The ability of employees to collaborate with remote colleagues is now essential for most large corporations and organizations. Decades of research have identified the conditions that must be present for remote collaboration to succeed. We present a set of studies of remote collaboration within a technology company (Google) that has not only met these conditions but gone beyond them by providing ubiquitous video conferencing (VC). We looked at how well remote collaboration can now work, whether travel is still required, and what impediments still remain. We found that several factors contributed to the success of remote collaboration. Visual real-time communication via VC is ubiquitous and easy to use, VC is integrated with calendar software, and most Google employees have laptops with VC capability. Collaborative tools such as Google Docs, e-mail, and instant messaging make working together, sharing information, and keeping in touch easy. Finally, there is a culture of trust and sharing within Google. We also found that initial face-to-face meetings remain crucial for enhancing subsequent remote interactions. There were two findings of particular interest. First, VC has completely replaced audio conferencing for internal company communications. Second, video portals (always-on video connections between two or more locations) have sprung up spontaneously throughout Google. We categorize their use into four different styles of interaction and describe how they can be effective not only in facilitating communication but also in providing presence and status information, helping to establish mutual trust and common ground, and preventing misunderstandings. Video portals reduce the behavioral costs of communication and for the first time allow tightly coupled remote work to succeed. Although there are some lingering problems in technology-mediated distributed meetings, a combination of a collaborative culture with appropriate infrastructure, software, and access to technology can radically narrow the gap between colocated and remote collaboration.

In two experiments, each using a different product (either a CD-ROM based eleclxonic book or an interactive voice response system), we compared the usability problems uncovered using low-and high-fidelity prototypes.One group of subjects performed a series of tasks using a paperbased low-fidelity prototype, while another performed the same tasks using either a high-fidelity prototype or the actual product.In both experiments, substantially the same sets of usability problems were found in the low-and highfidelity conditions.Moreover, there was a significant correlation between the proportion of subjects detecting particular problems in the low-and high-fidelity groups.In other words, individual problems were detected by a similar proportion of subjects in both the low-and high-fidelity conditions.We conclude that the use of low-fidelity prototypes can be effective throughout the product development cycle, not just during the initial stages of design.

The human factors aspects of designing and introducing automated services using automatic speech recognition (ASR) over the public switched telephone networks are examined. Current applications, the problems encountered, and the lessons learned are reviewed. In addition, the authors are currently engaged in a project to introduce automation using ASR, and they discuss the five-stage approach that they are using, which is based on published accounts of previous field trials as well as current techniques for user-interface design. They also describe more advanced capabilities that will be required for both near- and far-future applications, identifying areas where research is needed and discussing the difficult problems that must be overcome. In particular, data on the vocabulary requirements of human conversations are presented.>