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Deictic Roles of External Representations in Face-To-Face and Online Collaboration

Published on 6/7/2007 in References. Closed

Suthers, D., Girardeau, L., and Hundhausen, C. (2003). Designing for Change, chapter Deictic Roles of External Representations in Face-To-Face and Online Collaboration, pages 173–182. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, The Nederlands. [pdf]

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This study examined how learner-constructed graphical evidence maps were used by learners to support conversation through deixis to the contents of the evidence map in face-to-face and online conditions. The results show that although external representations play important roles as resources for collaboration in both face-to-face and online learning, they are appropriated in different ways to support communication and collaboration.

In face-to-face collaboration, deixis was accomplished quite effectively through gesture. Gesture is spatially indexical: it can select any information in the shared visual space, regardless of when that information was previously encountered or introduced. Online collaborators also used external representations for referential purposes, but through verbal deixis and direct manipulation rather than gestural deixis. Verbal deixis in the chat tool was temporally indexical: it most often selected recently manipulated items.

These results raised the question of whether and how online participants revisit prior information. Direct manipulation of the representations seemed to play this role most effectively, and indeed constituted an alternative means through which some aspects of communication about problem solution took place. However, communication in an evidence map (graph) is limited to propositions in the domain and the evidential relations between them.

Direct manipulation is in a sense “first order” – higher order reflections such as discussion of possible interpretations of the information available are undertaken more often in the verbal media (speech or chat). Putting these observations together, there is a danger that online discourse may be less reflective, especially in its integration of new and prior information, because the most reflective mode of interaction – verbal – focuses on recent (temporally indexed) items online; while the easiest means of reintroducing prior information is through direct manipulation. This speculation was consistent with the reduced integration scores seen in the essays of online participants.

The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct them

Published on 6/6/2007 in References. 2 Comments

Novak, J. D. and, J. Canas (2006). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct them. Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, FI, USA. [pdf]

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This tech report describes CMapTools, a widespear utility that helps building concept maps. One interesting features of CMapTools is that it allows the users to build maps collaboratively giving them support to a shared display and to a chat channel. The messages in the chat are not connected with the elements in the map.

Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. We define concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %, and sometimes more than one word is used. Propositions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units, or units of meaning.

Cmaptool

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Airboard: a shared space for gesture

Published on 6/6/2007 in Concept. Closed

Last summer while I was an intern at MSR, I was thinking about this concept. When people are discussing face-to-face, speech is enriched with gestures (more so if you are Italian :-) ). Sometimes it happens that gestures depict the physical/geometrical arrangements of the objects being referenced in the discourse.

When this happens, hands moves across a sort of transparent whiteboard hypothetically placed between the speakers. I call this an “airboard”, a communication device that share some feature of a real display. For instance, invisible items can be grabbed from their position in the airboard and moved on other positions or that can be “erased” wiping the hand over the invisible item.

A pretty cool project would be to make these airboards appear with an Augmented Reality technique.

Airboards

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Tools that Tell Tales: Bridging Context Seams by Digitally Annotating Physical Artifacts

Published on 6/5/2007 in References. Closed

Churchill, E. F., Nelson, L., and Sokoler, T. (2005). Tools that tell tales: Bridging context seams by digitally annotating physical artifacts. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Smart Object Systems In Conjunction with the Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005), Tokyo, Japan. [pdf]

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The main argument of this paper is that instead of relating notes to a physical place, we should attach them to a physical object. This because the object is meaningful and seamless between the activity in which it is involved and the people that will be part of those activity. The paper reports the main rationale behind the prototype TackTales that augments a physical bullettin board with digital information.

In this paper we describe our method for supporting artifact-centered communication. We elaborate a design space we have been elaborating called Tools That Tell Tales, and describe the TackTales prototype which provides an instance in this design space. We show how paper postings on a community pin board can be augmented to enable conversations around the physical, paper postings. The TackTales prototype uses modified radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to establish the link between paper postings and the online communication, bridging a seam between artifacts and conversation and activity as annotation. We suggest that our approach can be a ubiquitous computing alternative to the design of general-purpose communication devices and propose artifact-centered communication as a meaningful conversational annotation. 

Churchill Tacktales

The picture below shows one of the nice example contained in the paper. The car window itself is the communication space, being annotated with a wax marker, with explicit instructions on the collaborative repair process.

Churchill Car-Window

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The importance of awareness for team cognition in distributed collaboration

Published on 6/5/2007 in References. Closed

Gutwin, C. and Greenberg, S. (2004). The importance of awareness for team cognition in distributed collaboration. In Salas, E., Fiore, S., and Cannon-Bowers, J., editors, eam Cognition: Understanding the Factors that Drives Process and Performance, pages 177–201, Washington. APA Press. [pdf]

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This paper contains a framework for evaluating the impact of awareness of distributed work. The paper is a mine of definitions. The main definition of workspace awareness is the knowledge created through interaction between an agent and its environment-knowing what is going on. Outlouds are running commentaries that people commonly produces alongside their actions. Consequential communication is the mechanism of seeing and hearing other people active in the workspace.

More of interest for my work is the definition of feedthrough: the mechanism of determining a person’s interactions through the sights and sounds of artifacts (Dix et al., 1993). Feedthrough is importantfor direct manipulation. Maybe in the context of my work I should talk about mediated manipulation. Coupling is the degree to which people are working together.

An interesting passage defining the role of deixis and workspace awareness:

The role of workspace awareness in deixis (i.e., where one’s pointing or gesturing action disambiguates conversational references, such as when one says “this one” while pointing to an object), visual evidence and gaze awareness means that the elements of awareness are part of conversational common ground in shared spaces (Clark 1996). This implies that not only do you have to be aware of me to interpret my visual communication, but that I have know what you are aware of as well, so that I can safely make use of the workspace in my communication.

The paper summarizes a previous work (Gutwin and Greenberg, 1999) on the impact of a radarview telepointer on collaborative work at distance. The participants used a minimap.

Gutwin Radarview-Telepointer

“Where are you pointing at? ” a study of remote collaboration in a werable videoconference system

Published on 6/5/2007 in References. Closed

Bauer, M., Kortuem, G., and Segall, Z. (1999). “Where are you pointing at? ” a study of remote collaboration in a werable videoconference system. In Proceedings of the3rd International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC ’99), pages 151–158, San Francisco, CA, USA. IEEE. [pdf]

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The results show that by using a reality-augmenting telepointer a remote user can effectively guide and direct a wearable user’s activities. The analysis of verbal communication behavior and pointing gestures clearly indicates that experts overwhelmingly used pointing for guiding workers through physical tasks. While the use of pointing reached 99%, verbal instructions were used considerably less. In more than 20% of all the cases experts did not use verbal instructions at all, but relied on pointing alone instead.

The majority of verbal instructions contained deictic references like ‘here’, ‘over there’, ‘this’, and ‘that’. Because deictic references are mostly used in connection with and in support of gestures, this finding is a strong indication that participants naturally combined pointing gestures with verbal communication, much the same they

do in face-to-face conversations.

Bauer Telepointer