CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Short Talks
Leave the Office, Bring Your Colleagues: Design Solutions for Mobile Teamworkers
Ivan Bretan1, Leif Fredin1,
Walter Frost2, Leif-Rune Hedman1,
Per Kroon1,
Scott McGlashan3, Eva-Lotta
Sallnäs1 and Markku Virtanen1
1Telia Research AB
S-136 80 Haninge, Sweden
2School of Design and Crafts
Kristinelundsg. 6-8, S-411 37 Göteborg, Sweden
3Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Box 1263, S-164 28 Kista, Sweden
ivan.p.bretan@telia.se
ABSTRACT
One of the keys to successful deployment of mobile
multimedia technology among professionals lies in identifying
inherently distributed teams working under real-time constraints
in dynamic field environments where the need to increase the efficiency
of co-ordination, communication and collaboration is apparent.
We report on some findings from investigating such non-office/out-of-office
user-groups, and discuss the design of a portable environment
for supporting the virtual reinforcement of teams, with special
emphasis on co-worker status monitoring with respect to process
phase, availability, geographical position etc.
KEYWORDS
Mobile multimedia, CSCW, wearable computing.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
MOBILE MULTIMEDIA IN THE WORKPLACE
Digital cellular networks such as GSM, DECT, IS-95
and CMDA are powerful enablers of new work forms, making feasible
mobile multimedia and groupware applications. Offering various
degrees of location-independent communication they support distributed
organisations and flexible work forms.
Figure 1. User-groups and functions in their
current work.
USER-GROUP COMMUNICATIONS
In studying distributed teamwork, we have drawn on
knowledge from several different disciplines: group processes
[3], workflow, field studies and ethnographic research on collaboration
within various work settings and studies addressing informal communications
among mobile professionals [1]. Building on this body of work
we developed a model of group functions, activities and their
related groupware support systems for communication, co-ordination
and co-operation [4]. This model was used as the basis for designing
an empirical study of team members in five different distributed
work forces. Detailed interviews were conducted with construction
workers, fire fighters, plumbers, TV reporters and nation-wide
software sales representatives to solicit views on distributed
collaboration from individual perspectives. We also employed a
conceptual modelling technique in conjunction with some of the
interviews to find out more details about the actual organisation
of work activities. One of the ambitions of the study was to provide
requirements for the design of a mobile multimedia prototype.
Findings
The study showed that these non-office user-groups
are highly mobile, and that they communicate and co-ordinate mostly
synchronously, away from other functions in the organisation but
co-located within teams. For all the user groups their mobile
systems for communication were regarded as their most important
working tool. In the process of coordination the use of auditive
team status was particularly noticeable, i.e., continuously monitoring
an open audio channel (typically traditional VHF radio) broadcasting
messages implicitly or explicitly giving information on the whereabouts
or current work tasks of co-workers. Visual information was also
used for coordination purposes, such as maps and construction
blueprint. However, these sources of information were normally
not available for mobile members of the team (figure 1). For most
of the user groups, coordination was clearly a critical point
due to the need of assessing human and material resources efficiently
in order to jointly carrying out work orders under tight time
constraints. Locating and staying in touch with distributed team
members turned out to be a cumbersome part of their work.
Generally speaking, the work group studies revealed
two principal categories of requirements:
a) Support for increased consumption and production
of information. Our professionals were today frequently transporting
themselves physically or using technical support staff to transmit
and receive information.
b) Support for additional shared contexts. Team members
often needed to bring together resources for immediate use in
solving temporally constrained tasks. To aid them in this critical
process, they asked for both visual and auditory information supporting
instant team status, i.e., a continuously updated presentation
of location, availability (etc.) of co-workers and work resources.
WEARABLE MULTIMEDIA TEAM TOOLS
In parallel with user studies being carried out,
many different design solutions were worked out pertaining both
to portable multimedia terminals and user interfaces. Factors
of special interest included industrial design (shape, material
and ergonomic requirements) and interaction design (views of information
resources, tasks and co-workers).
