Chat-based prompts respond with verbose linear-sequential texts, making it difficult to explore and refine ambiguous intents, back up and reinterpret, or shift directions in creative AI-assisted design work. AI-Instruments instead embody "prompts" as interface objects via three key principles: (1) Reification of user-intent as reusable direct-manipulation instruments; (2) Reflection of multiple interpretations of ambiguous user-intents (Reflection-in-intent) as well as the range of AI-model responses (Reflection-in-response) to inform design "moves" towards a desired result; and (3) Grounding to instantiate an instrument from an example, result, or extrapolation directly from another instrument. Further, AI-Instruments leverage LLM's to suggest, vary, and refine new instruments, enabling a system that goes beyond hard-coded functionality by generating its own instrumental controls from content. We demonstrate four technology probes, applied to image generation, and qualitative insights from twelve participants, showing how AI-Instruments address challenges of intent formulation, steering via direct manipulation, and non-linear iterative workflows to reflect and resolve ambiguous intents.

Technology-mediated communication tools are widely used to maintain connections between older adults and their remote family members. However, challenges often arise due to differences in their life rhythms and communication preferences, such as time zones, daily routines, or preferred platforms. To address these challenges, we propose using Ditto, a mimetic embodied agent, in video-call-like interactions between an older adult and a remote family member. When direct interaction is difficult, FamilyDitto can represent either party, providing a strong social presence and a personalized experience to the other person. To explore the potential of Ditto in supporting intergenerational communication, we conducted seven co-design workshops (n=27) with older adults and younger family members. Our thematic analysis reveals Ditto's potential roles as both a temporal bridge and an emotional proxy, identifies the tension between faithful and idealized representations, and emphasizes the importance of personalization to support unique family dynamics. We distill our findings into implications for designing mediated semi-synchronous communication, using idealized representation responsibly, and addressing the asymmetric motivations and comfort levels with Ditto across roles and ages. This study provides a foundation for mimetic AI technologies that enhance, rather than replace, human connection in remote intergenerational relationships.

We are currently witnessing the rapid evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI), marking the beginning of a transformative era. Gen-AI is not only revolutionizing what we can achieve with computing but also redefining how we engage with this new medium. Much like the printing press, which unlocked immense potential as a tool, its true value was fully realized when paired with human creativity. Similarly, the true magic of AI lies in the experiences it will empower when combined with human ingenuity. This talk will explore new research directions in Human-Computer Interaction that enable us to leverage the power of Gen-AI, shaping the experiences we create to empower individuals in the future.

Imagine being able to send a personalized embodied agent to meetings you are unable to attend. This paper explores the idea of a Ditto —an agent that visually resembles a person, sounds like them, possesses knowledge about them, and can represent them in meetings. This paper reports on results from two empirical investigations: 1) focus group sessions with six groups (n=24) and 2) a Wizard of Oz (WOz) study with 10 groups (n=39) recruited from within a large technology company. Results from the focus group sessions provide insights on what contexts are appropriate for Dittos, and issues around social acceptability and representation risk. The focus group results also provide feedback on visual design characteristics for Dittos. In the WOz study, teams participated in meetings with two different embodied agents: a Ditto and a Delegate (an agent which did not resemble the absent person). Insights from this research demonstrate the impact these embodied agents can have in meetings and highlight that Dittos in particular show promise in evoking feelings of presence and trust, as well as informing decision making. These results also highlight issues related to relationship dynamics such as maintaining social etiquette, managing one's professional reputation, and upholding accountability. Overall, our investigation provides early evidence that Dittos could be beneficial to represent users when they are unable to be present but also outlines many factors that need to be carefully considered to successfully realize this vision.

Hybrid meetings limit inclusion for remote participants. The Hybridge experimental system provides different interfaces for remote and room endpoints, focusing on improving inclusion via shared spatiality and remote agency. In-room participants see remotes on displays around a table, and remotes see video integrated into a digital twin. Remotes can choose where to appear and from where they view the room. We tested Hybridge in a within-subjects study of group survival tasks. An in-person condition was followed by a counterbalanced order of hybrid traditional videoconferencing ("Gallery") and Hybridge. We found that co-presence and agency differences between in-room and remotes were alleviated in Hybridge but remained in Gallery. Physical presence for remotes was higher in Hybridge than Gallery. Conversation flow was better in Hybridge than Gallery, but ease of awareness was not different. We argue that asymmetry should be embraced when designing hybrid meeting systems, with inclusivity achieved by tailoring features for the needs of different endpoints.

Hybrid video calls include attendees in a conference room with loudspeakers and remote attendees using headsets, each with different options for rendering sound spatially. Two studies explored the listener experience with spatial audio in video calls. One study examined the in-room experience using loudspeakers, comparing among spatialization algorithms spreading voices out horizontally. A second study compared varying degrees of horizontal separation of binaurally rendered voices for a remote participant using a headset. In-room participants preferred the widest spatialization over monophonic, stereo, and stereo-binary audio in metrics related to intelligibility and helpfulness. Remote participants preferred different widths of the audio stage depending on the number of voices. In both studies, rendering sound spatially increased performance in speech stream identification. Results indicate spatial audio benefits for in-room and remote attendees in video calls, although the in-room attendees accepted a wider audio stage than remote users.

With the shift to hybrid meetings in work spaces, there is an increasing need to create a more inclusive hybrid meeting experience where people meeting together in a room interact with those joining remotely. This paper describes a design exploration, implementation, and evaluation of Perspectives, a novel hybrid meeting system that aimed to create an inclusive and equitable space for hybrid meetings. Perspectives digitally composites everyone into a virtual room so that each person has a unique but spatially consistent viewpoint into the meeting. The user study compared Perspectives with three commercially available UX designs for hybrid meetings: Gallery, Together Mode, and Front Row. Results from this study revealed key benefits of Perspectives, including supporting natural interactions, creating a strong sense of co-presence, and reducing cognitive load. Results from the study also helped iterate on the design principles of Perspectives, which offer important insights on supporting hybrid meetings.

