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Cognitive and educational aspects of desktop videoconferencing
Interacting
with Computers
~018 no 2 (1996)
163-l
65
Editorial Cognitive and educational aspects of desktop videoconferencing Terry Mayes
and Sandra FoubisteP
The four papers which follow in this issue are written versions of presentations given to the British HCI Group’s one-day workshop on Cognitive and Educational Aspects of Desktop Videoconferencing held at Heriot-Watt University on 5 December 1995. This was a particularly lively workshop, bringing together most of the leading UK researchers in the area, reflecting the intense interest which now attaches to this topic. It is appropriate to introduce these papers by reflecting on why this is so: why should the rather slow development of this technology be accompanied by such a sense of research urgency? There is a scene from Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey in which a space traveller telephones home from a moon station using a videophone. Even in the late 196Os, despite the convincing nature of all the futuristic technology in the film (including HAL’s legendary intelligence), there was something awkward and rather pointless about the video communication. Then, one felt that this was a technology on the fringe. Today, there are strong pressures to bring video communication into the mainstream, yet this feeling persists. The global telecommunications industry sees videoconferencing as an important driver for ISDN and broadband infrastructures to be put in place across the developed world. Many projects in the RACE and ACTS programmes have been, or are currently, trying to build convincing videoconferencing applications in order to hasten this development, seeing major changes in work practices and in distance learning as user-empowering consequences. From a HCI perspective all this seems less than satisfactory. Once again the design of end-user systems is proceeding from the technology, rather than from user needs. Much of the funding is directed towards the search for a ‘killer application’, rather than to the development of an underlying science of visual communication, or to the careful identification of where the video component will have real impact on performance. Yet, perhaps because of the huge variety of potential applications that may use video-mediated communication, and because of the equally large range of cognitive issues that are raised in trying to Glasgow UK *Institute
Caledonian for Computer
Elsevier Science B.V. PI1 SO953-5438(96)01024-7
University,
3rd Floor,
Based Learning,
St. Andrew
Heriot-Watt
House, University,
141 West Nile
Street,
Riccarton,
Edinburgh
Glasgow EH14
G12RN, 4AS, UK
163
understand where it will have impact, the field of relevant enquiry is still to be properly defined, let alone fully explored. The title of the workshop reflected our desire to focus on HCI issues, rather than to be drawn too deeply into debates about compression algorithms, dark fibre, and the like. Most of us have by now had some personal experience of videoconferencing, either through SuperJANET, or through ISDN-based desktop systems, or CU-SeeMe on the Internet. Even a short exposure to these systems is enough to suggest that the underlying issues are many and complex, involving interactions between quality of video and audio, integration with other aspects of task performance, prior use, purpose of task, and the social context of use. The human communication issues alone would be justification for a targeted research programme. The papers from this workshop will be published across this and the next issue of the journal. In this issue we have four papers. The unifying theme is the difference between face-to-face and video-mediated communication. The first paper is from Vi&i Bruce on the implications of research on the role of the face in social interaction. This convincingly illustrates the subtlety of the way in which information about the human face is used for different purposes, and the differential sensitivity of these to reductions in spatial or bit-per-pixel resolution, compared to reductions in temporal resolution. While people can be identified just as readily with reduced resolution across the board, the understanding of their expressions and gaze is more sensitive to temporal resolution. This work begins to tell us where bandwidth should be critical, and provides an empirical underpinning for understanding the face-to-face/video-mediation comparison. This theme is also the focus of the paper by O’Malley et al., using the well-known ‘map task, a much-studied collaboration task sensitive to communication differences. Here the relationship between the level of information sought through both spoken and visual cues, and the level of mutual understanding achieved, is examined. We begin to see that trade-offs between dialogue, gaze, and task variables will make it very dangerous to offer any kind of generalisations about the broad impact of video-mediated communication, without a much firmer science base. In the paper by Anderson et aI., a collaborative task which simulates a service encounter between a travel agent and a potential traveller is used to compare video communication with face-to-face and audio-only conditions. The results support the conclusions of the O’Malley et al. paper, confirming that with these tasks and these subjects and this technology, video-mediated communication is certainly not the same as face-to-face. However, this work raises many possibilities for explaining why this is so, and demonstrates the need for a great deal more of this kind of careful, empirically-based, analysis. In the fourth paper, McAndrew et al. describe one of the first distance learning applications of broadband networks, in this case a system designed to support second language learning. This system, HIPERNET, involves remote learners enacting a role-play using video-mediated communication, and supported by various multimedia resources. It is hard to think of a more suitable application for videoconferencing than language learning, allowing learners to locate on the network other learners who wish to learn through the very act of communicating. 164
Interacting
with Computers
~018 no 2 (1996)
This paper describes the design issues, and reports on the early trials, of what is sure to prove to be the first of many similar applications. Overall, the first three papers make a coherent case for a cognitive science approach to this rich area of HCI, while the fourth bridges to an applied theme. In the next issue the remaining papers from the workshop will turn to more explicitly educational aspects of videoconferencing.
