Demonstrations

CSCW 96 will feature live and interactive demonstrations of noteworthy applications, technologies, research prototypes, and products. Developers will be on hand to discuss their systems. A reception will be held from 6:30 to 7:30 Tuesday evening in the demo area hallway.

For a less detailed listing without abstracts, see: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cscw96/prog/tueprog.html#demos

In the William Dawes Room:

Iris -- An Environment for Supporting Collaborative Writing in Wide Area Networks

Michael Koch (kochm@informatik.tu-muenchen.de), Institute für Informatik, TU München


This demonstration presents an environment designed for supporting the collaborative editing of multimedia and hypermedia documents. One basic concept of the environment is its usability in wide area networks and with mobile computers. In contrast to the existing repository solutions designed for wide area networks this environment allows a seamless transition between asynchronous and synchronous work if the network connection is up. Additional features are the possibility to integrate standard editor applications and its availability for different platforms.

Collaborative Survey Polls on the World Wide Web

Richard Frankosky (frankosky@subsys.ENET.dec.com) and Trudi Leone, Digital Equipment Corp.


Digital AltaVista Forum is an Internet groupware application. AltaVista Forum supports collaborative information sharing and conferencing for workgroups. It is intended to be used by project teams and groups which regularly share information in the form of documents, threaded discussions, filtered news feeds and mail. A search engine allows content-based and keyword retrieval.

Room with a View

Ted Selker (selker@almaden.ibm.com) and Jeff Allison, Almaden Research Center


The desktop metaphor demonstrates the utility of spatial separation of tasks. Room With a View (RWAV) extends the metaphor to make greater use of three dimensional spatial layouts and gestures. This demo introduces our multi-surface user interface metaphor. Surfaces, such as walls, shelves and tables, are projected with icons of books, files, etc. These icons represent information and other interactive media. Documents or drawings are displayed on a high resolution active blackboard, or on hand-held clipboard-sized interaction surfaces called viewboards. The user moves around the information space by gesturing with viewboards or blackboard chalk. RWAV's goal is to improve interaction with large amounts of spatially organized information.

Getting TAPPED IN-to Teacher Professional Development Activities: An On-line Conference Center for Communities of Practice

Mark Schlager (Mark_Schlager@qm.sri.com), Patricia Schank, and Richard Godard, SRI International


Current educational applications of Internet technology only peripherally reflect characteristics of communities of practice. They provide few of the tools, communication channels, and contextual supports needed to elicit the kinds of cognitive and social interactions that are characteristic of successful collaborative work, and therefore provide limited insights into how to achieve sustainable on-line teacher communities. SRI and several K-12 teacher professional development (TPD) providers are jointly developing a new vision of on-line TPD activities in a place where teachers with diverse interests, skills, and backgrounds can meet and learn from one another; be exposed to different education reform concepts and approaches; and find quality resources in minutes rather than hours. To demonstrate that more can be done to support this vision, we developed the Teacher Professional Development Institute (TAPPED IN), a platform-independent multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) that integrates synchronous and asynchronous communication, document sharing, and discourse-support objects in a venue patterned after a real-world conference center.

Microsoft NetMeeting

Deborah Dubrow (debdu@microsoft.com), Microsoft Corp.


Microsoft NetMeeting enables people to work together on the Internet or a corporate Intranet. NetMeeting 1.0 includes multipoint application sharing, whiteboarding, chat and file transfer and point-to-point audio. The product is based upon existing industry standards and interoperates with other standards based products.

Common uses of NetMeeting include casual communication between colleagues, working together to review a document or solve a problem, delivering presentations and demonstrations, conducting distributed team meetings, product support, and chatting with people over the Internet.

Collaboratory Builder's Environment and Corona

Robert W. Hall, Jang Ho Lee, Hyong Sop Shim, Farnam Jahanian, Terry Weymouth, and Atul Prakash (aprakash@eecs.umich.edu), Software Systems Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Unversity of Michigan


The Collaboratory Builder's Environment (CBE) provides a Java-based framework for open distributed collaboration over the Internet. This demonstration will introduce both the software architecture for supporting collaboration and the underlying Java-based Corona Communication Services that support applet group communication. It shows how DistView-based group-aware Java applets can be downloaded from a page to provide shared workspaces. Participants can also organize their shared workspaces into "rooms" by downloading a session manager. Rooms are entities to which participants can dynamically add/delete new URLs or collaborative applets. Rooms provide persistence of state, so that asynchronous collaboration can be supported. Also, we illustrate that work can be dynamically moved between different rooms and between a private workspace and a shared room. The demo explains the relationship between operations on rooms and the basic inter-process communication primitives used in group-aware applets. In addition, it shows the user-extensibility of the software architecture. The demo also illustrates some of the group communication and awareness features supported by the Corona Communication Service.

