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September 3, 2010
 

Collaborative User Interfaces  →

A few days ago I was asking my social networks if there's a specific term for "user interfaces assisting human-to-human interaction — in a sense of eg. group learning, (cardboard) game play, reading books to kids, doctor vs. patient, salesperson vs. customer ..."? I was actually looking for a technical term a la GUI, TUI or NUI or such …

So far, I have no concrete indication for a field like that, already being explicitely labeled eg. CUI (Collaborative User Interfaces) – because a first thought was it must be something with "collaborative" (which was confirmed by my friend Sonja in my Facebook thread). The only thing I'm missing in this is that it is too generic, or too open-ended. In a way, things like Facebook are also collaborative user interfaces, though interaction between people is mostly virtual (although it might lead to real-world interaction, but in best case, Facebook in its current form then doesn't make an appearance anymore ;-).

I found one paper that talks about "synchronous collaborative user interfaces", which is indeed longer, but also more to the point. Although "synchronous" could still refer to Facebook – at least if you're online together with some friends, doing a lot of wall-to-wall posting or chatting – it still refers more to a group of 2 or more people, sharing the same real-world location at the same time.

If you're stumbling across something related or have some thoughts around the topic, please let me know. We're currently researching and developing in this field as we're confident that there's a lot of room and perspective for ideas with all these new mobile devices such as smartphones and mainly tablets (here are some thoughts on the iPad as a shared device). And of course there's plenty of open ground on the horizon if you think beyond today's devices and screens (huge immersive multi-touch screens are quite appealing, though ;-) – interaction involving tactile everyday objects, things that are becoming intelligent with added sensors and microchips. When computing is finally becoming ubiquitous, when digital is seamlessly woven into the real-world.

Think of interfaces that are actively assisting any form of collaboration between at least two people in a face to face constellation. Think of that interface not being too immersive to distract your counterpart away from you (or both altogether), but instead enhance your face to face interaction, help you fulfill the task you're currently into together.

Update: Moritz has pointed me to an academic field called computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) that is being researched since 1984. According to the Wikipedia entry, CSCW "addresses how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems" – which describes pretty well what I was looking for. I find the title a bit too cryptical and dated though, but really great to see there's a lot to read about. Now it's time to find – and work on some good examples.

On the Wikipedia page for CSCW there's a graphic called "CSCW Matrix". The aspects that I find most interesting about it are the ones in the upper left – face to face interactions, same place (colocated), same time (synchronous). When talking about a device such as the iPad for that purpose, that might be "single display groupware":

800px-cscwmatrix
The CSCW Matrix from Wikipeda

Here are two academic papers I found touching the topic of "collaborative user interfaces" in the broadest sense:

Model-based development of synchronous collaborative user interfaces (PDF)

This paper undertakes with collaborative software development taking into account requirements emerged from recent progress in technologies relevant to networks and computing devices. Considering this technological breakthrough, especially under the light of the consequently sharply growing online virtual communities, we can deduce that a new substance is given to the software supporting collaborative practices for multiple environments. In such cases, one important aspect to consider is the user interfaces (UIs) design supporting group work appropriately. The results today offer a rich insight to the desired groupware functionality and the features devised to facilitate such functionality (i.e., replication models, object sharing, floor control, etc). On the other hand, very little is known about their capability to facilitate generation of multi-user interfaces to groupware applications. With the advent of model-based user interface engineering, which signifies a move towards transformation-based approaches to generating the user interface, one challenge is bridging across these two perspectives. The current work seeks to contribute to this goal by identifying the type of models needed to capture collaborative behavior in synchronous multiple user interface settings as well as generating the collaborative user interface by making use of suitable platform-oriented architectural models.

Designing Collaborative User Interfaces for Ubiquitous Applications Using CIAM: The AULA Case Study (PDF)

Abstract: In this article we explain how we apply the CIAM methodology based on the CIAN notation in order to generate user interfaces in collaborative applications. CIAM has been applied successfully in the development of desktop applications, such as Domosim-TPC, demonstrating its effectiveness in the definition of user interfaces for collaborative applications where a shared context is required. We present the AULA system modeled by means of CIAM. The results in the application of this Methodology show the necessity to include those aspects closely related with context modeling and the synchronization of contents; that is why we make an outline of the way to take into account these characteristics as a future work.

 

 

 

 

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July 23, 2010
 

Urban mobility through rent-a-bike ubiquity  →

StadtRAD Hamburg
Photo by Yukino Miyazawa

I just came back from using Stadtrad Hamburg the first time. It's a pretty new rent-a-bike service here in Hamburg, offering around 1000 bikes at currently 71 stations all over town. There are a dozen bikes per station and anyone can instantly rent a bike with a  touchscreen terminal, calling a number or using your smartphone instead.

It is a good example for connecting a digital service to the real world. No advanced techno-magic, no circumstantial visit-our-website-and-print-out-your-data disillusion – it's just there and works. There's an iPhone app you can download for free (I'm sure there's also something available for other platforms), enter your credentials once and then handle the full process of renting a bike. It tells you where the next station is, how many bikes are available and let's you unlock a bicycle of your choice on location by providing you with a 4 digit pin code you only need to enter into a tiny touchscreen that is mounted on the bike.

When I first heard about the service, I was a bit sceptical – I guess we're just used to find a catch in such things. But today I'm quite excited about a few aspects they have done just right for an urban mobility offering:

  1. It's quite simple and can be used instantly (you pay €5 for registering, getting cleared with your first bill).
  2. There are plenty of stations and bikes available all over the city. You can go pretty much from anywhere to everywhere, it's very likely a station is nearby and they're planning to extend this ubiquity even more over time.
  3. The first 30 minutes are free of charge.
  4. You can rent two bikes at the same time, so you can always take a friend on your ride with you.

It is also a good example for a service, or product being an advertising campaign itself. You can see the stations and bikes pretty much everywhere and you hear a lot of satisfied customers as well as good press, so there's effective word-of-mouth recommendation going on. Which in turn casts a pretty good light on the Hamburg senate and even their operational partner Deutsche Bahn, the German railway carrier, a brand that is not very liked among customers.

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