This paper presents Dream Lens, an interactive visual analysis tool for exploring and visualizing large-scale generative design datasets. Unlike traditional computer aided design, where users create a single model, with generative design, users specify high-level goals and constraints, and the system automatically generates hundreds or thousands of candidates all meeting the design criteria. Once a large collection of design variations is created, the designer is left with the task of finding the design, or set of designs, which best meets their requirements. This is a complicated task which could require analyzing the structural characteristics and visual aesthetics of the designs. Two studies are conducted which demonstrate the usability and usefulness of the Dream Lens system, and a generatively designed dataset of 16,800 designs for a sample design problem is described and publicly released to encourage advancement in this area.

In this study, we examine how geographic distance affects collaboration using computer-mediated communication technology. We investigated experimentally the effects of cooperating partners being in the same or distant city on three behaviors: cooperation, persuasion, and deception using video conferencing and instant messaging (IM). Our results indicate that subjects are more likely to deceive, be less persuaded by, and initially cooperate less, with someone they believe is in a distant city, as opposed to in the same city as them. Although people initially cooperate less with someone they believe is far away, their willingness to cooperate increases quickly with interaction. Since the same media were used in both the far and near city conditions, these effects cannot be attributed to the media, but rather to social differences. This study confirms how CSCW needs to be concerned with developing technologies for bridging social distance, as well as geographic distance.

We present two experimental studies examining the effects of videoconferencing and application sharing on task performance. We studied performance on a cognitive reasoning task while subjects were observed via two-way video, one-way video and application sharing. Results demonstrate that performance is impaired when subjects are observed via media compared to when they are not observed. Surprisingly, we found no significant difference in awareness of the observer's presence between the application sharing and the two-way video conditions. This is surprising because application sharing lacks visual feedback of the observer. This finding contradicts social presence theory which claims that media which provides visual feedback of others produce the greatest sense of social presence. Our data also show that media use heightens the perception of task difficulty. We extend social presence theory and argue that these social effects need to be considered in the design and deployment of video and application sharing technologies for use in the workplace.

We discuss findings from an ethnographic study of instant messaging (IM) in the workplace and its implications for media theory. We describe how instant messaging supports a variety of informal communication tasks. We document the affordances of IM that support flexible, expressive communication. We describe some unexpected uses of IM that highlight aspects of communication which are not part of current media theorizing. They pertain to communicative processes people use to connect with each other and to manage communication, rather than to information exchange. We call these processes "outeraction". We discuss how outeractional aspects of communication affect media choice and patterns of media use.

We take as our premise that it is possible and desirable to design systems that support social processes. We describe Loops, a project which takes this approach to supporting computer-mediated communication (CMC) through structural and intemctive properties such as persistence and a minimalist graphical representation of users and their activities that we call a social proxy. We discuss a prototype called Babble that has been used by our group for over a year, and has been deployed to six other groups at the Watson labs for about two months. We describe usage experiences, lessons learned, and next steps.