Human-AI collaboration for decision-making strives to achieve team performance that exceeds the performance of humans or AI alone. However, many factors can impact success of Human-AI teams, including a user’s domain expertise, mental models of an AI system, trust in recommendations, and more. This article reports on a study that examines users’ interactions with three simulated algorithmic models, all with equivalent accuracy rates but each tuned differently in terms of true positive and true negative rates. Our study examined user performance in a non-trivial blood vessel labeling task where participants indicated whether a given blood vessel was flowing or stalled. Users completed 140 trials across multiple stages, first without an AI and then with recommendations from an AI-Assistant. Although all users had prior experience with the task, their levels of proficiency varied widely. Our results demonstrated that while recommendations from an AI-Assistant can aid in users’ decision making, several underlying factors, including user base expertise and complementary human-AI tuning, significantly impact the overall team performance. First, users’ base performance matters, particularly in comparison to the performance level of the AI. Novice users improved, but not to the accuracy level of the AI. Highly proficient users were generally able to discern when they should follow the AI recommendation and typically maintained or improved their performance. Mid-performers, who had a similar level of accuracy to the AI, were most variable in terms of whether the AI recommendations helped or hurt their performance. Second, tuning an AI algorithm to complement users’ strengths and weaknesses also significantly impacted users’ performance. For example, users in our study were better at detecting flowing blood vessels, so when the AI was tuned to reduce false negatives (at the expense of increasing false positives), users were able to reject those recommendations more easily and improve in accuracy. Finally, users’ perception of the AI’s performance relative to their own performance had an impact on whether users’ accuracy improved when given recommendations from the AI. Overall, this work reveals important insights on the complex interplay of factors influencing Human-AI collaboration and provides recommendations on how to design and tune AI algorithms to complement users in decision-making tasks.

In AI-assisted decision-making, effective hybrid (human-AI) teamwork is not solely dependent on AI performance alone, but also on its impact on human decision-making. While prior work studies the effects of model accuracy on humans, we endeavour here to investigate the complex dynamics of how both a model's predictive performance and bias may transfer to humans in a recommendation-aided decision task. We consider the domain of ML-assisted hiring, where humans---operating in a constrained selection setting---can choose whether they wish to utilize a trained model's inferences to help select candidates from written biographies. We conduct a large-scale user study leveraging a re-created dataset of real bios from prior work, where humans predict the ground truth occupation of given candidates with and without the help of three different NLP classifiers (random, bag-of-words, and deep neural network). Our results demonstrate that while high-performance models significantly improve human performance in a hybrid setting, some models mitigate hybrid bias while others accentuate it. We examine these findings through the lens of decision conformity and observe that our model architecture choices have an impact on human-AI conformity and bias, motivating the explicit need to assess these complex dynamics prior to deployment.

We study how the ratings people receive on online labor platforms are influenced by their performance, gender, their rater's gender, and displayed ratings from other raters. We conducted a deception study in which participants collaborated on a task with a pair of simulated workers, who varied in gender and performance level, and then rated their performance. When the performance of paired workers was similar, low-performing females were rated lower than their male counterparts. Where there was a clear performance difference between paired workers, low-performing females were preferred over a similarly-performing male peer. Furthermore, displaying an average rating from other raters made ratings more extreme, resulting in high performing workers receiving significantly higher ratings and low performers lower ratings compared to when average ratings were absent. This work contributes an empirical understanding of when biases in ratings manifest, and offers recommendations for how online work platforms can counter these biases.

Understanding how racial information impacts human decision making in online systems is critical in today's world. Prior work revealed that race information of criminal defendants, when presented as a text field, had no significant impact on users' judgements of recidivism. We replicated and extended this work to explore how and when race information influences users' judgements, with respect to the saliency of presentation. Our results showed that adding photos to the race labels had a significant impact on recidivism predictions for users who identified as female, but not for those who identified as male. The race of the defendant also impacted these results, with black defendants being less likely to be predicted to recidivate compared to white defendants. These results have strong implications for how system-designers choose to display race information, and cautions researchers to be aware of gender and race effects when using Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.

In a world where the use of AI is growing and evolving, where will we be in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? What role will AI play in our society, and how will humans and AI interact? While there will undoubtedly be scenarios where AI systems will be able to outperform humans, there will also continue to be instances where humans will be a critical part of the process. As researchers explore improvements to AI systems, we also need to explore the interplay between humans and AI, and continue to evolve our understanding of how humans and AI systems can work together, effectively harnessing the benefits of both systems [3].

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) frame opportunities and challenges for user interface design. Principles for human-AI interaction have been discussed in the human-computer interaction community for over two decades, but more study and innovation are needed in light of advances in AI and the growing uses of AI technologies in human-facing applications. We propose 18 generally applicable design guidelines for human-AI interaction. These guidelines are validated through multiple rounds of evaluation including a user study with 49 design practitioners who tested the guidelines against 20 popular AI-infused products. The results verify the relevance of the guidelines over a spectrum of interaction scenarios and reveal gaps in our knowledge, highlighting opportunities for further research. Based on the evaluations, we believe the set of design guidelines can serve as a resource to practitioners working on the design of applications and features that harness AI technologies, and to researchers interested in the further development of human-AI interaction design principles.

Although systematic biases in decision-making are widely documented, the ways in which they emerge from different sources is less understood. We present a controlled experimental platform to study gender bias in hiring by decoupling the effect of world distribution (the gender breakdown of candidates in a specific profession) from bias in human decision-making. We explore the effectiveness of representation criteria, fixed proportional display of candidates, as an intervention strategy for mitigation of gender bias by conducting experiments measuring human decision-makers’ rankings for who they would recommend as potential hires. Experiments across professions with varying gender proportions show that balancing gender representation in candidate slates can correct biases for some professions where the world distribution is skewed, although doing so has no impact on other professions where human persistent preferences are at play. We show that the gender of the decision-maker, complexity of the decision-making task and over- and under-representation of genders in the candidate slate can all impact the final decision. By decoupling sources of bias, we can better isolate strategies for bias mitigation in human-in-the-loop systems.

Although technology is evolving to connect people in new and exciting ways, it still falls short of truly embracing the power of human connection. And for kids, that gap is all too evident. It is time to take a step back and let children inspire us to create technology that supports truly magical experiences. Designing "for" kids will disrupt the trajectory of telepresence and help us create environments that embody new forms of copresence. This talk with reflect on my years of research examining children playing together with technology. This work started with supporting children's play through multiple mice on a desktop computer, and evolved to include shared experiences with a plethora of telepresence prototypes. Although the insights gained from this work have been enlightening, I am still disappointed with the current offerings we have to support children's remote play. Not only do our kids deserve better, I believe they can inspire new evolutions in this space, if we make them a priority in our design.

We developed a prototype which overlays local and remote participants in a video call and enables them to take group pictures together. These pictures serve as keepsakes of the event. The application uses real-time chroma key background removal to composite the remote person into the scene with the local group. We tested the prototype in a museum setting, and compared it to a more standard picture-in-picture (PiP) model. Users rated the composite mode as being significantly more fun, creating a greater sense of copresence and involvement than the PiP mode. Composite snapshots were also strongly preferred over picture-in-picture. Based on results from the study, we added a pinch-zoom and positioning interface to make it easier to frame remote people together into the snapshot, and conducted a second study. We conclude that combining composite video calls and picture-taking on a mobile device enables people to socially construct a shared activity with a remote person.

