Awareness Checklist: Reviewing the Quality of Awareness Support in

Collaborative Applications

 Pedro Antunes, Claudio Sapateiro, José A. Pino, Valeria Herskovic and Sergio F. Ochoa

Department of Informatics of the Faculty of Sciences, University of LisbonComputer Science Department, Universidad de Chile

Contents

• Introduction

• Awareness Elements

• Awareness Checklist Proposal

• Case Study

• Conclusions

Awareness

• Distinctive feature of collaborative systems• How to assess awareness support?– Questionnaires, interviews, logging– Without user participation?

• Awareness checklist – Useful to system developers– Complement or substitute users’ evaluation

Related Work

Methodology

• Definition of – Awareness types– Design elements contributing to awareness– Correlations between design elements and awareness types with help from experts

• Construction of awareness checklist• Validation of checklist with case studies

Awareness Elements

Time x Place

• Same place, different place, any place

• Co-located, virtual co-located, remote places

• Drawbacks of technology-mediated communication

• Collaboration awareness: perception of temporal and spatial structures in group of peers

[Rodden&Blair, 1991]

[Johansen et al. 1991]

Geographical space

• Location– Cartesian– Topological

• Distance• Orientation

[Dix et al. 2000]

Physical space

• Mobility– Wandering, visiting,traveling

– Fixed,mobile,autonomous,free,embedded,pervasive

[Kristoffersen&Ljunberg 1998]

[Dix et al. 2000]

Virtual space

• Collection of computer-supported interaction spaces– Conceptual topology– Interactive– Shared– Malleable– Populated

• Navigation– Spatial– Logical

[Rodden, 1996]

Social space

• Broader issues related to social practice and context

• Geographical, physical and virtual affordances + social interaction, cultural meaning, experience, knowledge

[Brewer&Dourish, 2008]

Workspace• Container of places with ongoing activities

• Peripheral awareness: understand activities of others in nearby places 

• Workspace awareness: another person’s interactions– Who– What– Where– When– How

[Snowdon et al., 2000]

[Liechti, 1998]

[Gutwin&Greenberg, 1999]

Situation awareness

• Perception of elements in current situation

• Comprehension of current situation

• Projection of future status

[Endsley et al., 1988]

Design elements Design category Design elements

1 Accessibility Same place, different place, any place, co-located, virtually co-located, remote

2 Communication Synchronous, asynchronous, network connectivity, message delivery, network management

3 Spatiality Cartesian locations, topological locations, distances, orientation, focus/nimbus

4 Mobility Wandering, visiting, traveling, fixed, mobile, autonomous, independent, embedded, pervasive

5 Physicality Physical constraints, physical places, physical topology, physical attributes

6 Navigation Viewports, links, radar views, teleports

7 Virtuality Private, group, public, data access privileges, concurrency control, floor control, version control, virtual constraints, virtual places, virtual topology, virtual attributes

8 Membership Participants, roles, activities, privileges, group history

9 Attention Eye-gaze orientation, body orientation, voice filtering, portholes/peepholes

10 Task Who, what, where, when, how, task history

11 Interaction Feedback, feedthrough, backchannel feedback

12 Interdependence Parallel activities, coordinated activities, mutually adjusted activities, loosely coupled, tightly coupled

13 Internalization Events, actions, resources, critical elements, meaning, future scenarios

14 Externalization Individual cognition, distributed cognition, team cognition

Main relationshipsType of awareness Design categories

1 Time x place  Accessibility, communication

2 Geographical space  Spatiality

3 Physical space  Mobility, physicality

4 Virtual space  Navigation, virtuality

5 Social space  Membership, attention

6 Workspace  Task, interaction, interdependence

7 Situation  Internalization, externalization

• Example:– Design element: Different place – Design category: Accesibility– Main relationship: Time x place– Also negatively influences workspace awareness

Correlation Matrix

Example of use: COIN

Awareness Checklist

+ implementation contributes to realize design element- implementation is detrimental to design requirement

Awareness Report

Awareness Report

• Low positive scores:– Physical awareness (3)– Virtual space awareness (4)

• High negative scores:– Situation awareness (7)

Conclusions

• Awareness checklist based on QA principles, 77 design elements, 7 awareness types

• Correlations matrix contains knowledge extracted from experts

• Developers must balance benefit of awareness item with information overload and implementation cost

• Allows formal review of awareness support, may help examine and improve awareness support

Thank you for your attention