With  the  ever  expanding  development  and  use  of  technology,  smartphones  enjoy  an increase in use mainly as people’s personal devices. This study aims to turn smartphones into  co-located  devices  through  a  serious  game  with  the  goal  of  breaking  the  ice  when groups meet for the first time. A prototype for a game named ICE (Interactive Co-located Events) was made and evaluated with a group of 14 people in a laboratory setting. Through questionnaires,  a  focus  group  and  observations,  it  became  clear  that  the  game  works  to break down barriers between people, but didn’t succeed in supporting people to truly get to know each other. This was mainly due to the competitive aspect of the game and the time limit  set  for  it.  Future  implementations  of  the  game  could  have  these  removed  to  see  if games  like  these  can  take  the  next  step  and  go  beyond  breaking  down  barriers  between people.

Two primary types of multiplayer gaming have emerged over the years. The first type involves co-located players on a shared display, and typically caps at four players. The second type of gaming provides a single display for each player. This type scales well beyond four players, but places no requirement on co-location. This paper will attempt to combine the best of both worlds via high-resolution, highly-multiplayer gaming. Over the past few years, there has been a rise in the number of extremely high-resolution, tiled displays. These displays provide an enormous amount of screen space to work with. This space was used to allow twelve co-located players to play a game together. This study accomplishes three things: we designed and built PyBomber, a high-resolution and highly multiplayer game for up to twelve players; secondly, user trials were conducted to see whether this type of gaming is enjoyable as well as to learn what sorts of social interactions take place amongst so many players; lastly, the lessons learned were generalized into design criteria for future high-resolution games. Results show that with more people, much more of the time during a game was filled with vocal interactions between players. There were also more physical movements in the larger games. Over the course of this study, we learned that good high-resolution games will: decide between a singular gameplay area and split views, use the physical space in front of the display, provide feedback that is localized to each player, and utilize input devices appropriately. / Master of Science

<p>This thesis is about collaborative activities in interactive spaces. These spaces are characterized by having shared, large displays in combination with private displays and software tools that facilitate a fluent sharing of information between people and their resources. The aim is to understand the collaborative activities in interactive spaces in terms of how team members are allowed to contribute to the overall work and what influence the physical qualities of space have on the collaboration. The research questions focus on the ways team members come to contribute to the work, how roles and functions are handled during collaboration, and how the physical qualities of the space influence the collaborative activities. To investigate these issues two empirical studies were conducted. The first study focused on two student teams that carried out conceptual design activities. The second study focused on geographically distributed meetings of an international research network. Data was mainly collected using video recordings, observations and questionnaires. The analyses are primarily based on detailed investigations of video recordings. The results showed in the first study that the large, touch-sensitive displays made it possible for the team members to interact and contribute to the work in several ways, which led to more equalized roles. In the second study the setting was more complex; the use of both video- and audio conferences made it difficult for the team members to overview the situation and to take part in the conversations, and their roles became more accentuated. It was further found that the physical- and the social space were intertwined: they appeared as spaces within spaces. The team members were also in a concrete sense constructing spaces within spaces: they created their own spaces in the common space and they often made transitions between shared and private, focal and peripheral work.</p>

This thesis is about collaborative activities in interactive spaces. These spaces are characterized by having shared, large displays in combination with private displays and software tools that facilitate a fluent sharing of information between people and their resources. The aim is to understand the collaborative activities in interactive spaces in terms of how team members are allowed to contribute to the overall work and what influence the physical qualities of space have on the collaboration. The research questions focus on the ways team members come to contribute to the work, how roles and functions are handled during collaboration, and how the physical qualities of the space influence the collaborative activities. To investigate these issues two empirical studies were conducted. The first study focused on two student teams that carried out conceptual design activities. The second study focused on geographically distributed meetings of an international research network. Data was mainly collected using video recordings, observations and questionnaires. The analyses are primarily based on detailed investigations of video recordings. The results showed in the first study that the large, touch-sensitive displays made it possible for the team members to interact and contribute to the work in several ways, which led to more equalized roles. In the second study the setting was more complex; the use of both video- and audio conferences made it difficult for the team members to overview the situation and to take part in the conversations, and their roles became more accentuated. It was further found that the physical- and the social space were intertwined: they appeared as spaces within spaces. The team members were also in a concrete sense constructing spaces within spaces: they created their own spaces in the common space and they often made transitions between shared and private, focal and peripheral work.