Video conferencing is often used to connect geographically distributed users and can be used to help them engage in a shared activity in a mobile setting for remote collaboration. One key limitation of today's systems however is that they typically only provide one camera view, which often requires users to hold a mobile phone during the activity. In this paper, we explore the opportunities and challenges of utilizing multiple cameras to create a hands-free, mobile, remote collaboration experience. Results from a study with 54 participants (18 groups of three) revealed that remote viewers could actively participate in an activity with the help of our system and that both the local participant and remote viewers preferred hands-free mode over traditional video conferencing. Our study also revealed insights on how remote viewers manage multiple camera views and showed how automation can improve the experience.

Live streaming services are a growing form of social media. Most live streaming platforms allow viewers to communicate with each other and the broadcaster via a text chat. However, interaction in a text chat does not work well with too many users. Existing techniques to make text chat work with a larger number of participants often limit who can participate or how much users can participate. In this paper, we describe a new design for a text chat system that allows more people to participate without overwhelming users with too many messages. Our design strategically limits the number of messages a user sees based on the concept of neighborhoods, and emphasizes important messages through upvoting. We present a study comparing our system to a chat system similar to those found in commercial streaming services. Results of the study indicate that the Conversational Circle system is easier to understand and interact with, while supporting community among viewers and highlighting important content for the streamer.

We designed and developed a "crowdcasting" prototype to enable remote people to participate in a live event through a collection of live streams coming from the event. Viewers could select from a choice of streams and interact with the streamer and other viewers through text comments and heart reactions. We deployed the prototype in three live events: a Winterfest holiday festival, a local Women's March, and the South by Southwest festival. We found that viewers actively switched among a choice of streams from the event and actively interacted with each other, especially through text comments. Streams of walking about among exhibits or city sights elicited more user interaction than streams of lectures. We observed that voluntary viewers had a wider variation in how long they viewed the event, and switched among streams less and had less interaction through text comments compared to viewers recruited through Mechanical Turk.

We conducted a mixed methods study of the use of the Meerkat and Periscope apps for live streaming video and audio broadcasts from a mobile device. We crowdsourced a task to describe the content, setting, and other characteristics of 767 live streams. We also interviewed 20 frequent streamers to explore their motivations and experiences. Together, the data provide a snapshot of early live streaming use practices. We found a diverse range of activities broadcast, which interviewees said were used to build their personal brand. They described live streaming as providing an authentic, unedited view into their lives. They liked how the interaction with viewers shaped the content of their stream. We found some evidence for multiple live streams from the same event, which represent an opportunity for multiple perspectives on events of shared public interest.

Live streaming is becoming a popular way to share experiences with others. When concurrent video streams of the same event are available, it can be challenging to decide which streams to view and to manage the experience across multiple streams. We designed and developed the SocialStreamViewer prototype that aggregates multiple streams from an event and visualizes others' viewing, hearting, and text chat activity. It also enables users to replay portions of streams. A lab study of SocialStreamViewer explored how people experience an event remotely through multiple streams, and how they use social signals from other viewers' activities. We found that 1) providing multiple streams is beneficial; 2) replaying back in time is highly valued since it helps ensure that users will not miss interesting content; and 3) visualizing other viewers' activities helps users decide which stream to watch.

Children diagnosed with a chronic illness, such as cancer, experience a vastly different childhood than their healthy counterparts. They may struggle with accepting that they are no longer seen as "normal". We surveyed 10 children who have a chronic illness and interviewed 15 healthcare professionals and 7 parents of chronically ill children to understand their communication practices and challenges of how these patients stay connected with their peers. We found that due to the nature of their illness and constant hospitalization, pediatric patients often use various communication technologies to stay in touch with friends and try to maintain normalcy in their lives. Some patients also had to create a "new normal" that balanced life before and after being diagnosed. Based on these results, we suggest opportunities for technology to help patients connect to others and retain a sense of normalcy or to encourage them to embrace their "new normal".

We developed a prototype called SeeSaw that explored using reaction video and auto reply to create an engaging video messaging experience. When viewing a video message, reaction video captures a video of the viewer's reaction to share back with the message sender. After finishing viewing the video message, auto reply immediately begins recording the viewer's response. A pilot study found that SeeSaw evoked conversational and authentic interactions, even though the messages were captured remotely and asynchronously. A follow-up comparative lab study found that reaction video encouraged a more conversational exchange, while both features together enhanced the authenticity of the experience. Although participants preferred the reaction video only condition, they perceived that the reaction video plus auto reply condition combined the conversationality of a video call with the flexibility of asynchronous messaging.

We present the design, and evaluation of WaaZam, a video mediated communication system designed to support creative play in customized environments. Users can interact together in virtual environments composed of digital assets layered in 3D space. The goal of the project is to support creative play and increase social engagement during video sessions of geographically separated families. We try to understand the value of customization for individual families with children ages 6-12. We present interviews with creativity experts, a pilot study and a formal evaluation of families playing together in four conditions: separate windows, merged windows, digital play sets, and customized digital environments. We found that playing in the same video space enables new activities and increases social engagement for families. Customization allows families to modify scenes for their needs and support more creative play activities that embody the imagination of the child.

Consumers shopping in "brick-and-mortar" (non-virtual) stores often use their mobile phones to consult with others about potential purchases. Via a survey (n = 200), we detail current practices in seeking remote shopping advice. We then consider how emerging social platforms, such as social networking sites and crowd labor markets, could offer rich next-generation remote shopping advice experiences. We conducted a field experiment in which shoppers shared photographs of potential purchases via MMS, Facebook, and Mechanical Turk. Paid crowdsourcing, in particular, proved surprisingly useful and influential as a means of augmenting in-store shopping. Based on our findings, we offer design suggestions for next-generation remote shopping advice systems.

Telephone calls and videoconferencing are ubiquitous parts of everyday life. As the content of the call may extend beyond just words, people share applications and media using techniques such as screen sharing and email attachments. Little is known about the prevalence of this behavior and the benefits it can provide. We conducted a survey and a lab study to examine media sharing during a video call and found that it can be useful as well as emotionally engaging. Participants indicated that they would be more likely to have more frequent and longer calls if media sharing were easy. Overall, this work demonstrates the importance of exploring communication media that augment and enrich our everyday activities.

