Intuitive Device-Based Interactions for Collaboration

In collocated collaborative work scenarios analog media, such as paper and pen, are still very common to use. Their usage is intuitive, they are easy to get and very cheap. However, they lack in digitizing, further editing and sharing of content. In contrast, common devices, such as laptops, support digital creating of content but interfere social interactions of group members, since they form a physical barrier between two persons due to their size and form factor. There are also other technologies for digitizing easily in collaborative scenarios, for example, tabletops or display walls. They also provide direct digital creating, editing and sharing content but rely on special surroundings that provide these technologies. Mobile devices can bridge this gap because they are small enough to not hinder people but still can digitize content. Furthermore, nearly everybody nowadays owns such mobile devices, i.e. smartphones. Although mobile devices seem to have a lot of advantages, they still are not often used in collaboration. According to [1], non-intuitive interactions hinder people to use mobile devices collaboratively. By facilitating the interaction with such devices they can become as easy to use as paper and pen and thus support collaboration.

To address this issue I am aiming to investigate device-based interactions on mobile devices and how they can support collocated collaborative work scenarios. Device-based interactions are performed directly with mobile devices using built-in sensors. They depend on devices and their sensors, users and their cognitive abilities and the surrounding and specific situations. In this thesis the mainly addressed parameters for measuring and evaluating efficient collocated collaboration are user experience [2] and social interaction [3] between collaborating people. Different (user) roles and situations will be taken into account to get insights into how such interactions are performed depending on these roles. Several device-based interactions for collaborative scenarios based on specific tasks as well as requirements and challenges in collaboration are presented. Prototypically implemented, they serve as basis to show, compare and revise the efficiency of device-based interactions, to answer the question on the usefulness of such interactions in collaboration and to get measured results on the users‘ behavior.

[1] Andrés Lucero, Matt Jones, Tero Jokela, and Simon Robinson. 2013. Mobile collocated interactions: taking an offline break together. interactions 20, 2 (March 2013), 26-32.

[2] Sus Lundgren, Joel E. Fischer, Stuart Reeves, and Olof Torgersson. 2015. Designing Mobile Experiences for Collocated Interaction. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 496-507.

[3] Gustavo Zurita, Miguel Nussbaum, Computer supported collaborative learning using wirelessly interconnected handheld computers, Computers and Education, Volume 42, Issue 3, April 2004, 289-314.