Browsing by Author "Wallace, James R."

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    Collaborative sensemaking on a digital tabletop and personal tablets: prioritization, comparisons, and tableaux
    (ACM, 2013) Wallace, James R.; Scott, Stacey D.; MacGregor, Carolyn G.
    We describe an investigation of the support that three different display configurations provided for a collaborative sensemaking task: a digital table; personal tablets; and both the tabletop and personal tablets. Mixed-methods analyses revealed that the presence of a digital tabletop display led to improved sensemaking performance, and identified activities that were supported by the shared workspace. The digital tabletop supported a group's ability to prioritize information, to make comparisons between task data, and to form and critique the group's working hypothesis. Analyses of group performance revealed a positive correlation with equity of member participation using the shared digital table, and a negative correlation of equity of member participation using personal tablets. Implications for the support of sensemaking groups, and the use of equity of member participation as a predictive measure of their performance are discussed.
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    Exploring automation in digital tabletop board game
    (ACM, 2012) Wallace, James R.; Pape, Joseph; Chang, Yu-Ling Betty; McClelland, Phillip J.; Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Scott, Stacey D.; Hancock, Mark
    Digital tabletops present the opportunity to combine the social advantages of traditional tabletop games with the automation and streamlined gameplay of video games. However, it is unclear whether the addition of automation enhances or detracts from the game experience. A study was performed where groups played three versions of the cooperative board game Pandemic, with varying degrees of automation. The study revealed that while game automation can provide advantages to players, it can also negatively impact enjoyment, game state awareness, and flexibility in game play.
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    Investigating teamwork and taskwork in single- and multi-display groupware systems
    (Springer, 2009) Wallace, James R.; Scott, Stacey D.; Stutz, Taryn; Enns, Tricia; Inkpen, Kori
    Multi-display groupware (MDG) systems, which typically comprise both public and personal displays, promise to enhance collaboration, yet little is understood about how they differ in use from single-display groupware (SDG) systems. While research has established the technical feasibility of MDG systems, evaluations have not addressed the question of how users’ behave in such environments, how their interface design can impact group behavior, or what advantages they offer for collaboration. This paper presents a user study that investigates the impact of display configuration and software interface design on taskwork and teamwork. Groups of three completed a collaborative optimization task in single- and multi-display environments, under different task interface constraints. Our results suggest that MDG configurations offer advantages for performing individual task duties, whereas SDG conditions offer advantages for coordinating access to shared resources. The results also reveal the importance of ergonomic design considerations when designing co-located groupware systems.
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    Investigating the Role of a Large, Shared Display in Multi-Display Environments
    (Springer, 2011) Wallace, James R.; Scott, Stacey D.; Lai, Eugene; Jajalla, Deon
    We conducted an empirical study to investigate the use of personal and shared displays during group work. The collaborative environments under study consisted of personal workspaces, in the form of laptops, and a shared virtual workspace displayed on a nearby wall. Our study compared the use of the large shared display under two different interface content conditions; a status display that provided an overview of the group’s current task performance, and a replicated view of the shared workspace that allowed task work to occur on the shared display. The study results suggest that while participants used their personal displays primarily to perform the task, the shared display facilitated several key teamwork mechanisms. In particular, the provided status display best facilitated monitoring of group progress, whereas the replicated content display best facilitated conversational grounding. Regardless of the shared display content, having a shared, physical reference point also appeared to support synchronization of the group activity via body language and gaze.
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    The NiCE Discussion Room: Integrating Paper and Digital Media to Support Co-Located Group Meetings
    (ACM, 2010) Haller, Michael; Leitner, Jakob; Seifried, Thomas; Wallace, James R.; Scott, Stacey D.; Richter, Christoph; Brandl, Peter; Gokcezade, Adam; Hunter, Seth
    Current technological solutions that enable content creation and sharing during group discussion meetings are often cumbersome to use, and are commonly abandoned for traditional paper-based tools, which provide flexibility in supporting a wide range of working styles and task activities that may occur in a given meeting. Paper-based tools, however, have their own drawbacks; paper-based content is difficult to modify or replicate. We introduce a novel digital meeting room design, the NiCE Discussion Room, which integrates digital and paper tools into a cohesive system with an intuitive pen-based interface. The combination of digital and paper media provides groups with a flexible design solution that enables them to create, access, and share information and media from a variety of sources to facilitate group discussions. This paper describes the design solution, along with results from a user study conducted to evaluate the usability and utility of the system.
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    Solar scramble: an educational children's game for collaborative multi-touch digital tabletops
    (ACM, 2010) Kelly, Ashley R.; Wallace, James R.; Cerar, Katie; Randall, Neil; McClelland, Phillip; Seto, Amanda Mindy
    Our experience report describes the design and development of an educational game for interactive, multi-touch tabletop displays. The game has been designed for children aged 5-10 on the SMART Tabletop platform. This experience report describes the process, design and development of our application and the implications we have drawn from this work in the design of educational technologies for interactive multi-touch tabletops. To investigate the effectiveness of our design, and to identify potential issues in deploying our software, we conducted participant interviews. Based on our design and development process, as well as our participant feedback, we have identified several key issues regarding the development of educational software for K-5 aged (5-10 years old) children on digital tabletops. This research was conducted at the University of Waterloo jointly by the Collaborative Systems Laboratory and the Critical Media Lab.