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CSCW Liveblog

Mike Madison — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:45:31 +0000

Virtual Worlds, Real Use

By 2012 (Gartner):

80% of Internet users will have avatars
Half of US companies will have “networked virtual environments”

Beyond “Serious Games”

Not games at all

Virtual Worlds used to…

Orient new hires
Hold meetings
Conduct specialized professional collaborations
Offer enterprise customer service
Create branded experiences
Visualize data

Why do we care?

offer a new paradigm of interaction and collaboration
Natural way to organize, negotiate multiple activities, communication threads
Easy way to work on shared objects synchronously
Body positioning offers rich communications feedback

National Science Foundation

Human-Centered Computing
Cyberinfrastructure
Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation
Science of Science and Innovation Policy

Naming Virtual Worlds:

MUD (Multi-user dungeons)
CVE (collaborative virtual environments)
Virtual worlds / synthetic worlds
Metaverse (bigger than a game and can contain many games; it’s and authoring platform to develop virtual worlds)
MUVE (multi-user virtual environments)

Example: SL, Active Worlds, There (less structured, open-eneded experiences)

MMOG (massively multiplayer online games)

Example: WoW, Everquest, Eve Online (medieval, fantasy, science fiction settings; closed fixed world designed by designers)

Definitions

An online app where users create a character (an avatar) and interact with other users in a simulated environment
Avatar can move, gesture, and emote
Participants communicate via text and/or voice chat

Shared Space: the world allows multiple users to participate at once
Graphical User Interface: the world depcits space visually, ranging in style from SD “cartoon” imagery to more immersive 3D environments
Immediacy: Interaction takes place in real time
Interactivity with the environments (some): The world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customzied content.
Persistent: the world’s existence continues reglardless of whether individual users are logged in
Socialization / Community: The world allows and encourage the formation of in-world social groups like guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighborhoods, etc.
Themed (wow) versus non-themed (SL, There, Active World)
Scale – an MMO has thousands of users sharing the enviornment, Halo multiplayer has up to 16; Unreal goes up to 64

Characteristics

Rich graphics
Realistic simulations
Imaginative alternative realities
Avatars can be human, animal, robot, or jus tabout anything
Avatar movement controlled by key board and mouse
In-world content (artifacts, landscapes, etc.)

Participant-created content (SL: texture can be uploaded in-world; 3D modeling tools, the linden scripting language based on java and C)
Created entirely by product developers

Constrained by network connectivity

CVE

Developed in the 1990′s, in the academic setting
An example of the technologies developed for collaboration (CSCW)
CVEs are distributed virtual reality systems that offer graphically realized, potentially inifinte, digital landscapes. Within these landscapes, individuals can share information through interaction with each other and through individual and collaborative interaction with data representation.

CVE Characteristics

CVEs represent the computer as a malleable space, a space in which to build and utilize shared places for work and leisure.
A terrain or digital landscape that can be “inhabited” or “populated” by individuals and data.
Users (as avatars) are free to navigate through the space, encountering each other, artifacts, data objects
Users are free to user verbal or non-verbal communication through visual and auditory channels.

Motivations

Distributed work is rapidly becoming the norm
Workforce in big IT corporation has reached a tipping point

Sun: on any given day, over 50% of employees are remote (even more on Fridays)

Addressing problems resulting from distributed work

Social interaction: increasing remote workers decreasing interaction

CSCW Liveblog – 3/3/2009

Mike Madison — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:41:29 +0000

Questions for the day:

Are virtual teams doomed?
Are some tasks better suited for virtual teams?
Do collaborative tools help virtual teams? Why / How?

What do distant teams lack that radically collocated teams have

Context of what is being said / done
Same space can lead to more social queues
Informal Discussion / Impromptu Communication
Accountability
Group Identity

What are distance teams missing?

fluidiy of participation is conducive to timely completion of work

People move from one subgroup to another;
Overhearing others’ conversations and/or seeing what someone was working on
Spatial reference of artifacts using gestures and glances
Impromptu communication
Developing common grounds
Knowing your teammates (likes, dislikes, work habits, expertise, etc.)
Informal training sessions (through imitating one’s work)
Immediate feedback and attention

Virtual Teams

Team

A collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks
They share responsibility for the outcomes
They see themselves as a social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems

Virtual Team

A group of geographically, organizationally, and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more tasks

Characteristics of a Virtual Team

While they can be ongoing, they are often assembled on an as-needed basis to cooperate on specific deliverables
Flexible composition
Reliance on IT to communicate with each other
Ability to traverse traditional organizational boundaries & time constraints
Can be short-lived (due to the specialized function they can serve)

Socio-Emotional Processes

Relationship Building

Vt tends to be more task-focused and less social focused
Early socialization is key (e.g., regular chat, mandatory F2F)

Trust

Trust must be developed quickly
Short-lived VT are able to develop high trust but they do not do so by following a swift trust model

Task Process
The processes that occur as team members work together to accomplish a task or goal

Communication

Challenges: time delays in feedback, lack of common frames of reference for all, limited communication cues
Solution: Frequency and predictability of communication

Coordination

Develop collaborative norms to make it effective

Technology

Strive to match tasks with appropriate technology

F2F meetings/Phone: More ambiguous tasks, managing conflicts, etc.
Electronic communication: More routine tasks

Outputs

Perforamnce

Take longer to reach a decision
Factors contributing to successful performance:

Goal setting
Shared language
Team cohesiveness
Team coordination
Appropriateness of task-technology fit

Satisfaction

More communication mechanism and training contribute to satisfied VT members

CSCW Liveblog – 2/24/2009

Mike Madison — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:36:30 +0000

Why should we study co-located collaboration

Face to face is the richest method of communication
Get more done interacting directly
Interaction with the artifacts
To make the technology more human centric, you have to observe the humans