Marmot™: Internet Publishing and Remote Collaboration

Elizabeth G. Hetzler (eg_hetzler@pnl.gov), Alan E. Turner, and Barbara J. Cheney, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory


Marmot™ empowers distributed groups to control their remote shared information and work collaboratively, using a cross-platform graphical user interaction client. It is designed to be very simple to use, requiring no knowledge of Internet protocols or server administration. At the same time, it gives users full control over their remote shared information.

As an example, suppose that Mary is a member of a distributed team. Using Marmot, Mary can add a PowerPoint presentation to the team's shared workspace (located on a remote server), update a text status report, and modify the access permissions to allow Tom to co-author her draft report. The text status report is automatically converted to HTML; the HTML pages for the shared workspace are automatically updated to reflect all changes; and Joe, who has requested E-mail notification, is automatically sent a message summarizing the updates.

A PDA-Based Tool for Collaborative Design

Adrienne Warmack (warmack@ucsu.Colorado.edu) and Mark D. Gross, College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado; and Wayne Citrin, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Colorado


As part of an ongoing project to develop drawing and diagram recognition systems whose functionality is distributed between personal digital assistant (PDA) front ends and host computer back ends, we have designed a collaborative drawing system that allows multiple users, at different locations, to collaborate in the construction of diagrams. The system has a number of advantages over previously proposed collaborative drawing systems. It employs inexpensive hardware supporting both pen-based entry and communications, it allows the easy integration of shape and handwriting recognition, it supports off-line drawing of diagrams which can subsequently be distributed and collaborated on, and it allows mediation of the process by a centralized diagram-recognition back end.

In the Thomas Paine Room:

TeamRoom

Paul Cole (Paul_Cole/Lotus_Institute.LINET@crd.lotus.com), Lotus Institute, Lotus Development Corp.


TeamRoom is a Lotus Notes application designed to support task groups. Its design is based on group effectiveness principles and technology implementation research. The application represents a significant departure from the existing task management systems designed for teams. The demonstration will show the system, discuss the group principles underlying the system, indicate specific design choices related to the principles and the initial pilot phase findings on the organizational/group factors influencing adoption.

Collaborative Virtual Workspace

Peter J. Spellman (peter@kagoona.mitre.org), MITRE Corp.


Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW) is a collaboration framework in which people interact with documents and each other in a shared virtual space. We developed CVW as a means of prototyping a collaboration environment in which underlying services enable a seamless integration of diverse tools. We have focused on integrating commercial tools and services, developing our own where commercial ones do not exist. This notion of tight integration of commercial tools is one way in which CVW differs from other collaborative environments.

Other differences include:

• Support for persistence of all objects, including whiteboards. Objects, once created, never disappear simply because the current session has ended.
• Treatment of users and documents as primary objects. One can see, search for and learn about them both.
• Reliance on and support of "semi-synchronous" collaboration, where the synchronicity of the collaboration depends on availability of collaborators rather than the mechanism chosen for collaboration.

We believe these concepts are important when integrating diverse tools - tools that cross the continuum of synchronous to asynchronous, and that enable collaboration with documents and users

Detailed Collaborative Analysis

Samer Minkara, Ptech Inc.


This demonstration is based on a philosophy of cooperative teamwork and a unique approach for specifying the requirements of collaborative systems. A methodology for analyzing and prototyping collaborative systems is supported by the TeamWork feature of FrameWork from Ptech Inc. The tool for capturing specifications allows users to extend the concepts for requirements modeling, making it possible to capture system stipulations from various points of view. The development and prototyping environments use a graphical interface that simplifies design and analysis and makes them visible to all levels of workers. We will show a design example for a multiuser locking mechanism from which scenarios can be modeled and prototyped.

LearningSpace: Distributed, Collaborative Learning

Peter Rothstein, Lotus Development Corp.


LearningSpace is an innovative, completely new type of distributed learning solution. Developed by Lotus Education and Lotus Institute, LearningSpace is a Lotus Notes-based educational technology solution that enables students and teachers to most closely approximate the collaborative atmosphere of a traditional classroom. LearningSpace does this by allowing participants (students and instructors) simultaneously to take advantage of stored information, use interactive learning tools and communicate/collaborate without regard to time or geographic boundaries. In addition, LearningSpace is a complete solution for educational content delivery, incorporating training and consulting support to help corporations and institutions of higher learning create and deliver effective, instructor-led on-line courses.

This is your chance to get a hands-on introduction to Lotus' innovative new approach to distributed, collaborative learning. Through first-hand experience with it's live interactive nature, asynchronous learning capabilities, and sophisticated use of Lotus Notes, you'll get a first-hand glimpse of the future of course delivery, development, and deployment in the education industry.