This thesis investigates new ways of using information visualization to support collaboration in co-located work. To study this phenomenon, Multiple Viewer Display Environments (MVDEs) with independent views have been applied to present information such that all viewers at the same time and in the same display can see correct views of 3D models, see correctly oriented text and see different parts and aspects of information in each view. Several prototypes have been developed either as proof of new conceptual designs or to evaluate particular research questions. These prototypes have been used to investigate general properties that apply to co-located collaborative visualizations. A prototype system to keep track of the viewpoints and information in the independent views was implemented on MVDE hardware to support discussions on future command and control environments and to provide the necessary framework for conducting empirical studies (Paper II). Another prototype, the in situ tomographic display, was developed to support presentation of spatial 3D data (e.g., temperature or airflow) in 2D views in situ with working environments (Paper III). In addition to the visualization systems, a technique for high precision pen-based interaction in rear-projection display environments - the PixelActiveSurface – was developed (Papers IV and V). The empirical studies evaluate how new forms of visualization in MVDEs with independent views affect the way information is perceived and can be shared in collaboration. The conclusion is that multiple independent views can provide more effective and efficient visualization when the following conditions are met: text is oriented towards the viewer (Paper VI), different aspects of information are coordinated between different views of the same display (Paper VIII) and correct views of 3D models are used to compare ordinal information and relations in spatial data (Paper VII). However, for the techniques to support co-located work efficiently, it is necessary that the type of work and the task to be solved are first properly analyzed and understood (Papers VII and IX).

What social practices are people involved when staying in a game café? What kind of social setting is the game café? What are the attitudes towards playing computer games at home and in public among parents? What are the media representations of co-located game playing in public? What are the sensory experiences of playing co-located game play in public? This dissertation gives a descriptive and analytical account of the contexts and meanings of playing co-located computer games in public settings such as game cafés and LAN parties. The overall aim with the dissertation is to describe and investigate the social and cultural meanings and contexts of playing computer games in a game café. The research questions have been investigated in four empirical studies. The dissertation shows that people are involved in various social practices and activities aimed at supporting and maintaining social relationships among friends and peers. The game café can be seen as a third place, as it used by players for recreation and an escape from the pressure of home and school, a place which feels like home, is familiar and welcoming. However the game café is a limited third place used by young men who likes to play online and network games. The dissertation also shows how the social environment provides for specific sensory experiences. These sensory experiences involve sitting together side by side slapping each other’s shoulders and legs, eating candies and drinking sodas, listening to music. The representations of co-located game playing in public reproduce traditional gender roles where professional gamers are represented by men and causal gamers are represented by women (and men) as well as construct youth as party lovers. The study also suggests that parents’ attitudes towards their children playing games in public draw on traditional values and ideas about children’s play and social relationships. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Submitted. </p>

