Secrets to Success and Fatal Flaws: The Design of Large-Display Groupware: Secrets to Success and Fatal Flaws: The Design of Large-Display Groupware Huang, Mynatt, Russell, Sue.
Computer Graphics & Applications 26(1), p. 37-45, Jan/Feb 2006.
Large-Display Groupware : Large-Display Groupware Currently…
No killer application
No common look and feel
No broadly applicable design principles
What makes a large-display groupware application successful?
Desktop Groupware Challenges: Desktop Groupware Challenges Grudin, 1994…
Who does the work vs. who gets the benefit
Critical mass and prisoners’ dilemma
Social, political, and motivation factors
Exception handling in workgroups
Designing for infrequently used features
Underestimated difficulty of evaluating groupware
Breakdown of intuitive decision-making
Managing acceptance: a challenge for developers
Large-Display Uniqueness : Large-Display Uniqueness Form factor
Viewable from a greater distance
Multiple simultaneous users
Public audience and location
Located in shared space
More public
Outside personal workspace
Less willing to publicly explore
Group owned
Less ownership and responsibility for use and content
Approach: Approach Approach…
Observation of various large-display applications
Open-ended interviews with researchers
Interviews with members of workgroups
Notification Collage (U. Calgary): Notification Collage (U. Calgary) How it works: Desktop clients are used to post info
Success: low effort for use because it starts automatically on desktop
Problem: No reason to use large-display
MessyBoard (CMU): MessyBoard (CMU) How it works: same as Notification Collage
Failure: hard to install, not everyone used it
Intense collaboration only needed sporadically
Tried to exploit person connections, conducted training sessions, and targeted specific individuals who had greatest need to convey information
Plasma Poster (FX Palo Alto): Plasma Poster (FX Palo Alto) How it works: users post items via email or through a web form
Success: use climbed after early drop-off, attributed to “strong champions” and use of email interaction
Semi-Public Displays (Ga Tech): Semi-Public Displays (Ga Tech) How it works: systems automatically gathers data content from reports
Failure: didn’t match group practices and users didn’t feel a sense of ownership so no one turned it on in the morning
People did include more help requests and this sparked conversation
BlueBoard (IBM Almaden): BlueBoard (IBM Almaden) How it works: Users swiped ID cards and that let them access to their own person data
Failure: Proprietary applications, weren’t comfortable standing in front of display to collaborate
Was used for presentation and users liked the ability to email files to themselves
MERBoard: MERBoard How it works: Users sign into the system and have access to their own data, SolTree application visualizes possible rover actions
Success: used by engineers in addition to mission scientists, SolTree was only available on MERboard
Clock display caused hesitation to use, for other applications laptops were used for collaborating
Awareness Module (Accenture): Awareness Module (Accenture) How it works: Post to display using Web form, swipe badge to have content emailed to them
Failure: used infrequently possibly because of need to compose content and to find web form
Could read information at their leisure in their personal space rather than on display
Recommendations : Recommendations Task specificity and integration
Users will spend less time exploring
Common mistake: increased screen real estate is not sufficient to motivate user migration
Tool flexibility and generality
Visibility and exposure to others’ interactions
Low barriers to use
Users already have to physically move to the display, stand up, deal with display artifacts, etc.
Dedicated core group of users
Discussion Questions: Discussion Questions Other recommendations?
What collaborative tasks might benefit from increased, shared screen real estate?
Physically (large display) vs electronically public (website): why/how important is this distinction?