Mobile videoconferencing is increasingly being used to bring remote friends or family along to an activity happening outside the home, such as shopping or visiting a tourist attraction. We explored how including contextual information of the event, in addition to audio and video of the person at the event, impacts the shared experience. We studied three kinds of information: a map showing the position of the person at the activity, a second live video showing what was in front of that person, and periodic high quality images showing what was in front of the person. We carried out a field study with twelve pairs of participants, where one participant (the nomad) was at a self-selected activity while the other (the couch potato) joined the activity from our living room lab. The study results show that including contextual information significantly improved connectedness and the sense of presence for both participants. Each type of contextual information offered unique benefits. The map was used for orientation and to provide directions, the live video for "do you see this" moments and to maintain a sense of liveliness, and the periodic images for "did you see that" moments and to see greater detail. Together they led to smooth view negotiation, activity input from the couch potato, and high levels of engagement.

Whether in private or professional life, individuals frequently adapt the technology around them and work with what they have at hand to accomplish a certain task. In this one-day workshop, we will discuss how this form of technology appropriation is used to satisfy communication needs. Thereby, we specifically focus on technology that was not intended to facilitate communication, but which led to appropriation driven by individuals' communication needs. Our aim is to identify "unexpected" communication needs, to better address these in the design of interactive systems. We focus on a variety of different contexts, ranging from not restricted contexts to environments that are characterized by strict regulations (e.g., production lines with 24/7 shift production cycles). Consequently, this workshop aims at better understanding how users adapt technology to match their individual communication purposes and how these appropriation practices interrelate with and support organizational cooperation.

Studies have shown positive impact of video blogs (vlogs) on patient education. However, we know little on how patient-initiated vlogs shape the relationships among vloggers and viewers. We qualitatively analyzed 72 vlogs on YouTube by users diagnosed with HIV, diabetes, or cancer and 1,274 comments posted to the vlogs to understand viewers' perspectives on the vlogs. We found that the unique video medium allowed intense and enriched personal and contextual disclosure to the viewers, leading to strong community-building activities and social support among vloggers and commenters, both informationally and emotionally. Furthermore, the unique communication structure of the vlogs allowed ad hoc small groups to form, which showed different group behavior than typical text-based social media, such as online communities. We provide implications to the Health Care Industry (HCI) community on how future technologies for health vlogs could be designed to further support chronic illness management.

New approaches in the use of media and technology provide the opportunity to give children's voices a space to express their unique interests. These new forms of video and audio use create a new type of engagement for children to communicate in ways that makes it relevant to their identity. We are looking to tap into the already prevalent use of these technologies by children to establish a conversation about issues that are important to them. Giving children the opportunity to create and exercise control over the content of their creation can foster children centered programs and establish a conversation with larger communities in a local, national and global stage. Exploring the potential of audio and video in innovative ways will be the focus of this workshop. Workshop participants will present specific case studies and projects and discuss informal trends identified through their work on children's new uses of media. This workshop will provide insight in how technology is being used and ways that it can provide a new communication platform for children.

Health video blogs (vlogs) allow individuals with chronic illnesses to share their stories, experiences, and knowledge with the general public. Furthermore, health vlogs help in creating a connection between the vlogger and the viewers. In this work, we present a qualitative study examining the various methods that health vloggers use to establish a connection with their viewers. We found that vloggers used genres to express specific messages to their viewers while using the uniqueness of video to establish a deeper connection with their viewers. Health vloggers also explicitly sought interaction with their viewers. Based on these results, we present design implications to help facilitate and build sustainable communities for vloggers.

Video communication is moving beyond face-to-face discussions on desktop computers to sharing experiences out in the real world. We explored how mobile video could enable distributed family members to share experiences wherever they occurred - kids' sporting events, birthday parties, etc. We investigated how people used two technology probes to share activities outside the home: an iPad running Skype and our Experiences2Go prototype composed of a networked slate and a camcorder on a tripod. We observed their use in the field with nine families and explored the impact that their mobility, optical zoom, and multiple view features had on sharing the experience. We identified four sets of stakeholders in sharing experiences, the variety of sharing scenarios enabled, and reactions to the features that each probe offered, leading to design considerations for future mobile shared experience systems.

Visual analytics involves complex analytical processes that can often benefit from collaboration. Many researchers have explored co-located synchronous systems to help support collaborative visual analytics; however, the process can often be long and require a series of sessions. Providing support for asynchronous collaboration in visual analytics systems can help divide the problem between several analysts across many sessions to ensure that they can effectively work together toward a solution. Currently, visual analytics systems offer limited support for asynchronous, multi-session work [1]. In this workshop, we seek to bring together researchers from both the CSCW and Visual Analytics communities to discuss avenues for supporting asynchronous collaboration in visual analytics system.

Consumer-based synchronous video communication is on the rise and is viewed as a valuable medium to support long distance relationships. We were interested in the potential of asynchronous video to augment children's close friendships and what types of activities they would engage in using video. We explored both of these concepts through a 9-week field study with a group of six 9-10 year old girls. We see children as potential media trendsetters when it comes to video communication given their comfort with video and desire for rich social interactions. The results from this study were striking. Despite having frequent face-to-face interactions, the girls used our asynchronous video communication tool extensively to augment their existing relationships. Not only were they able to have rich conversations using asynchronous video, they also demonstrated a strong desire to share more than just a "talking head". The results from this work point to the need for video mediated communication to move beyond conversations, to the sharing of rich experiences.

Task and reference spaces are important communication channels for remote collaboration. However, all existing systems for sharing these spaces have an inherent weakness: they cannot share arbitrary physical and digital objects on arbitrary surfaces. We present IllumiShare, a new cost-effective, light-weight device that solves this issue. It both shares physical and digital objects on arbitrary surfaces and provides rich referential awareness. To evaluate IllumiShare, we studied pairs of children playing remotely. They used IllumiShare to share the task-reference space and Skype Video to share the person space. The study results show that IllumiShare shared the play space in a natural and seamless way. We also found that children preferred having both spaces compared to having only one. Moreover, we found that removing the task-reference space caused stronger negative disruptions to the play task and engagement level than removing the person space. Similarly, we found that adding the task-reference space resulted in stronger positive disruptions.

Time Travel Proxy (TTP) enables participating in meetings that you cannot attend in real time, either because of time conflicts or global time zone differences. TTP uses lightweight video recordings to pre-record your contributions to a meeting, which are played on a tablet that serves as a proxy for you during the meeting. Reactions and responses in the meeting are also captured in video to give you feedback of what happened at the meeting. A working prototype of TTP was deployed and studied within four developer teams in their daily stand-up meetings. The study found that the affordances of video helped integrate the time traveler into the social context of the meeting, although the current prototype was better at enabling the time traveler to contribute to the meeting than it was in conveying the meeting experience back to the time traveler.

Work teams are often geographically distributed, and in some cases, experience large time-zone differences with no overlap in working hours. We explored the use of asynchronous video in temporally distributed teams. We developed VideoThreads, which provides a novel thread-based visualization of video messages. Based on a deployment to four teams, we offer design recommendations and insights about the benefits of asynchronous video sharing.