Collaborative Object WorkSpace (COWS)

Shariq Khan and Munir Mandviwalla (mandviwa@vm.temple.edu), CIS Department, Temple University


COWS: Collaborative Object WorkSpace is an any-time, any-place, any-work CSCW system. The goal of COWS is to create an architecture that can support most if not all the collaborative work activities of teams. Currently, COWS supports controlled and free form sentential, sketch, and table based interaction on shared and private objects. The most basic element in COWS is the object. Objects have properties (e.g., title, sentences, graphics, and links to external documents) and methods (e.g., add, edit, sort, merge, and vote). Objects are manipulated in views such as Sketch (layered object based drawings), List, and Table (organized lists). All the views are wysiwis "live" in that data is updated in real time or by a refresh command. Object libraries categorize individual objects by shapes. For example, circles on the Sketch view may explicitly represent questions, rectangles represent options, and so on.

Tools are available to control and understand the work. Access to data and object methods can be restricted and work is coordinated by selecting specific views and invoking a "look here" function. A "memory" log player allows play back of events in the past. The playback allows the user to step back and forth through the events of the selected session. A complementary log book provides static representations of the memory. The demonstration will focus on showing how COWS can support the continuity of work across different time, place, and task contexts.

A Shared Language Schema for Fostering Collaboration

Kumar S. Nochur, Vidya Technologies, Inc. (vidya@world.std.com)


As groupware and other CSCW products enter mainstream use, the lack of a shared language for computer-based cooperation is leading to cyberglut and information anxiety. A shared, common basis for electronic interactions can promote collaboration by fostering more effective exchange of ideas and giving users a big picture perspective of key issues. This presentation describes a schema designed to fill this need. A visual implementation of this schema will be presented, in a product called ThoughtFlow ™, along with examples of its application for strategic planning, corporate communication, and cross-functional collaboration.

GroupLens

John Riedl (riedl@mail.netperceptions.com), Brad Miller, Joe Konstan, & Steven Snyder, Net Perceptions, Inc.


The GroupLens research project, first reported at CSCW 94, is among the first successful attempts to apply collaborative filtering to dynamic, on-line information resources. Collaborative filtering alleviates information overload by offering recommendations on whether an item is valuable based on the opinions of those who have already evaluated it. The GroupLens project established the viability of applying collaborative filtering to Usenet news and extended collaborative filtering to use both explicit and implicit measures of opinion.

Net Perceptions, Inc., has developed this research into the GroupLens collaborative filtering toolkit. The toolkit enables on-line information, product, and service providers to craft personalized experiences for visitors to their sites. An on-line bookstore, for example, can adapt to each user's tastes by providing personalized recommendations and by organizing its content to match the user's preferences.

At the demo you will be able to participate in two example collaborative filtering applications built on the GroupLens toolkit: a small bookstore and Usenet news.

In the Molly Pitcher Room:

Design Issues for CSCW Software for the Desktop and Meeting Room Interactive Displays

Dr. Joerg M. Haake (haake@darmstadt.gmd.de) and Christian Schuckmann, GMD-IPSI; and David Martin (davidmar@smarttech.com), Rob Kremer, and Tom Fukushima, SMART Technologies Inc.


Dolphin from GMD-IPSI and SMART Ideas from SMART Technologies Inc. are software applications that are built quite differently to solve the issues involved with providing interfaces for both local and remote electronically supported meetings. These products will be used to demonstrate the issues and solutions that exist in trying to provide meeting support tools on an interactive display (SMART Board) as well as on desktop computers.

GMD will present the issues that they have seen and their solutions for the system known as DOLPHIN. SMART Technologies Inc. will present their solutions for pen based input on a SMART Board Interactive Display while retaining support for local and remote desktop input. A new software product known as SMART Ideas will be the main demonstration tool. This product is based upon concept maps and allows objects to be created within a multimedia object-oriented database.

Inhabited Virtual Worlds on the Internet

Bruce Damer (bdamer@ccon.org), Contact Consortium


This demonstration will introduce CSCW attendees to multi-user social virtual worlds hosted on the Internet. Members of the Contact Consortium and others will be on hand to demonstrate the environments and help attendees engage in live exercises. These collaborative exercises will involve the formation of groups for social discourse, construction of shared spaces and other activities. As these exercises will be hosted on the Internet, participants all over the world will be free to join CSCW attendees. Participants in the demonstration will also have an opportunity to share their impressions and opinions during a panel to be held on this theme the next day.

The virtual environments to be used during this demonstrations will include one or more of:

• AlphaWorld from Worlds Incorporated
• Worlds Chat from Worlds Incorporated
• Onlive Utopia from Onlive! Technologies
• The Palace from The Palace Incorporated

In the Haym Salomon Room:

Computer Support for Concerted Teamwork

Jay Nunamaker, Bob Briggs (bbriggs@bpa.arizona.edu), and Daniel Mittleman, Ventana Corp.


In this demonstration you'll go hands-on with GroupSystems, a state-of-the-art GSS. You'll experience working on-line with other participants to generate and prioritize a list of the top issues facing CSCW researchers over the next five years. We will give a brief review of the state of GSS research and development, and demonstrate the state-of-the-art in Web- and LAN-based tools for the virtual workplace. We will also demonstrate the use of a neural network to extract and organize information from your on-line transcripts and from the Web. We will conclude with an audience-participation discussion of the issues raised during the session.