Thesis (Ph.D)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Stasko, John; Committee Member: Bartram, Lyn; Committee Member: Catrambone, Richard; Committee Member: Guzdial, Mark; Committee Member: Mynatt, Elizabeth. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Thesis (M. S.)--Industrial Design, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Neta Ezer; Committee Member: Ellen Yi-Luen Do; Committee Member: Jon Sanford. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

A tremendous amount of information is produced in the world around us, both as a product of our daily lives and as artifacts of our everyday work. An emerging area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focuses on helping individuals manage this flood of information. Prior research shows that multiple displays can improve an individual user's ability to deal with large amounts of information, but it is unclear whether these advantages extend for teams of people. This is particularly relevant as more employees are spending large portions of their workdays in meetings My contribution to HCI research is empirical fieldwork and laboratory studies investigating how multiple shared displays improve aspects of teamwork. In particular, I present an insight-based evaluation method for analyzing how teams collaborate on a data-intensive sensemaking task. Using this method, I show how the presence and location of multiple shared displays impacted the meeting process with respect to performance, collaboration, and satisfaction. I also illustrate how multiple shared displays engaged team members who might not have otherwise contributed to the collaboration process. Finally, I present Mimosa, a software tool developed to visualize large volumes of time series data. Mimosa combines aspects of information visualization with data analysis, facilitating a deep and iterative exploration of relationships within large datasets.

Knowledge Management (KM) and Business Intelligence (BI) are topics, which are receiving much currency in the literature of academia and the general media over the past several years. This thesis explores KM from the perspective of the acquisition of business intelligence inside and outside the organisation. We do this by undertaking an extensive survey of the literature in the field. This thesis provides an overview of the major concepts, approaches, and issues as well as some experiences and trends of KM, covering both organisational and technological aspects. Firstly, chapter 2 discusses various definitions of knowledge and KM as well as related terms like tacit knowledge and intellectual capital, from a philosophical, a technological and a business point of view. Secondly, chapter 3, describes the major components of KM, from a process perspective, a func- tional perspective and a technological perspective. Important processes include the setting of appropriate goals; the creation, discovery, acquisition and capture of knowledge. The chapter also describes the storage of that knowledge in knowledge repositories, the classification, re- trieval, filtering and refinement of knowledge; the transfer and use of that knowledge. Finally, the chapter ends with how organisations may undertake the assessment, conservation and main- tenance of knowledge, and states that groupware, document management systems, intelligent agents, knowledge maps and expertise profiling are examples of technologies used in KM. iii The thesis then looks at the role of asynchronous groupware in enabling and harnessing the benefits of KM. Here, the research discusses how Information Technology (IT), and specifically, synchronous and asynchronous groupware, may be integrated with KM in a drive towards cre- ating BI. Chapter 4 also studies the term `business intelligence', with specific relevance to the identification of business opportunities, and the application of the concepts of intellectual capital (IC). Chapter 5 outlines the research methodology, which includes two surveys on KM awareness and KM practices in order to gauge the level of implementation and application of KM for adding value to organisations. The research methodology also employs a case study to validate the implementation of an aspect of KM collaboration and knowledge sharing. The findings from the surveys give testament to the level of awareness and implementation of KM in best practice organisations. Chapter 7 then presents the approaches to measuring IC, and BI used by firms employing knowledge management practices to maintain their competitive advantage. In chapter 8, the researcher analyses how KM presentations and implementation in organisations may be operationalised. In chapter 9, the research presents the research model, the KM-BI model, which is the seminal objective of this thesis. The KM-BI model uses the confirmatory factor analysis procedure, Proc Calis of SAS Institute, to present a measurement model. In seeking to clarify the argument being made, a model is confirmed and discussed in terms of the transformation process from KM to BI and the subsequent competitive advantage. iv / Business Management / DBL

Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) is a branch of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). CIR is the process by which people search for and retrieve information, working together and using documents as data sources. Currently, computer support for CIR is limited to single user systems. Collaboration takes place either with users working at different times or in different locations. Multi-touch interaction has recently seen a rise in prominence owing to a reduction in the cost of the technology and increased frequency of use. Multi-touch surface computing allows multiple users to interact at once around a shared display. The aim of this research was to investigate how multi-touch interaction techniques could be used to support CIR effectively in a co-located environment. An application architecture for CIR systems that incorporates multi-touch interaction techniques was proposed. A prototype, called Co-IMBRA, was developed based on this architecture that used multi-touch interaction techniques to support CIR. This prototype allows multiple users to retrieve information, using the Internet as a shared information space. Documents are represented as visual objects that can be manipulated on the multi-touch surface, as well as rated, annotated and added to folders. A user study was undertaken to evaluate Co-IMBRA and determine whether the multi-touch interaction techniques effectively supported CIR. Fifteen teams of two users each participated in the user study. High task completion rates and low task times showed that the system was effective and efficient. High levels of user satisfaction were reported in the post-test questionnaires. Participants rated the system as highly useful and several commented that it promoted collaboration and that they enjoyed the test. The successful implementation of Co-IMBRA provides evidence that multi-touch interaction techniques can effectively support CIR. The results of the user evaluation also enabled recommendations for future research to be made.

Wiki Message Linking (WML) is a group communication tool that will be used between group members and the group leader. By using WML, group web pages are created and modified easily. From the WML, new pages are created and owned by their creators. The group leader and the page owner can modify the page, and the owner may give permission for other people to modify the web page; member can edit their works online and the leader can review the works and correct the works directly from the WML.

The objective of this study was to observe evidence of structural transfer among subjects in a group problem-solving activity and determine whether mode of collaborative technology or use of a priming agent affected the nature of transferred structures. Evidence for structural transfer is found in three theoretical perspectives: organizational ditransitive (linguistic) verb structures, adaptive structuration theory, and mental model transfer theory. Dependent variables included various grammatical structures and coefficients derived from pretest and posttest scores on David Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory, modified for the experiment. The combination of changes in grammatical frequencies and learning style may suggest that one or more media or the priming agent may affect structural transfer. Results indicate that groups using the GroupSystems™ collaborative technology produced less overall linguistic content than did subjects using a generic chat system, but employed more complex language as indicated by frequency of the organizational ditransitive verb structure. Also, subjects supplied with an organization chart (priming agent) during the group problem-solving session experienced greater change on the learning styles inventory than did those participating in the session without the chart. These findings suggest that mode of communication and use of priming agents may contribute positively or negatively to the transfer of structures among group members. Researchers, collaborative system designers, organizational leaders, trainers & educators, and frequent collaborative technology system end-users should be aware of these potential affects. Suggestions for future research are provided. Relationship of theoretical foundations of structural transfer to constructivism is discussed.

Changes in work, along with improvements in techniques to statistically model uncertainty, have resulted in a class of groupware tools able to forecast the activities and/or attentional state of their users. This thesis represents an exploration into the design, development, and use of one such system. I describe the design and development of a groupware calendar system called Augur that is augmented with the ability to predict the attendance of its users. Using Bayesian networks, Augur models the uncertain problem of event attendance, drawing inferences based on the attributes of calendar events as well as a history of attendance provided by each user. This system was deployed to an academic workgroup and studied over the course of a semester. To more deeply explore the social implications of Augur and systems like it, I conducted a structured privacy analysis of Augur to examine the vulnerabilities inherent in this type of forecasting groupware system. I present an architecture, user interface, and probabilistic model for Augur. This work also addresses the feasibility of such a system and the challenges faced when deploying it to an academic workgroup. I also report on an exploration of the systems use by individuals, its effects on communication within working relationships, and its effectiveness with respect to the presence of domestic calendars. Finally, I present a set of implications for the workplace social environment with the introduction of Augur. Specifically, I show how the integrity of predictions generated by Augur can have consequences for the privacy of users and their representations through the shared calendar. Overall, this thesis is presented as an early exploration into the potential for a new class of forecasting groupware applications. It offers guidance and lessons learned for both designers and researchers seeking to work in this area. It also presents a complete calendar application as an example for building and studying such systems.