We conducted a study comparing avatar conferencing with video and audio conferencing for work scenarios. We studied nine four-person teams using a within-subjects design that measured users' perceptions and preferences across the conferencing conditions. Video was rated highest in all measures. Avatar and Audio were rated similarly, except for sociability, where Avatar was rated higher than Audio, and realism, where Avatar was rated lower than Audio. While users appreciated how avatar conferencing brought them together in a common virtual space, they found the cartoon avatars to be inappropriate for a professional discussion. As a result, participants preferred Video the most and Avatar the least for a business meeting. Lower ratings for the avatar condition were partly due to users' frustrations when the avatar system did not track them perfectly. When assuming a "perfect" system, preference for Avatar increased significantly while preference for Audio and Video remained unchanged.

Co-located collaboration can be extremely valuable during complex visual analytics tasks. We present an exploratory study of a system designed to support collaborative visual analysis tasks on a digital tabletop display. Fifteen participant pairs employed Cambiera, a visual analytics system, to solve a problem involving 240 digital documents. Our analysis, supported by observations, system logs, questionnaires, and interview data, explores how pairs approached the problem around the table. We contribute a unique, rich understanding of how users worked together around the table and identify eight types of collaboration styles that can be used to identify how closely people work together while problem solving. We show how the closeness of teams’ collaboration and communication influenced how they performed on the task overall. We further discuss the role of the tabletop for visual analytics tasks and derive design implications for future co-located collaborative tabletop problem solving systems.

People sometimes miss small parts of meetings and need to quickly catch up without disrupting the rest of the meeting. We developed an Accelerated Instant Replay (AIR) Conferencing system for videoconferencing that enables users to catch up on missed content while the meeting is ongoing. AIR can replay parts of the conference using four different modalities: audio, video, conversation transcript, and shared workspace. We performed two studies to evaluate the system. The first study explored the benefit of AIR catch-up during a live meeting. The results showed that when the full videoconference was reviewed (i.e., all four modalities) at an accelerated rate, users were able to correctly recall a similar amount of information as when listening live. To better understand the benefit of full review, a follow-up study more closely examined the benefits of each of the individual modalities. The results show that users (a) preferred using audio along with any other modality to using audio alone, (b) were most confident and performed best when audio was reviewed with all other modalities, (c) compared to audio-only, had better recall of facts and explanations when reviewing audio together with the shared workspace and transcript modalities, respectively, and (d) performed similarly with audio-only and audio with video review.

This paper describes results from a large-scale survey to explore users' comfort with different styles of avatars for workplace communication. Thirty-one avatars were evaluated based on users' ratings along several dimensions and grouped into five different clusters. The highest rated cluster was the set of formal, realistic avatars that users did not feel were creepy. These avatars were ranked comparatively with webcam photos, and users felt that they would be appropriate for work. Our results also revealed that realism is nuanced, as avatars in another cluster were also rated high on realism, but were felt to be inappropriate for work. Finally, this work also demonstrates that people are more particular concerning which type of avatar they are represented by, compared to ones they interact with.

We conducted interviews with sixteen members of teams that worked across global time zone differences. Despite time zone differences of about eight hours, collaborators still found time to synchronously meet. The interviews identified the diverse strategies teams used to find time windows to interact, which often included times outside of the normal workday and connecting from home to participate. Recent trends in increased work connectivity from home and blurred boundaries between work and home enabled more scheduling flexibility. While email use was understandably prevalent, there was also general interest in video, although obstacles remain for widespread usage. We propose several design implications for supporting this growing population of workers that need to span global time zone differences.

Current business conditions have given rise to distributed teams that are mostly collocated except for one remote member. These "hub-and-satellite" teams face the challenge of the satellite colleague being out-of-sight and out-of-mind. We developed a telepresence device, called an Embodied Social Proxy (ESP), which represents the satellite coworker 24x7. Beyond using ESPs in our own group, we deployed an ESP in four product teams within our company for six weeks. We studied how ESP was used through ethnographic observations, surveys, and usage log data. ESP not only increased the satellite worker's ability to fully participate in meetings, it also increased the hub's attention and affinity towards the satellite. The continuous physical presence of ESP in each team improved the interpersonal social connections between hub and satellite colleagues.

We present an empirical investigation of video-mediated free play between 13 pairs of friends (ages 7 and 8). The pairs spent 10 minutes playing with each of four different prototypes we developed to support free play over videoconferencing. We coded each interaction for the types of play and the amount of social play observed. The children in our study were largely successful in playing together across videoconferencing, though challenges in managing visibility, attention, and intersubjectivity made it more difficult than face-to-face play. We also found that our prototypes supported some types of play to varying degrees. Our contribution lies in identifying these design tradeoffs and providing directions for future design of video-mediated communication systems for children.

Previous work has demonstrated the benefits of spatial audio conferencing over monophonic when listening to a group conversation. In this paper we examined three-way distributed conversations while varying the presence of spatial video and audio. Our results demonstrate significant benefits to adding spatialized video to an audio conference. Specifically, users perceived that the conversations were of higher quality, they were more engaged, and they were better able to keep track of the conversation. In contrast, no significant benefits were found when mono audio was replaced by spatialized audio. The results of this work are important in that they provide strong evidence for continued exploration of spatialized video, and also suggest that the benefits of spatialized audio may have less of an impact when video is also spatialized.

We explore the design of a system for three-way collaboration over a shared visual workspace, specifically in how to support three channels of communication: person, reference, and task-space. In two studies, we explore the implications of extending designs intended for dyadic collaboration to three-person groups, and the role of each communication channel. Our studies illustrate the utility of multiple configurations of users around a distributed workspace, and explore the subtleties of traditional notions of identity, awareness, spatial metaphor, and corporeal embodiments as they relate to three-way collaboration.

When people attend meetings they may miss parts of the discussion if they, for example, step out to take a phone call, go to the bathroom, or have a momentary lapse in concentration. As a result, they may need to catch up on what they missed upon returning to the meeting. Asking other attendees for a recap is often disruptive. To avoid such disruptions, we have developed an Accelerated Instant Replay (AIR) Conferencing system for videoconferencing that enables participants to privately catch up to an ongoing meeting. We explored several mechanisms where the meeting content is replayed at an accelerated rate so that the participants can catch up to the live discussion reasonably quickly.

