Blended interaction spaces for distributed team collaboration

Abstract

In recent years there has been an introduction of sophisticated new video conferencing technologies (e.g., HP Halo, Cisco Telepresence) that have led to enhancements in the collaborative user experience over traditional video conferencing technologies. Traditional video conferencing setups often distort the shared spatial properties of action and communication due to screen and camera orientation disparities and other asymmetries. These distortions affect access to the common resources used to mutually organize action and communication. By contrast, new systems, such as Halo, are physically configured to reduce these asymmetries and orientation disparities, thereby minimizing these spatial distortions. By creating appropriate shared spatial geometries, the distributed spaces become "blended" where the spatial geometries of the local space continue coherently across the distributed boundary into the remote site, providing the illusion of a single unified space. Drawing on theories of embodied action and workplace design we discuss the importance of this geometric "blending" of space for distributed collaboration and how this is achieved in systems such as Halo. We then extend these arguments to explore the concept of Blended Interaction Spaces: blended spaces in which interactive groupware is incorporated in ways spatially consistent with the physical geometries of the video-mediated setup. We illustrate this discussion through a system called BISi that introduces interactive horizontal and vertical multipoint surfaces into a blended video-mediated collaboration space. In presenting this system, we highlight some of the particular challenges of creating these systems arising from the spatial consequences of different interaction mechanisms (e.g., direct touch or remote control) and how they affect movement and spatial configuration of people in these spaces.

Physical Versus Digital Sticky Notes in Collaborative Ideation

“…In recent years, we have seen work on collaborative tabletops (Geyer et al 2011b), blended interaction (Jetter et al 2014) and also distributed teams who collaborate around blended interaction spaces (O'Hara et al 2011;Broughton et al 2009). Wellner (1993) did some of the earliest work on paper and digital desks.…”

Investigating the effects of using biofeedback as visual stress indicator during video-mediated collaboration

“…More specifically, recent systems incorporating situation awareness and conversational grounding in the form of visual information have been explored [17,24] to engage remote (instructor) collaboration in a video-mediated setup. Research utilising physical environment as a mean for task engagement includes Lighthouse [21] and BISi [20], which explored physical setup and proxemics to establish a taskcentred point of view for situation awareness.…”

Eye contact over video

“…More recent examples include "blended spaces" like HP Halo and BISi where physical placement of displays, cameras and furniture creates an experience of two or more locations blending into one [7,9]. As alternative to well-considered spatial arrangement and physical configurations, and the use of raw camera feeds, other research has explored the possibility of rendering live virtual viewpoints from multiple cameras.…”