Sophia, Annemiek, Aljosha, and Dirk: congratulations and good luck in Edinburgh!

“On assignment for Future Workspaces we have looked into how to improve collaborative moments for knowledge workers using multi-touch technology. One of the most promising collaborative activities that could be improved was brainstorming. An interactive system already offers many advantages, and especially during the idea clustering phase the advantages of multi-touch can be leveraged. We have developed such a brainstorming application in collaboration with knowledge workers and validated the concept using focus groups.

With our application we try to bring a good deal more fun to the brainstorming process by providing brainstorm participants with interactive games. These games bring participants to the multi touch wall, and also release some of the tensions associated with selecting ‘winning’ ideas. Next to that, we also made large improvements on the clustering process. We feel it is important to be able to freely try different clusterings, and be able to play around during this phase. Using intuitive gestures, and using a ’bubble’ metaphor, brainstorm participants are able to create, move, remove, resize, rearrange, undo and relate clusters and ideas. During the entire brainstorm we support structuring the discussion with a ‘compare idea’ tool so participants can backtrack decisions and their rationale.

Are you curious to see how this all works together to support an entire brainstorming session, from creation of ideas to the selection of them? Then please, check out our movie prototype below. We welcome any comments you might have.”

The two main goals of Jennifer’s project were to: (1) Identify the consequences and challenges of mobile work – particularly with respect one’s ability to stay up-to-date (i.e., in sync) and connected (i.e., in touch) with his or her distant colleagues; and, (2) come up with potential design solutions to address these challenges.

Project Goal 1: Determine the role of in sync and in touch in mobile professionals’ lives

Interviews were initially undertaken with a group of mobile workers in order to determine how much they valued staying in sync and in touch with their distant colleagues. Because all of those interviewed worked primarily in distributed project teams, they all spoke of expending a great deal of effort in order to nurture a sense of connectedness and stay up-to-date with their immediate, project-level colleagues. To that end, they generally traveled in order to hold regular face-to-face meetings with their team members, or were in daily contact with them by either phone or email (or both). So much effort was poured into activities that supported staying in sync and in touch with their project level colleagues that all those interviewed expressed satisfaction with the outcome of these efforts. In fact, staying in sync and in touch with one’s project team was so important that it came to be considered a primary need of the mobile workers interviewed.

However, breakdowns occurred when they tried to use the same tools and practices for staying in sync and in touch with their project teams, as with the colleagues in their departments or wider organizations. The main problem arose when they used what one might consider traditional office tools – i.e., principally face-to-face meetings, phone and email – to infiltrate this second, much more dispersed and loosely connected group of individuals. Thus, these individuals came to be referred to as Traditionalists, namely because their choice of communication tools most closely resembled that of traditional, co-located office workers. They were also much more conservative in their approach to communication than a second group of highly connected networkers that was interviewed. To an extent, staying in sync and in touch with one’s departmental or organizational level colleagues was considered to be of value to the Traditionalists (although not to the same degree as interactions with one’s project level peers); communications at this level were thus designated secondary needs.

The problems for the Traditionalists were found to have two distinct levels. First, breakdowns in their ability nurture connections with their departmental/organizational level peers had dire consequences for the relationships that they had with those individuals. Some Traditionalists expressed a sense of confusion over what others in their department were currently working on; in extreme cases, the identities of some departmental peers were not even known. So, not only were there potential direct implications of not being able to stay in sync and in touch with one’s departmental peers, but there were found to be indirect implications that had potentially detrimental repercussions for their project work, as well.

Project Goal 2: Come up with solutions to the problems faced by mobile professionals

As mentioned above, a second set of interviews was conducted with highly connected professionals. Findings from these interviews were used as inspiration for coming up with solutions to address the problems of the Traditionalists in keeping in sync and in touch with their departmental- and/or organizational-level colleagues. These were: (1) integrating the use of information filters (e.g., RSS feeds) into any solution; and (2) supporting one-to-many or many-to-many communication.

Next, a set of design six requirements (see the table below) was used to provide a foundation for some possible concept solutions.

After a series of analyses, and a couple of iterative design cycles, three concepts were developed into short illustrative movies; these were: (1) Ping, (2) Status Sharing tools, and (3) Bulletin Board.

The next section covers the extent to which each of the three concepts met the design requirements, according to findings from the evaluations.
 

Assessment of the validity of the concepts

(1) With respect to the requirements

Comparison of the concepts to the requirements, including how those requirements were met (at least in part); * = This item is starred because it was the tool that was perceived to require the most effort by all those who took part in the final evaluation; however, results indicated that the degree of effort required was still perceived to be low, on average. (Click on the table for an enlarged version)

As shown in the table above, it can be argued that – where applicable – all of the tools met all of the requirements. It is important to note that – because the solutions presented were early-stage concepts – it would be hard to concretely assess the effort involved in setting up each tool. Moreover, the evaluations were mainly meant to tap the extent to which the users valued the concepts themselves (e.g., did they mind sharing information regarding their activities and whereabouts, and similarly, did they also like to have access to this information from their contacts?) Therefore, a second requirement dealing with the need for a low-effort set-up of the system was left out of the table.

