Coordination of communication: effects of shared visual context on collaborative work

We outline some of the benefits of shared visual information for collaborative repair tasks and report on a study comparing collaborative performance on a manual task by workers and helpers who are located side-by-side or connected via audio-video or audioonly links. Results show that the dyads complete the task more quickly and accurately when helpers are colocated than when they are connected via an audio link. However, they didn’t achieve similar efficiency gains when they communicated through an audio/video link. These results demonstrate the value of a shared visual work space, but raise questions about the adequacy of current video communication technology for implementing it. Keywords Computer-supported collaborative work, video mediated communication, conversational analysis, wearable computers, empirical studies

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Susan R. Fussell, Robert E. Kraut, Jane Siegel
• Keywords: Collaborative Repair Tasks, CSCW 2000, Keywords Computer-supported Collaborative, Social Sciences, Video Mediated Communication