I have a long-standing interest in the implications of different communications media for how people interact and communicate with one another. This has led to my involvement in a number of projects over the years exploring various aspects of mediated communication, ranging from navigation in virtual environments, to playing games with distributed groups via a videoconferencing system. This is a second in a series of posts covering projects I worked on before my current postdoc position.
Remote Participation in Research: This chapter uses the theoretical notion of common ground to explore remote participation in experimental research. On one hand, there is a desire to give remote participants the same views and capabilities that they would have as local participants. On the other, there are settings where experimental specimens and apparatus are large and difficult to effectively manipulate or view from a remote vantage point, and where multiple and diverse perspectives may be useful in decision making. In exploring these issues, the authors draw on two studies of researchers in the earthquake engineering community. The first, an interview study about attitudes toward teleparticipation, suggests that engineers are wary of remote participation because they fear the inability to adequately detect signs of potential failure. The second study, an observational study of researchers conducting an experiment in a centrifuge facility, illustrates that researchers adapt to the available information, and that diverse perspectives and information may be valuable in troubleshooting.
Birnholtz, J., Rader, E., Horn, D.B., and Finholt, T. (2009). Enabling Remote Participation in Research. In B. Whitworth and A. de Moor (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems. (link)
Playing Games via Video: Video connections can establish a media space in which games may be played, just as people play games while collocated. Experiments were conducted in which eight groups of participants played the party game ‘Mafia’, which involves cooperative decision-making among subsets of players. Of the eight groups, four participated in collocated sessions with all participants in one room. The other participants joined four video sessions which were split between different sites, connected by a video conferencing system. Results suggest that people in a video condition have similar levels of satisfaction, fun, and frustration, to those that play while collocated. This finding holds for both those with prior experience using video systems and those without, suggesting it is not merely a “novelty effect.”
Batcheller, A. L., Hilligoss, B., Nam, K., Rader, E., Rey-Babarro, M., & Zhou, X. (2007). Testing the Technology: Playing Games with Video Conferencing. Proceedings of CHI 2007. (link)
Video Quality: The marketing literature for videoconferencing products often makes recommendations for settings that will yield acceptable subjective video quality; however, these recommendations have not been empirically validated. Additionally, a number of high bandwidth conferencing systems have been created that promise high video quality, but with extremely high bandwidth costs. An experiment was conducted investigating the subjective perception of video quality under the following conditions: 384 kbps, 1920 kbps, DVTS, and plain video. Four test scenes were used that differed in the amount and type of motion present in the video. Participants viewed sequences of reference and test scenes on a Samsung 42-inch plasma display, and made subjective ratings of all scenes using a discrete, 5-point scale. 1920 kbps scenes were given higher ratings than 384 kbps, but lower than both DVTS and a control. Ratings were also lower for scenes with more motion present in the video. No statistically significant difference was found between the DVTS and control test scenes. These findings suggest that while low bandwidth video may be acceptable for “talking heads”-type scene composition, medium bandwidth video offers a higher quality experience for users. Even higher bandwidth systems improve quality more, with the most dramatic improvements coming in scenes with high levels of motion.
Hofer, E., Rader, E., and Finholt, T. (2005). Toward supporting virtual collocation. WACE 2005 (Workshop on Advanced Collaborative Environments). (link)
Rader, E., Hofer, E. and Finholt, T. (working paper). High-bandwidth videoconferencing systems: When is the quality worth the cost? (link)
Navigation in Virtual Environments: Head-mounted displays for virtual environments facilitate an immersive experience that seems more real than an experience provided by a desk-top monitor [18]; however, the cost of head-mounted displays can prohibit their use. An empirical study was conducted investigating differences in spatial knowledge learned for a virtual environment presented in three viewing conditions: head-mounted display, large projection screen, and desk-top monitor. Participants in each condition were asked to reproduce their cognitive map of a virtual environment, which had been developed during individual exploration of the environment along a predetermined course. Error scores were calculated, indicating the degree to which each participant’s map differed from the actual layout of the virtual environment. No statistically significant difference was found between the head-mounted display and large projection screen conditions. An implication of this result is that a large projection screen may be an effective, inexpensive substitute for a head-mounted display.
Patrick, E., Cosgrove, D., Slavkovic, A., Rode, J.A., Verratti, T. and Chiselko, G. (2000). Using a large projection screen as an alternative to head-mounted displays for virtual environments. Proceedings of CHI 2000. (link)