Terminal Design
A lot of the work in wearable computing is currently
centred around head-mounted display (HMD) solutions, which can
be very attractive in certain scenarios due to the possibilities
of creating private immersive or augmented environments. However,
for many of the users we came into contact with, there was an
apparent need for a wearable solution which would allow seamless
transition from an office-like environment to the field and vice
versa.
All in all, the following requirements were settled
on as a point of departure for the terminal design:
- hands-free interaction possibilities
- semi-private or common view
- attachment to body rather than head
- high resolution to provide detail in overviews
- suitability also for non-mobile scenarios
This design approach resulted in the set-up illustrated
in figure 2, where a voice- and pen-controlled tablet PC running
the teamwork interface is carried in a combined strap and case,
which frees the hands as well as relieves the user from the weight
of the hardware. The strap and case allows for positioning the
tablet for active use but also folds up toward the abdomen when
just being transported. When moving from field work into a stationary
environment, the tablet snaps off easily. In order to share the
screen view with others present, the tablet could be flipped over
180°. The tablet PC is equipped with various hardware extensions,
such as a GSM card (with or without separate cellular telephone)
which provides for both voice and data traffic. Positioning is
obtained either through the use of GPS devices or enhanced GSM
functionality.
Figure 2. Field worker with mobile multimedia
terminal.
The overriding motivation behind the idea of hanging
the tablet in a strap was to free the hands of the user, since
they are needed during work. Thus, pen-based interaction is complemented
with a speech interface which facilitates rapid, hands-free operation
of a small terminal. Speech provides an alternative modality for
navigation commands, and the basis for entering information without
the need of an awkward, miniaturised keyboard.
Interaction Design
The user interface model developed and applied within
the project can be described as context/object-oriented.
At any given moment during the interaction, the user works within
a specific context, here defined as a set of rules specifying
the visualisation of the domain objects, operations associated
with them and possibly also a graphical backdrop over which the
objects are distributed. The various contexts represent different
aspects or views of the information contained in the objects.
The basic interaction principle of the model is selecting among
contexts in order to change the view of the same set of objects.
Depending on the context, different properties of the objects
are used as input to the visualisation process. For mobile field
workers contexts would typically include a geographical view of
work areas indicating the position of colleagues and other resources
(e.g., vehicles, cameras, measuring equipment); an administrative
view showing the employees' position within the organisation;
a temporal view showing people and their tasks during different
project phases. These views embody the notion of instant team
status in the user interface. Related contexts can also be combined
to produce complex visualisations (as in a combination of a topological
and a political map view). A particularly important context is
the communications context, which is a dedicated space for communicating
with co-workers. That context provides a set of text, audio and
video tools, which also can be invoked in other contexts (as can
be seen in figure 2, where they have been activated in a geographic
context).
The interface design clearly has a lot in common
with interactive visualisation environments such as Visage [2]
where objects also can communicate different aspects of themselves
to the handling application, thus triggering different types of
visualisation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the project part-time members:
Annette Andersson, Ola Andersson, Miina Kauppinen, Mattias Lundberg,
Peo Mattsson, Thomas Nöjd, Marie Wilhelmsson and Niklas Wolkert.
REFERENCES
1. Kraut, R., Fish, R., Root, R. and Chalfonte, B.
(1991). Informal Communication in Organizations: Form, Function
and Technology, In Baeker, R. (Ed.) Readings in Groupware and
Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Morgan Kaufman.
2. Lucas, P., Roth, S.F. and Gomberg, C.C. (1996),
Visage: Dynamic Information Exploration, Proceedings of the
CHI 96 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
ACM Press, Vancouver, Canada.
3. McGrath, J.E. (1984). Groups: Interaction and
Performance, Prentice Hall, pp. 60-66.
4. Sauter, C., .Morger, O., Muhlherr, M., Thutchytson,
A. and Teusel, S. (1994). CSCW for Strategic Management in Swiss
Enterprises: an Empirical Study. Proceedings of the Fourth
European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work,
Stockholm, Sweden, 117-132.
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Short Talks