This thesis presents two empirical studies of four pairs of design students collaborating on two small products design sessions in both face-to-face and distributed settings while using computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies and a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). To gain insight about the way designers communicate and collaborate, the observation focused on how much time the students worked "together" and "individually" in the design process. Each design process was video recorded and analyzed with a video analysis software Observer XT. The first study shows that both teams worked together to arrive at a design concept then they divided the work for each person to work independently (either the 3D modeling task or the 2D graphic task) to produce the final design. Teams worked together less than fifty percent of the overall work time because they could not share design information effectively using the computing technology tools on the collaborative design process. Findings of the first study suggested plausible design criteria for communication tools for distributed collaboration that supports interaction and sharing design information. The second study used the same methodology and experimental procedures as those used in study. However, participants were provided a shared tool such as NetMeeting Whiteboard and Shared program that support shared sketching abilities or shared viewing of 3D objects. The study shows that teams spent more time working together when using programs that support shared sketching abilities or shared viewing of 3D objects. The shared program and the whiteboard function from NetMeeting helped the design teams to share more information. Participants commented that this program helped facilitate the collaborative process by enabling them each to perform multiple tasks such as talking with their teammates and observing 3D object in a shared view at the same time. Participants also reported that they found the distributed setting a more engaging environment to work with teammates because they were "forced to be engaged" and "forced to communicate better," and that they "concentrated more using hand gestures on camera." Although two studies showed that current CVE (Unreal) did not lead to effective collaboration, several potential features such as creating virtual mock-ups for the brainstorming within a virtual environment were introduced. Participants consider real time 3D visualization effective in the design process and thus very promising in the collaborative setting if they can share ideas easily within a 3D virtual environment.

Le « knotworking » représente une forme innovante d’organisation du travail dans laquelle la collaboration prend place sous la forme d’épisodes en fonction des besoins de la situation. Cela implique de multiples défis pour soutenir la collaboration, dus à la nature épisodique, improvisée et inter-organisationnelle de cette collaboration. Notre objectif dans cette thèse est de relever ces défis, au travers d’un cas d’étude sur les pratiques collaboratives d’un groupe de professionnels de santé libéraux prenant en charge des patients à domicile. Nos résultats montrent : 1) La centralité des artefacts de coordination ; 2) comment la focalisation sur la qualité de vie des patients amène les acteurs de la prise en charge à traiter de problèmes au-delà du périmètre médical ; 3) que les acteurs de santé passent par différents rythmes de collaboration en fonction de l’évolution de la situation de leur patient. Ces résultats nous ont permis de définir des principes de conception et de développer l’application CARE (Classeur pour une Approche en Réseau Efficace), accessible sur une tablette et restant au domicile du patient. Les retours montrent le rôle potentiel des technologies pour motiver la participation de nouveaux acteurs de santé, et pour la mise en place d’un espace partagé pour les différents participants de la prise en charge. Notre travail contribue à la recherche en TCAO en mettant l’accent sur un nouveau modèle d’organisation du travail (knotworking) et en proposant la première étude de cas de conception d’un outil pour assister la collaboration dans ce contexte / The development of new modes of working raises new challenges for supporting collaboration. Knotworking represents an innovative way of organizing work where collaboration occurs in episodes depending on the requirement of the current situation. Supporting collaboration in knotworking presents multiple challenges due to the episodic, improvised, and cross-boundary nature of the collaboration. Our objective in this thesis is to tackle these challenges. Thus, we conducted a design case study investigating the collaborative practices of a group of self-employed care professionals organized as an association which take care of patients at home. The results show: 1) the centrality of the coordinative artifacts for sharing information and coordinating the work; 2) how focusing on patients’ quality of life leads care actors to address issues beyond the medical scope; 3) how the care actors experience different rhythms of collaboration depending on the patient’s situation. Based on these results, we defined some implications for design and developed the CARE application (Classeur pour une Approche en Réseau Efficace), which is accessible via a tablet and stays at the home of the patient. Feedback reveals the potential role of technologies in motivating the participation of new care actors, and in the creation of a shared place for diverse participants. Our work contributes to CSCW by bringing to focus a new model of organizing work named knotworking and by providing a first design case study aiming at supporting collaboration in this context