stanford hci group / cs376

Remote
Collaboration

Scott Klemmer · 17 October 2006 Paul Badger, Information Superhighway Anagrams

Proxemics: Edward T. Hall

 The study of spatial distances between
individuals in different cultures and
situations
 The Hidden Dimension, 1966

intimate
personal
social
public

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Proxemics: Edward T. Hall
 The boundaries between these areas is highly
culturally dependent
 e.g., Southern Europe has closer boundaries for
personal space than America

intimate
personal
social
public

Proxemics: Intimate (<18")

 Embracing and whispering

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Proxemics: Personal (18“ – 4')
 Friends and family, waiting in line

Proxemics: Social (4' – 12')

 Communication among business associates
 Separates strangers using public areas

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Proxemics: Public (12' – 25')
 Distance between audience and speaker

Angle of Orientation
 Sommers 1959

Conversation Cooperation Competition

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William H. Whyte (1917 - 1999)
 The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
(book 1980, video 1984)
 Results of the Street Life project
 In addition to captivating results, an excellent case study in
social science research methods

Recording Spatial Information

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Closer to reality
 Meyer TeamSpace
 TideWave
 Smart Ideas + CamFire

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Design Issues, Principles, Research

 Even today, building collaborative spaces is hard. Recent
developments help:
 DiamondTouch table & DiamondSpin toolkit (tables)
 The Papier-Mâché toolkit (vision, rfid, barcode)
 iROS and the PatchPanel (interactive rooms)
 These tools all support simultaneous input by multiple
people, and the latter two address heterogeneous devices

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History
 Weiser’s ubicomp era: LiveBoards
 Fundamental contribution: computing at the wall scale
 Commercial spinouts by LiveWorks, SMART
 SMART now a $100m/yr business
 Early/Mid 90s: Richer interactions
 Digital Desk, Clearboard
 More recently: Interacting across devices
 iRoom!

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Design Principles
 Always on scanning
 Geo-referenced I/O
 Capture & Access

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Next Time… Distributed Cognition
Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-
Computer Interaction Research, James Hollan, Edwin
Hutchins, and David Kirsh
On Distinguishing Pragmatic from Epistemic Action, David
Kirsh and Paul Maglio

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