Mischief is a system for classroom interaction that allows multiple children to use individual mice and cursors to interact with a single large display [20]. While the system can support large groups of children, it is unclear how children's performance is affected as group size increases. We explore this question via a study involving two tasks, with children working in group sizes ranging from 1 to 32. The first required reciprocal selection of two on-screen targets, resembling a swarm pointing scenario that might be used in educational applications. The second, a more temporally and spatially distributed pointing task, had children entering different words by selecting characters on an on-screen keyboard. Results indicate that performance is significantly affected by group size only when targets are small. Further, group size had a smaller effect when pointing was spatially and temporally distributed than when everyone was concurrently aiming at the same targets.

Over the years we have seen a shift from mainframe computing, to personal computing, to a world heavily dominated by Web interactions. Users today have access to a wide variety of devices and advances in social computing now enable users to keep in touch with colleagues, friends, and family all over the world; however, we are still limited by the one-user/one-computer origins of PC technology. Whether we want to interact with people in the same room, down the hall, or 10,000 km away; whether we want to work together, or apart, at the same time, or independently, our computing environments need to adapt. In this talk the author emphasizes the importance of designing for ldquoshared computingrdquo; the notion that devices as well as experiences are often shared, and we need to effectively support all dimensions of shared use. Extending a design from individual to shared use is more than adding a few new features and often, the underlying conceptual model of the system must change. This talk reflects on where we've come from, current stumbling blocks, and where we are headed.

Media spaces and videoconference systems are beneficial for connecting separated co-workers and providing rich contextual information. However, image sharing communication tools may also touch on sensitive spots of the human psyche related to personal, perceived image issues (e.g., appearance, self-image, self-presentation and vanity). We conducted two user studies to examine the impact of self-image concerns on the use of media spaces and videoconference systems. Our results suggest that personal, perceived image concerns have a considerable impact on the comfort level of users and may hinder effective communication [8]. We also found that image filtering techniques can help users feel more comfortable. Our results revealed that distortion filters, which are frequently cited to help preserve privacy, do not tend to be the ones preferred by users. Instead, users seemed to favor filters that make subtle changes to their appearance, or, in some instances, they preferred to use a surrogate instead.

Designers' extensive software needs have not been adequately documented in the research literature, and are poorly supported by software. Without appropriate tools to support their needs, designers have difficulty knowing the best way to evolve the look and feel of interactive applications they are designing. In order to inform the design of new tools for interactive application design, we used a grounded theory approach to find out what designers' needs are when designing such applications. This paper reports our findings (20 designer needs) from content analysis of five types of artifacts: surveys, blend discussion list emails, dreamweaver forum entries, flash forum entries, and interviews with ten designers. These 20 needs were then validated in follow-up interviews and focus group sessions. The results of this work revealed trends regarding the importance of each need and show that flow is one of the most important needs.

We present a new interaction framework for collaborating in multiple display environments (MDEs) and report results from a field study investigating its use in an authentic work setting. Our interaction framework, IMPROMPTU, allows users to share task information across displays via off-the-shelf applications, to jointly interact with information for focused problem solving and to place information on shared displays for discussion and reflection. Our framework also includes a lightweight interface for performing these and related actions. A three week field study of our framework was conducted in the domain of face-to-face group software development. Results show that teams utilized almost every feature of the framework in support of a wide range of development-related activities. The framework was used most to facilitate opportunistic collaboration involving task information. Teams reported wanting to continue using the framework as they found value in it overall.

Mischief is a system to support traditional classroom practices between a remote instructor and a group of collocated students. Meant for developing regions, each student in the classroom is given a mouse and these are connected to a single machine and shared display. We present observations of teaching practices in rural Chinese classrooms that led to Mischief's design. Mischief's user interface, with which scores of collocated students can interact simultaneously, supports anonymous responses, communicates focus of attention, and maintains the role of the instructor. Mischief is an extensible platform in which Microsoft PowerPoint slides, used commonly in developing regions, are made interactive. We setup a controlled environment where Mischief was used by classrooms of children with a remote math instructor. The results from the study provided insight into the usability and capacity of the system to support traditional classroom interactions. These observations were also the impetus for a redesign of several components of Mischief and are also presented. These findings contribute both a novel system for synchronous distance education in an affordable manner and design insights for creators of related systems.

Staying in touch with extended family members can be a challenge in part because of the time and effort required, even with the help of current technologies. To explore the value of sharing suggestions in sparking communication and facilitating sharing between extended families, we iteratively built SPARCS, a prototype that encourages frequent sharing of photos and calendar information between extended families. Results from a five-week field study with 7 pairs of families highlight a number of important features for an ideal sharing system to help families stay connected, including asynchronous chat and easily configurable sharing suggestions.

In this paper we present Family Accounts, a new user account model for shared home computers. We conducted a study with sixteen families, eight who used individual profiles at home, and eight who shared a single profile. Our results demonstrate that Family Accounts is a good compromise between a single shared profile and individual profiles for each family member. In particular, we observed that because Family Accounts allowed individuals to switch profiles without forcing them to interrupt their tasks, family members tended to switch to their own profiles only when a task required some degree of privacy or personalization.

We present results from a study examining the sensitivity of group navigation strategies to changes in route presentation on a shared mobile device. Two content-equivalent interfaces are compared. An interface providing textual instructions linked to regions on a route map yields reliance on text primarily, encouraging route planning and a divide-and-conquer strategy we term 'navigator and scout'. An interface combining text instructions with map segments on individual pages yields less planning, still permits nav/scout, and sees an increase in an ad-hoc 'sync and go' strategy involving more gathering around the device. Finally, when the route map is used without text, the frequency of the nav/scout strategy drops markedly as sync and go increases.

Designers of Multi-Display Environments (MDEs) often use input redirection to allow users to manipulate content on multiple displays with a single interaction device, but users seated at sub-optimal positions (i.e., not facing the display) may find interaction difficult or frustrating. In collaborative MDEs, users should be able to choose their preferred collaborative arrangement, rather than adjusting to the limitations of the technology. We compare content and input redirection from a variety of seating positions in an MDE. Results from our studies show that content redirection does not suffer from performance loss in sub-optimal seating positions, as opposed to input redirection, which does. Content redirection provides a method for all members of a group to interact with shared content regardless of their position relative to a shared display.

It can be difficult to properly understand aspects of user behavior on the Web without examining the behaviors in a realistic setting, such as through field studies. In this article, an overview of the experiences in augmenting logged data with contextual information over the course of two separate research projects conducted in the field is presented. One project investigated the privacy sensitivity of normal Web browsing, and the other examined user behavior during Web-based information-seeking tasks. Throughout both projects, the contextual information was collected through participant annotations of their Web usage. Based on experiences in conducting this research, implications of methodological decisions are considered, unanswered questions are highlighted, and considerations for other researchers are provided. These shared experiences and perspectives will assist future researchers planning similar field studies, allowing them to build upon the lessons learned.