Les Environnements Virtuels Immersifs (EVI) peuvent être utilisés pour amener des utilisateurs, répartis géographiquement ou co-localisés, à partager un même monde virtuel pour collaborer. Si l’on compare aux situations distantes, les utilisateurs d’une immersion co-localisée collaborent aussi dans le monde virtuel, mais a contrario, partagent physiquement un même espace de travail. Cette co-localisation facilite le travail collaboratif en permettant des communications directes et des interactions sans médiation informatique entre les utilisateurs.Avec le développement de l'affichage multi-utilisateur et de la technologie de tracking, les dispositifs immersifs classiques basés sur la rétroprojection (ex. CAVE) peuvent offrir maintenant l'immersion pour plusieurs utilisateurs co-localisés en affichant différentes vues stéréoscopiques sans distorsion visuelle pour chacun d’eux. Dans ce contexte, la coexistence de l'information du monde virtuel et réel, en particulier lorsque les utilisateurs ne partagent pas un référentiel spatial commun, offre aux utilisateurs une nouvelle expérience perceptive et cognitive. Dans cette thèse nous nous sommes intéressés à la façon dont les utilisateurs se perçoivent et communiquent entre eux pour atteindre un contexte commun pour la collaboration, et aux moyens permettant d’élargir des scénarios collaboratifs déjà pris en charge dans ce type de dispositifs, basés sur des techniques de contrôle plus flexible des points de vue des utilisateurs. Cette thèse de doctorat traite donc principalement des problèmes perceptifs et de cohabitation que nous avons identifiés dans l’objectif d’assurer la sécurité et l’efficacité des collaborations co-localisées dans les environnements virtuels immersifs. Tout d'abord, nous avons mené une étude de cas pour examiner comment les conflits perceptifs modifieraient la communication entre les utilisateurs et leur performance. Deuxièmement, nous avons conçu et évalué des paradigmes de navigation appropriés pour permettre la navigation virtuelle individuelle tout en résolvant les problèmes de la cohabitation dans un espace de travail partagé physiquement limité. Enfin, sur la base des résultats de ces travaux, nous avons proposé un modèle dynamique générique qui intègre des contraintes de l'espace de travail physique et aussi ceux du monde virtuel pour gérer la collaboration co-localisée dans les systèmes immersifs multi-utilisateurs. / Immersive virtual environment can be used to bring both geographically distributed and co-located users to the same virtual place for collaboration. Compared to remote situations, co-located users collaborate in the same virtual world on top of a shared physical workspace. This collocation allows direct user communication and interaction without computer mediation which facilitates collaborative work. With the development of multi-user display and tracking technology, classical projection-based immersive setups (e.g. CAVE) can now support group immersion for co-located users by offering individual stereoscopic views without visual distortion. In this context, the coexistence of information from the virtual and real world, especially when users do not share a common spatial reference frame, provides users with a new kind of perceptual and cognitive experience. We are interested in how users perceive and communicate with each other to achieve a shared context for collaboration, and how we can broaden supported collaborative scenarios with more flexible viewpoint control.This PhD thesis mainly addresses perceptual and cohabitation issues that we identified in the aim of supporting safe and efficient co-located collaboration in immersive virtual environment. First, we conducted a case study to examine how perceptual conflicts would alter user communication and task performance. Second, we concentrated on the design and evaluation of appropriate navigation paradigms to allow individual virtual navigation while solving cohabitation problems in a shared limited physical workspace. At last, based on the results of previous studies, we designed a generic dynamic navigation model which integrates constrains from the physical workspace and also the virtual world to enable co-located collaboration in multi-user immersive systems.

Background It is evident that due to the globalization, offshoring and cross-national collaboration has become a natural evolution for many companies which have created the virtual world. The virtual world has many advantages, but when this is put into practice it turns out that there are also some disadvantages that affect the teams that are working with different sites. Teams face big challenges in communication and collaboration due to the physical distance, cultural differences and time zones. While believing that the work becomes more efficient, this process is at the same time slowed down due to the challenges that arise that affects the performance which in turn affects the costs. Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding about whether or not there are differences in globally distributed teams and co-located teams in terms of soft factors, team performance and cost efficiency. The projects that will be studied are global software development projects where the teams are either located in Sweden or in India. Method This study is a case study at Ericsson that operates in many distributed software development projects where team members are located all over the world. 11 projects were selected and compared. Two surveys were made in order to collect data from developers who worked with the different projects that were selected. Furthermore, internal data about the performance for each project were collected and used in the statistical tests together with data from the survey in SPSS. The performance data was also used in order to calculate the performance deviations from the expected performance and in order to calculate the associated costs. Results There is a statistically significant difference in communication efficiency, shared identity, trust and cultural clashes between co-located and distributed teams. These soft factors are strongly related to the team performance. The co-located teams perform better than expected while distributed teams perform worse than expected which also increase the extra costs in the project. Conclusion The communication efficiency, shared identity and trust are higher in co-located teams, and the values of cultural clashes are lower than in distributed teams. Co-located teams perform better than distributed teams and the performance in co-located teams leads to cost savings while the performance in distributed teams leads to cost losses.

