WYSIWIS Revisited: Early Experiences With Multiuser Interfaces

1
WYSIWIS Revisited Early Experiences With
Multiuser Interfaces

• Mark Stefik
• Daniel G. Bobrow
• Greg Foster
• Stan Lanning
• Deborah G. Tatar

Proceedings of CSCW 1986, Austin, TX
2
Why we use the term, et alia (and others)

• ALL WERE AT XEROX PARC
• Mark Stefik
• At PARC since 1980
• Works with creativity, collaboration, and
  expression
• Daniel G. Bobrow
• Greg Foster
• Stan Lanning
• Deborah G. Tatar

Mark Stefik
Daniel Bobrow
3
COLAB Project (1987-1992)

• http//www2.parc.com/istl/members/stefik/colab.htm
  

4
Whats it all about?

• Workers spend a lot of time in meetings.
• Small working groups (2-6 people) often
  collaborate together in such meetings.
• What you see is what I see is a driving design
  abstraction in most multi-user interfaces.
• The perfect example is a chalkboard.
• Strictly holding to WYSIWIS is too limiting, thus
  the authors describe methods to adapt to real-use
  conditions as observed in the COLAB project.
• 20 (!) issues raised in course of paper, not
  recapitulated here!

5
Case 1 Boardnoter

• Meeting tool meant to resemble chalkboard in
  terms of use.
• Allows text entry, drawing, erasing, and
  telepointing.
• Many, many, many issues and possible design
  solutions to them listed on pages 588-589
  (Baecker)
• Real meeting rooms sometimes have multiple
  chalkboards shrunken versions (stampsheet)
• Still an extremely preliminary system, thus
  further study necessary.
• This version lacks copying, moving, resizing,
  grouping, neatening. These features would raise
  yet other issues.

6
Case 2 Cognoter

• Tool for organizing information in meetings.
• Three stages in a Cognoter meeting
• Brainstorming public window, any user can type
  in phrases without waiting for turns
• Organizing Ideas creating links between items
  and creating subgroups of ideas
• Evaluating Ideas combining subgroup results,
  pruning ideas into group product, Cognoter can
  produce outlines and highlight ambiguities in
  ordering.

7
Cognoter Lightweight Collaboration

• Small subgroups form often during the
  collaborative process.
• Want to avoid cluttering users displays
• To support this, two alternatives are explored
  stampsheets and Rooms.
• Want users to be able to tell when somethings
  happened, draw attention to the public, possibly
  open group window to public attention, etc.
• Rooms requires an overview room allowing users to
  view overall progress. Public rooms can exist
  which are in the same place for everyone.
  Subgroups become more isolated, and users cant
  follow activity except in overview room.

8
Thoughts, Conclusions, Discussion

• The authors make cogent suggestions as to the
  important of relaxing strict What You See is
  What I see.
• To what extent are highly-productive
  collaborations of 2-6 individuals unique to PARC?
  (Many of the design decisions for Colab turn
  fundamentally on expectations for the size of the
  group.)
• To what extent do (as the authors allege) such
  groups frequently subdivide into subgroups of
  1-3? Sounds a bit more like kindergarten projects
  than my 7 years of workplace meeting experience.
• Are stampsheets useful in non-collaborative
  settings? Minimized views that allow for degree
  of change measurement without disrupting workflow
  (i.e. Windows taskbar 75 done)
• As resolutions available on desktop systems
  (standard resolution is probably XGA (1024x768)
  today, whereas even 5 years ago SVGA (800x600)
  was more typical. Both 1280x1024 and 1600x1280
  are seen today. Real estate may eliminate need
  for both stampsheets and Rooms in terms of
  collaboration (1280x1024 is 4 times larger than
  640x480 after all, and in 1986 they probably
  didnt have much more than that.)