Monitoring occurs when users return to previously viewed web pages to view new or updated information. While tools exist to support web-based monitoring, we know little about the monitoring activities users engage in and the nature of the support needed. We have conducted 40 semi-structured interviews in order to better understand the types of information users monitor and the characteristics of different monitoring activities. Using the data collected during the interviews, we characterized monitoring as an activity within six web information tasks: Browsing, Communications, Fact Finding, Information Gathering, Maintenance, and Transactions. The results of our study have been used to provide general, as well as task specific, recommendations for the design of monitoring tools.

The results presented in this paper illustrate how a specific map visualization technique is sensitive to setting: a comparative evaluation of the technique gives conflicting results depending on where it takes place. While prior research has explored the impact of factors other than basic visual perception on visualization techniques, relatively little attention has been directed toward the physical setting in which the technique is used. We present results from a study involving 120 participants, comparing the effectiveness of two different geovisualization techniques in promoting recall of map layout. Recall was shown to be sensitive to setting, such that one technique in particular was more effective in a noisy public space than in a controlled, 'white-room' environment. The results have implications for the validation and measurement of information visualization techniques as a whole, and in particular for those employing motion as a communicative attribute.

Privacy can be an issue during collaboration around a personal display when previous browsing activities become visible within web browser features (e.g., AutoComplete). Users currently lack methods to present only appropriate traces of prior activity in these features. In this paper we explore a semi-automatic approach to privacy management that allows users to classify traces of browsing activity and filter them appropriately when their screen is visible by others. We developed PrivateBits, a prototype web browser that instantiates previously proposed general design guidelines for privacy management systems as well as those specific to web browser visual privacy. A preliminary evaluation found this approach to be flexible enough to meet participants' varying privacy concerns, privacy management strategies, and viewing contexts. However, the results also emphasized the need for additional security features to increase trust in the system and raised questions about how to best manage the tradeoff between ease of use and system concealment.

In this paper, we explore the use of an interaction technique called sequential segmentation to support target selection for mobile devices. Sequential segmentation iteratively partitions an information space into selectable regions and subsequent sub-regions where each region/sub-region is labeled (1--9) and is mapped to the corresponding key on the mobile device's numeric keypad. We conducted a study comparing the sequential technique to the directional pad for target selection. The results show that the directional pad is significantly faster than sequential for selecting targets that require three or less interactions with the directional pad. However, sequential is significantly faster than the directional pad for targets that require five or more interactions with the directional pad. User feedback shows a preference for sequential and that it is perceived easier to use than the directional pad.

We conducted a survey of 155 participants to examine privacy concerns relating to the viewing of incidental information (i.e. traces of previous activity unrelated to the task at hand) in web browsers. We have identified several dimensions of privacy for this domain. Results revealed the scope of this problem and how location and device affect web browsing activity and contribute to the types of incidental information that may be visible. We found that there are different privacy comfort levels inherent to the participant and dependent on the context of subsequent viewing of incidental information, including the sensitivity of the content, their relationship to the viewer and the level of control retained over input devices.

Researchers are using emerging technologies to develop novel play environments, while established computer and console game markets continue to grow rapidly. Even so, evaluating the success of interactive play environments is still an open research challenge. Both subjective and objective techniques fall short due to limited evaluative bandwidth; there remains no corollary in play environments to task performance with productivity systems. This paper presents a method of modeling user emotional state, based on a user's physiology, for users interacting with play technologies. Modeled emotions are powerful because they capture usability and playability through metrics relevant to ludic experience; account for user emotion; are quantitative and objective; and are represented continuously over a session. Furthermore, our modeled emotions show the same trends as reported emotions for fun, boredom, and excitement; however, the modeled emotions revealed differences between three play conditions, while the differences between the subjective reports failed to reach significance.

This research examines the privacy comfort levels of participants if others can view traces of their web browsing activity. During a week-long field study, participants used an electronic diary daily to annotate each web page visited with a privacy level. Content categories were used by participants to theoretically specify their privacy comfort for each category and by researchers to partition participants' actual browsing. The content categories were clustered into groups based on the dominant privacy levels applied to the pages. Inconsistencies between participants in their privacy ratings of categories suggest that a general privacy management scheme is inappropriate. Participants' consistency within categories suggests that a personalized scheme may be feasible; however a more fine-grained approach to classification is required to improve results for sites that tend to be general, of multiple task purposes, or dynamic in content.

Emerging technologies offer exciting new ways of using entertainment technology to create fantastic play experiences and foster interactions between players. Evaluating entertainment technology is challenging because success isn't defined in terms of productivity and performance, but in terms of enjoyment and interaction. Current subjective methods of evaluating entertainment technology aren't sufficiently robust. This paper describes two experiments designed to test the efficacy of physiological measures as evaluators of user experience with entertainment technologies. We found evidence that there is a different physiological response in the body when playing against a computer versus playing against a friend. These physiological results are mirrored in the subjective reports provided by the participants. In addition, we provide guidelines for collecting physiological data for user experience analysis, which were informed by our empirical investigations. This research provides an initial step towards using physiological responses to objectively evaluate a user's experience with entertainment technology.

The effectiveness of interaction with mobile devices can be impacted by handedness; however, support for handedness in the interface is rarely provided. The goal of this article is to demonstrate that handedness is a significant interface consideration that should not be overlooked. Four studies were conducted to explore left‐handed user interaction with right‐ or left‐aligned scrollbars on personal digital assistants. Analysis of the data shows that left‐handed users are able to select targets significantly faster using a left‐aligned scrollbar when compared to a right‐aligned scrollbar. User feedback also indicated that a left‐aligned scrollbar was preferred by left‐handed users and provided more natural interaction.

Technology may be able to play a role in improving the quality of life for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. We are evaluating the feasibility of an information appliance with the goal of alleviating repetitive questioning behaviour, a contributing factor to caregiver stress. Interviews were conducted with persons with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers to determine the nature of the repetitive questioning behaviour, the information needs of patients, and the interaction abilities of both the patients and the caregivers. We report results of these interviews and discuss the challenges of requirements gathering with persons with Alzheimer's disease and the feasibility of introducing an information appliance to this population.

Groups collaborating around a large wall display can do so in a variety of arrangements, positioning themselves at different distances from the display and from each other. We examined the impact of proximity on the effectiveness and enjoyment of co-located collaboration. Our results revealed collaborative benefits when participants were positioned close together, and interaction with the display was felt to be more effective when participants were close to the display. However, clear tradeoffs were evident for these configurations. When at a distance to the display, the choice of direct versus indirect interaction revealed that interactions were easier when using direct input but the effectiveness of the collaboration was compromised.

