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.”

	Quickr	Google Docs	Ning	Zoho wiki	Office Live	Box .net	Huddle	Con fluence	Base camp
Logging in
Https	?
New workspace
According to template					(1)
Access rights
My workspaces
Documents			(2)
Action points
Traceability	(3)
Notification change
Notification action points
Schedule
Online status
Chat	(4)
Knowledge base
Free	(5)					(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)
User friendly
Web application
Dutch
Ads free			(10)
Standard	DFNAS	DF	NS	DN	DFNAS	DF	DFAS	D	DA

About the demands: based on the way the customer would like to work together with people from other organizations, we have formulated the following demands on the virtual workspace. The words must, should and could in the description indicate the importance of the requirement:

• Logging in. The workspace must be secure and people need to log in before being able to access information.
• Https. Communication over the internet should be secure.
• New workspace: It must be possible to create new sub-workspaces that contain information on a specific topic/case, with specific access rights.
• According to template: It should be possible to create new workspaces according to a template to create a standard structure or to fill them with standard documents.
• Access rights. It must be possible to indicate per sub-workspace which people or groups have access (edit, view, no access)
• My workspaces. It should be possible to have an overview of the workspaces (topics/cases) you are working on.
• Documents. It should be possible to upload documents (Word or PDF) as part of a workspace. In the next phase of our experiment this must be possible.
• Action points. It must be possible to keep track of action points as part of a workspace.
• Traceability. It must be possible to see who made what changes to the workspace.
• Notification change. Users must be able to receive notifications of changes to the workspace.
• Notification action points. Users must be able to receive notifications of changes to the action points.
• Schedule. It should be possible to keep track of scheduled meetings in the workspace.
• Online status. It could be nice to see the online status of other workspace members in the workspace.
• Chat. It should be possible to exchange chat messages with other users in the workspace.
• Knowledge base. It should be possible to create a knowledge base at the highest level of the workspace, with questions and answers that all registered users can access.
• Free. The workspace should be free to use.
• User friendly. The interface of the workspace must be intuitive, clear and appealing (subjective scale).
• Web application. Users must be able to access the workspace via the internet using their web browser.
• Dutch. The workspace should have a Dutch interface.
• Ads. The workspace should not show ads.
• Standard: While it is often possible to store information in a workspace (for instance, notes about a document can be placed on a wiki), this shows which types of information (relevant in the pilot) the workspace recognizes.
  • Documents
  • Folders
  • Notes
  • Action points / tasks
  • Scheduled meetings / events

Notes:

1. Only via pre-defined templates
2. Only via external applications: Ning Apps
3. Only in the Quickr wiki
4. Requires integration with Lotus Sametime
5. The costs are €71 per person per year
6. The costs are $15 per person per month
7. Costs start at $200 per month, see http://www.huddle.net/huddle-price-plans/
8. See the options at http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/pricing.jsp
9. See the pricing options at http://basecamphq.com/signup
10. Paid option

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.

The decision process that was central in the experiment focused on a spatial decision problem. A team had to make a decision on the use of a vacant piece of land situated in an urban area. The virtual world of Second Life was used to create a virtual image of an urban area.

Group Decision Making in Second Life

Participants in the experiment were 240 students of Business Administration, randomly assigned to teams of 3 persons. Participants were unaware of who their team mates were as they were placed in different rooms.

Based on information they were given beforehand, teams were asked to decide what to do with the vacant piece of land. After reaching their decision, they were asked to fill out a survey in which a number of relevant variables concerning their interaction and decision making were measured. The results provide a number of interesting insights into the added value of virtual worlds for distributed group decision making, in terms of both interaction and decision quality. As the experiment will be continued in 2009 with people working in organizations, we cannot provide any more information on the results here – unfortunately…

Conducting this experiment has been a very valuable experience, providing interesting conclusions as to how people may collaborate through virtual environments. It has also provided us with interesting insights in terms of how to conduct such an experiment – insights which will be incorporated into the follow-up experiment to be conducted in 2009!

The researchers: Frans Feldberg, Alexander Schouten & Bart van den Hooff,
VU University Amsterdam,
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
Section Knowledge, Information & Networks

Within Future Workspaces, a team of researchers from the Free University in Amsterdam is investigating decision making processes in virtual environments. Keep an eye on their publications!

Enter the Brainstorm Organizr, a smartboard application that uses speech-to-text input in addition to freehand writing and sketching to produce text and drawings on virtual sticky notes. These notes can be moved around just like their physical counterparts, using multi-touch or even arm gestures, to create categories or clusters. When you’re done storming your mind, the results are stored and immediately accessible for the next session.