c4 luff

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Mobility in collaboration By Paul Luff and Christian Leath, 1998

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Current CSCW technologies appear rigid The trend to make devices increasingly complex also makes them increasingly inflexible and undermines the ability to reconfigure to the shifting activities. Many studies show how mobility of personnel and artifacts is critical to communication and collaboration Introduction

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Observations in three settings: -        - Primary health consultations -        - Construction sites -        - Stations on London Underground look at implications for supporting mobility and enhancing collaborative work Introduction

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Micro-mobility: medical consultations Micro-mobility: “the way in which an artefact can be mobilised and manipulated for various purposes around a relatively circumscribed, or ‘at hand’, domain”. A5 paper journal remains an important source despite the introduction of computerized systems due to its portability. - Supports synchronous and asynchronous collaboration - Ecological flexibility (movable) - Communicative flexibility (it can have different roles or focus on doctor-patient communication)

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Micro-mobility: medical consultations A conventional computer keeps the doctors orientation away from the patient and is difficult to put aside. Micro-mobility is a critical resource in collaboration and interaction in a broad range of workplace activities.

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Remote mobility: a construction site Allocation sheet: - records on what, and for how long, each worker has been working. - the gangers fills in the sheet - the foremen collects, checks and passes them on Asynchronous and remote communication

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Remote mobility: a construction site A notepad computer + mobile phone replaced the paper sheet. Produced quick and relevant information The computer became the focus instead of the work After a while, the foreman began using the system only in the site hut after recording the allocation information on paper as before. Then another person was hired to enter the data into the system.

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Remote mobility: a construction site Lessons learned: The technology may not be the most appropriate one. Provided asynchronous cooperation, disregarded real- time collaboration Serious attention has to be paid to the ways in which personnel interact with colleagues before designing the system

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Remote and local mobility London Underground Severe problems from the fact that the bulk of information and communication resources are based in one location, the Ops room. …description of various problems…

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London Underground - needs The staff need access to a range of facilities across various locations Different personell require different sorts of information and communication facilities. A mobile system must support different types of cooperation and collaboration, ranging from simple spoken messages to sharing and discussing images of suspect packages in real time. Need for: micromobility and synchronous collaboration asynchronous cooperation between distributed personnel

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London Underground - solutions High bandwidth wireless communication systems Several features requires a bigger screen, so the portables need to utilize displays that are currently available allows shared viewings can provide passenger information Quick shifts from private to collaborative and from using mobile display to a public display. Basis for development of a prototype technology

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Implications for technologies to support mobility in collaboration Need to consider: how everyday artifacts can be augmented with co-present collaboration and remote access. how participants shifts in orientation the micromobility of objects quick shifts between individual and collaborative activities

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Summary Individuals’ shifting orientations towards objects can inform the design of novel technologies. What may seem as an obvious resource to support with mobile technology may not actually be sensitive to the practical concerns of the participants. Current research in CSCW is too narrow…