The company Forsslund Systems has developed a simulator for oral surgery training. The simulator, named Kobra, uses detailed virtual models of surgical situations, spatial haptics and a co-located stereoscopic display to provide an environment in which students can practice surgical techniques. Four years after the introduction of the Kobra a need was recognized for a new hardware design that satisfies the customers expectations on visual appearance and hardware refinement and that aims to improve the experience for the end users. This report describes the design development process of the new enclosure, that had a focus on human-centered design, brand management and small-scale manufacturing. Inspired by findings from a comprehensive user study, conducted at a teaching hospital in Riga and relevant literature, as well as the results of prototyping and testing, the new design of the Kobra aims to improve the usability and market attractiveness of the product offering. This while being tailored to utilize the manufacturing technologies available to a small-scale in-house or out-sourced production team. A full-scale functioning prototype of the concept was built in-house, using the proposed means of manufacture, demonstrating a design that is close to ready for production. / Simulatorn, kallad Kobra, använder detaljerade virtuella modeller av kirurgiska ingrepp, 3D-haptik och en samlokaliserad stereoskopisk skärm för att skapa en miljö där elever kan öva kirurgiska tekniker. Fyra år efter introduktionen av Kobran klargjordes ett behov av en ny hårdvarudesign som uppfyller kundernas förväntningar på utseende och hårdvarukvalité samt som syftar till att förbättra upplevelsen för slutanvändarna. Denna rapport beskriver designutvecklingsprocessen av den nya exteriören, som hade utgångspunkt från människocentrerad design, varumärkeshantering och småskalig tillverkning. Inspirerad av insikter från en omfattande användarstudie, genomförd på ett lärosäte i Riga och relevant litteratur, såväl som resultaten av prototyptillverkning och utvärdering, syftar den nya designen av Kobran till att förbättra användbarhet och produktens marknadsläge. Detta medans designen är skräddarsydd för att utnyttja de tillverkningsprocesser som är tillgängliga för ett småskaligt internt eller externt produktionslag. En fullskalig fungerande prototyp av konceptet byggdes, med hjälp av de föreslagna tillverkningsmetoderna, som påvisade en nära produktionsklar design.

<p>This thesis investigates new ways of using information visualization to support collaboration in co-located work. To study this phenomenon, Multiple Viewer Display Environments (MVDEs) with independent views have been applied to present information such that all viewers at the same time and in the same display can see correct views of 3D models, see correctly oriented text and see different parts and aspects of information in each view. Several prototypes have been developed either as proof of new conceptual designs or to evaluate particular research questions. These prototypes have been used to investigate general properties that apply to co-located collaborative visualizations. </p><p>A prototype system to keep track of the viewpoints and information in the independent views was implemented on MVDE hardware to support discussions on future command and control environments and to provide the necessary framework for conducting empirical studies (Paper II). Another prototype, the in situ tomographic display, was developed to support presentation of spatial 3D data (e.g., temperature or airflow) in 2D views in situ with working environments (Paper III). In addition to the visualization systems, a technique for high precision pen-based interaction in rear-projection display environments - the PixelActiveSurface – was developed (Papers IV and V). </p><p>The empirical studies evaluate how new forms of visualization in MVDEs with independent views affect the way information is perceived and can be shared in collaboration. The conclusion is that multiple independent views can provide more effective and efficient visualization when the following conditions are met: text is oriented towards the viewer (Paper VI), different aspects of information are coordinated between different views of the same display (Paper VIII) and correct views of 3D models are used to compare ordinal information and relations in spatial data (Paper VII). However, for the techniques to support co-located work efficiently, it is necessary that the type of work and the task to be solved are first properly analyzed and understood (Papers VII and IX).</p>