(2) With respect to staying in sync

Both those interviewed and those who filled out the online evaluation indicated that the Bulletin Board and Status Sharing tools had the potential to help them stay up-to-date with their colleagues, to an equal degree. Ping was also thought to be a useful in sync tool, albeit to a slightly lesser degree than the other two concepts.

(3) With respect to staying in touch

Although all of the concepts were considered to be adequate in touch tools, the Bulletin Board was considered to be the tool that was best suited to this goal. Both those interviewed and those who took the online evaluation noted its potential for sharing more personally-relevant information.

General reception of the concepts

According to the final evaluation, those interviewed appeared to prefer the Ping concept overall. With respect to the online evaluation, both Ping and the Status Sharing tool came out on top. Although these tools were not perceived to be the best tools – hands down – for staying either in sync or in touch, they were considered to be the easiest to use; were thought to have the lowest cost-to-benefit ratios; and, would require the least amount of time. Thus, it can be argued that requirement #3 (above) was given the most weight when assessing these concepts. Interestingly, the concept that was considered to have the most combined in sync and in touch potential – that is, the Bulletin Board – was the least appreciated overall, across all evaluations.

Future directions

Based on findings from the evaluations, it was suggested that either the Ping or Status Sharing tool be considered for further development. In the end, the problems faced by the Traditionalists can be thought of as large – but given their preference for simple, low-effort tools it is concluded that only very modest solutions will be adopted readily. The potential benefit in providing modest solutions, however, is that they might lower the threshold sufficiently enough so that the Traditionalists can meet both primary and secondary needs effectively.

When the Concept Game is played by more people in an organization, it can help that organization determine what aspects of future ways of working are important for the people in that organization. The Concept Game can be played in a workshop of 8 to 10 people. In the workshop, people first select their own favourite and not favourite concepts. Secondly, the choices are explained and discussed by the group. Finally, a coherent view is created on what issues and opportunities of future ways of working are most important for the organization. You can download a flyer about the Future Workspaces Concept Game Workshop here.

We tested this prototype at the future workspaces project day. The participants of this day reacted enthusiastically, which resulted in approximately 100 swipes of badges within the hour. We are going to explore this way of social interaction more and extend this concept. If you are interested please feel free to contact us.

The physical version of the Concept Game can be played individually or in a workshop. It is also possible to play the Concept Game online.

Click here to start playing the Concept Game online. You will be asked to select your favourite and least favourite concept ideas. Please also tell us why you have selected these concepts and submit your choices. It will help us to focus our future plans and concept development.

The online version of the Concept Game was developed by Steven Haveman.

» Start the Concept Game

Buzzcuit is a large touch screen that is placed in a coffee corner at work. Buzzcuit was designed to provide co-workers with inspiring information and to get them to know each other a little better. Buzzcuit displays a constant flow of messages, or ‘buzz’. You can find ‘buzz’ in different categories, such as people, projects, twitter streams and RSS feeds. Buzz is linked to each other and to external news feeds.

By touching the buzz, you can zoom in on a message and see more information and links to related information.
A prototype of Buzzcuit was placed at the Rabobank last week. Already, people are starting to use Buzzcuit. We will evaluate the use of Buzzcuit at the Rabobank in a few weeks.

Buzzcuit was based on the Vista concept developed by Lucy Gunawan, Qarin Hjortzberg-Nordlund, Xu Sun, Nele Van den Ende, Marcin Wichar and Aga Matysiak.

Subsequently, some questions are asked about the concepts. The answers can be given by using a slider. We chose this solution because sliding a bar on a surface table is much easier than having to use a virtual keyboard to type answers. Finally, the player can submit his or her choices and feedback to the Future Workspaces team.

The video below shows how the Concept Game for MS Surface Table can be played. The game now runs at the Surface Table at the Rabobank.

While much of the existing applications for the MS Surface table focus on communication with customers, Combine & Create provides an example of how the table can support knowledge work as well. Especially for working with visuals, or visual information, from different perspectives such an application could prove useful.

The coming weeks we will experiment with the application at the Rabobank, gather user feedback and evaluate this application. We’ll keep you posted on the results.

Below we present two comics illustrating why using a multitouch surface can help people to work together more efficiently. Furthermore, two interaction scenarios are depicted:

An interactive display that can be used by multiple people can facilitate working together:

Co-creation using a multitouch wall – scenario for interaction