Information Representations for Shared Communication Spaces
Gavin J. Doherty, Thomas Rist · 2002
In the design of distributed collaborative systems accessed by means of heterogeneous interface devices with different communication bandwidths, the manner in which information is represented in the interface is of fundamental importance. The designer must consider the level of detail and abstraction determined by the physical form factor, the integration of information from other external and communicated information sources (and representations), and the use of represented information in collaborative acts and communications. We examine these concerns with respect to a collaborative route planning and navigation system, and look at the distributed cognition approach as a basis for structured reasoning about information representations in the interface. 1. Distributed collaborative route planning and navigation. An interesting and novel feature of applications based on emerging mobile and wearable user interface technology is the disparate and heterogeneous nature of the devices and capabilities available to different users. This is of particular importance for applications which support collaboration between users, who additionally may have different roles to play in the collaboration. In such scenarios, we see the interactive devices and infrastructure as part of the distributed cognitive system performing a task.