Events - Colloquia & Seminars

CCIS Colloquium Spring 2006

The Value of Shared Visual Information for Collaborative Task Performance

Speaker: Darren Gergle (Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University)

Date: Thursday, March 2, 2006

Talk: 12:00 pm, 366 WVH

Abstract

For several decades, researchers and engineers have struggled to develop systems to support distance collaboration. The failure of many collaborative technologies is due, in part, to a limited understanding of how groups coordinate in collocated environments and how the coordination mechanisms of face-to-face collaboration are impacted by technology.

My research is building a theoretical understanding of the role shared visual information plays in communication and collaboration. Visual information provides evidence to support both situation awareness and referential grounding. However, the effectiveness with which it can be used for these purposes depends upon the features of the media (e.g., video refresh-rates) and the features of the task (e.g., the linguistic complexity of the objects being discussed). At a theoretical level, my research leads to an improved understanding of how features of tasks and media, both alone and in combination, influence group coordination. At an applied level, my work benefits developers by identifying the features of technologies that enable people to work remotely, and provides guidelines for the development of new technologies to support distance collaboration.

Biography

Darren Gergle is a doctoral candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include small group communication in face-to-face and computer-mediated environments, the dynamics of collaboration, and the design and study of computational tools to support distributed collaboration.