MiMeG The MixedMediaGrid NCeSS node

1
MiMeG The MixedMediaGridNCeSS node

• University of Bristol
• Kings College London

2
Key areas of research

• Building on VidGrid pilot project
• Identifying needs of qualitative social science
  user communities
• Understanding social scientific practice
• Synchronous and Asynchronous support for mixed
  media qualitative analysis
• Capacity building across the social sciences,
  training, software roll-out programme

3
Studies of social science practice

• Scope of existing systems
• Interviews with expert practitioners
• Observational studies of existing practices
• Studies of MiMeG system in use

4
Shared real-time text and graphics annotations
5
Web data services for long-term data analysis
6
Off-Screen Annotations

• (full paper at CHI 2007)
• Enable remote understanding of pace and position
  of off-screen movement
• Especially off-screen to on-screen transitions
• Requires two components
• Real-time tracking of local off-screen position
• Visualising at remote site(s) appropriately

7
Tracking Annotations
Gumstix Computer
Ultrasound Receiver
Electronic Whiteboard Marker
Bluetooth Aerial
Battery
8
Response time results
9
Response time results
1 second
10
Studies of MiMeG system in use

• (full paper at ECSCW 2007)
• Some groups have agreed to be studied in using
  the software in greater depth
• describes the mechanisms researchers use to
  manage distributed analysis
• Local/remote activities
• Gestures and imitation
• Significant evidence that managing local work is
  useful for distributed collaboration

11
Next Steps

• Do we aim to preserve/amplify existing practice?
  (which we have ethnographic evidence works for
  users) or do we aim to alter practice (based on
  experimental studies that say collaborative
  responses are easier to predict)
• What do we really want our software to do here
  to support or to alter existing practice?
• Can we generate new domains of practice in
  real-time distributed research is this a better
  commercial space than traditional workplaces?

12
Next Steps

• Studies of distributed research practice in CSCW
  are few and lack detail
• Buxtons (1992) Telepresence challenge remains
• integrating task-focused activities with
  object-focused activities is still tough
• Real time groupware needs to move into the real
  world more, and perhaps researchers offer an
  improved testbed than traditional workplaces for
  real-time distributed tools