A Collaborative Guidance Case Study

Stevenson, D., Li, J., Smith, J. and Hutchins, M.

This paper reports on a collaborative guidance case study, which investigated the use of remote pointing and drawing technologies in a system designed for spatially focussed collaborative tasks. Four guidance technologies were available to the participants - pointing and drawing over video of the remote site and pointing and drawing into the remote workplace itself. The experimental task was designed to mimic the actions observed in an actual application setting. The purpose of the study was to see how the participants would use the technology and how they would collaborate with each other during the performance of the task. Specifically, the experiment looked at how the participants selected from the choice of guidance technology, and changed their selection, as the task progressed. It looked at how they used the technology and how they created working, 3-dimensional, shared frames of reference for the task. Finally it explored the way the system supported emerging collaborative behaviour between each pair of participants. The paper concludes that the participants were able to make reasoned choices about their selection of guidance technology, and that they evolved effective guidance strategies as the task progressed. They adapted their understanding of each other's frame of reference with respect to the task by focusing on reference objects created during the task. Finally, the paper concludes that the experimental system did indeed foster emerging collaborative behaviour between the participants.

Cite as: Stevenson, D., Li, J., Smith, J. and Hutchins, M. (2008). A Collaborative Guidance Case Study. In Proc. Ninth Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC 2008), Wollongong, NSW, Australia. CRPIT, 76. Plimmer, B. and Weber, G., Eds. ACS. 33-42.

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