Embodiments and VideoArms in Mixed Presence Groupware
Date
2004-03-29
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Abstract
Mixed Presence Groupware (MPG) is software that connects collocated
and distributed collaborators together in a shared visual workspace. The
problem is that collaborators in MPG focus their collaborative energies almost
exclusively on their collocated partners, ignoring their distributed
counterparts. This arises because remote collaborators are disembodied when
compared to their collocated cohorts: they lack the material presence that
informs others of their actions. In this paper, we recap how physical bodies
facilitate collaboration in physical workspaces via feedthrough, consequential
communication and gestures. We recast this theory as four design implications
for virtual embodiments that minimize the disparity between collocated and
remote collaborators within MPG. We use these properties to design VideoArms,
a video-based mechanism that captures people�s body actions within a
physical workspace, and then digitally recreates them as virtual embodiments
throughout the MPG workspace.
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Computer Science