In this paper, we present a field study comparing software-based navigation techniques (scrollbars, tap-and-drag, and touch-n-go) on mobile devices. In particular, we were interested in exploring the efficiency and user preference of these navigation techniques for different levels of mobility (sitting, walking, and standing) in a naturalistic environment. Results show that while there was no significant difference in performance between tap-and-drag and touch-n-go, both techniques significantly outperformed scrollbars for simple, multi-directional navigation tasks. In addition, the users preferred the touch-n-go technique over the other two methods. The results also revealed that users' interactions and preferences differed between the levels of mobility.

We present preliminary results from two studies examining the selection techniques suitable for paper maps using handheld computers or cellphones as interaction devices. An informal mockup exploration indicated a strong tendency toward point-and-click style interaction when participants were asked to envision how a range of queries might be expressed. A subsequent study involving a functional prototype and a short training session showed that participants were receptive to other interaction styles, including tracing paths, circling regions, constraining queries with paper menus, and selecting multiple non-adjacent map icons. The contrasting results underline the importance of using a range of design evaluation techniques when developing applications involving handheld devices as interactors.

Emerging technologies such as location-awareness devices have the potential to significantly impact users’ social coordination, particularly while rendezvousing. It is important that we explore how new technologies influence social behaviours and communication in order to realize their full potential. This paper presents a field study investigating the use of mobile location-aware devices for rendezvous activities. Participants took part in one of three mobile device conditions (a mobile phone, a location-aware handheld, or both a mobile phone and a location-aware handheld) and completed three rendezvousing scenarios. The results reveal key differences in communication patterns between the mediums, as well as the potential strengths and limitations of location-aware devices for social coordination. The paper concludes with a discussion of relevant design issues drawn from observations gathered during the field study.

Emerging technologies offer new ways of using entertainment technology to foster interactions between players and connect people. Evaluating collaborative entertainment technology is challenging because success is not defined in terms of productivity and performance, but in terms of enjoyment and interaction. Current subjective methods are not sufficiently robust in this context. This paper describes an experiment designed to test the efficacy of physiological measures as evaluators of collaborative entertainment technologies. We found evidence that there is a different physiological response in the body when playing against a computer versus playing against a friend. These physiological results are mirrored in the subjective reports provided by the participants. We provide an initial step towards using physiological responses to objectively evaluate a user’s experience with collaborative entertainment technology.

Researchers seeking alternatives to traditional desktop computers have begun exploring the potential collaborative benefits of digital tabletop displays. However, there are still many open issues related to the design of collaborative tabletop interfaces, such as whether these systems should automatically orient workspace items or enforce ownership of workspace content. Understanding the natural interaction practices that people use during tabletop collaboration with traditional media (e.g., pen and paper) can help to address these issues. Interfaces that are modeled on these practices will have the additional advantage of supporting the interaction skills people have developed over years of collaborating at traditional tables. To gain a deeper understanding of these interaction practices we conducted two observational studies of traditional tabletop collaboration in both casual and formal settings. Our results reveal that collaborators use three types of tabletop territories to help coordinate their interactions within the shared tabletop workspace: personal, group, and storage territories. Findings from a spatial analysis of collaborators' tabletop interactions reveal important properties of these tabletop territories. In order to provide a comprehensive picture of the role of tabletop territoriality in collaboration, we conclude with a synthesis of our findings and previous research findings and with several relevant design implications.

Computing devices within current work and play environments are relatively static. As the number of 'networked' devices grows, and as people and their devices become more dynamic, situations will commonly arise where users will wish to use 'that device there' instead of navigating through traditional user interface widgets such as lists. This paper describes a process for identifying devices through a pointing gesture using custom tags and a custom stylus called the gesturePen. Implementation details for this system are provided along with qualitative and quantitative results from a formal user study. As ubiquitous computing environments become more pervasive, people will rapidly switch their focus between many computing devices. The results of our work demonstrate that our gesturePen method can improve the user experience in ubiquitous environments by facilitating significantly faster interactions between computing devices.

This paper describes a project to explore issues surrouding the development of a collaborative handheld educational application for children. A user-centered, iterative design process was used to develop GeneyTM, a collaborative problem solving application to help children explore genetic concepts using PalmTM handheld computers. The design methodology utilized mock-ups of representative tasks and scenarios, pre-design meetings with targets users, prototype development, and feedback sessions with target users. The results of this work identify an effective way of utilizing handheld computers for collaborative learning and provide important insights into the design of handheld applications for children. This work also illustrates the necessity of user-centered design when new user groups are targeted, especially when novel user interface paradigms are employed that go beyond current windows-based interfaces.

The research area of Single Display Groupware (SDG) confronts the standard model of computing interaction, one user working on one computer, by investigating how the best support groups of users interacting with a shared display. One problem that has arisen in SDG research concerns access to private information. Previously, private information could not be displayed on a shared display, it could only be accessed on external devices, such as private monitors or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). This paper discusses Single Display Privacyware (SDP), an interaction technique that allows private information to be shown within the context of a shared display. A description of the hardware and software components of our prototype SDP system is given, as are the results of a user study performed to investigate users interacting in the environment. Conclusions concerning future research in the area of SDP are discussed.

This research investigates children's use of two common mouse interaction styles, drag-and-drop and point-and-click, to determine whether the choice of interaction style impacts children's performance in interactive learning environments. The interaction styles were experimentally compared to determine if either method was superior to the other in terms of speed, error rate, or user preference, for children. The two interaction styles were also compared based on children's achievement and motivation, within a commercial software environment. Experiment I used an interactive learning environment as children played two versions of an educational puzzle-solving game, each version utilizing a different mouse interaction style; experiment II used a mouse-controlled software environment modeled after the educational game. The results were similar to previous results reported for adults: the point-and-click interaction style was faster; fewer errors were committed using it; and it was preferred over the drag-and-drop interaction style. Within the context of the puzzle-solving game, the children solved significantly fewer puzzles, and they were less motivated using the version that utilized a drag-and-drop interaction style as compared to the version that utilized a point-and-click interaction style. These results were also explored through the use of state-transition diagrams and GOMS models, both of which supported the experimental data gathered.

No abstract available.

1. ABSTRACT This paper describes a shared virtual world with four key goals: a reasonable economic model; low latency for world synchronization; a hospitable environment for users; and affordances for social interaction. The first goal is supported by examining economic issues related to the design of commercially viable 3D virtual environments including issues such as allowing use of currently developed Web based content. The second goal is supported by underlying network support that combines a mixed set of Internet protocols and a mixed model of a central server for universal resource management and multicast based transaction distribution. The final two goals are supported through architectural design patterns and a literature review of social issues and personal representation in virtual worlds.