Mayes
and Foubister
165
with Computers
~018 no 2 (1996)
163-l
65
Editorial Cognitive and educational aspects of desktop videoconferencing Terry Mayes
and Sandra FoubisteP
The four papers which follow in this issue are written versions of presentations given to the British HCI Group’s one-day workshop on Cognitive and Educational Aspects of Desktop Videoconferencing held at Heriot-Watt University on 5 December 1995. This was a particularly lively workshop, bringing together most of the leading UK researchers in the area, reflecting the intense interest which now attaches to this topic. It is appropriate to introduce these papers by reflecting on why this is so: why should the rather slow development of this technology be accompanied by such a sense of research urgency? There is a scene from Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey in which a space traveller telephones home from a moon station using a videophone. Even in the late 196Os, despite the convincing nature of all the futuristic technology in the film (including HAL’s legendary intelligence), there was something awkward and rather pointless about the video communication. Then, one felt that this was a technology on the fringe. Today, there are strong pressures to bring video communication into the mainstream, yet this feeling persists. The global telecommunications industry sees videoconferencing as an important driver for ISDN and broadband infrastructures to be put in place across the developed world. Many projects in the RACE and ACTS programmes have been, or are currently, trying to build convincing videoconferencing applications in order to hasten this development, seeing major changes in work practices and in distance learning as user-empowering consequences. From a HCI perspective all this seems less than satisfactory. Once again the design of end-user systems is proceeding from the technology, rather than from user needs. Much of the funding is directed towards the search for a ‘killer application’, rather than to the development of an underlying science of visual communication, or to the careful identification of where the video component will have real impact on performance. Yet, perhaps because of the huge variety of potential applications that may use video-mediated communication, and because of the equally large range of cognitive issues that are raised in trying to Glasgow UK *Institute
Caledonian for Computer
Elsevier Science B.V. PI1 SO953-5438(96)01024-7
University,
3rd Floor,
Based Learning,
St. Andrew
Heriot-Watt
House, University,
141 West Nile
Street,
Riccarton,
Edinburgh
Glasgow EH14
G12RN, 4AS, UK
163
understand where it will have impact, the field of relevant enquiry is still to be properly defined, let alone fully explored. The title of the workshop reflected our desire to focus on HCI issues, rather than to be drawn too deeply into debates about compression algorithms, dark fibre, and the like. Most of us have by now had some personal experience of videoconferencing, either through SuperJANET, or through ISDN-based desktop systems, or CU-SeeMe on the Internet. Even a short exposure to these systems is enough to suggest that the underlying issues are many and complex, involving interactions between quality of video and audio, integration with other aspects of task performance, prior use, purpose of task, and the social context of use. The human communication issues alone would be justification for a targeted research programme. The papers from this workshop will be published across this and the next issue of the journal. In this issue we have four papers. The unifying theme is the difference between face-to-face and video-mediated communication. The first paper is from Vi&i Bruce on the implications of research on the role of the face in social interaction. This convincingly illustrates the subtlety of the way in which information about the human face is used for different purposes, and the differential sensitivity of these to reductions in spatial or bit-per-pixel resolution, compared to reductions in temporal resolution. While people can be identified just as readily with reduced resolution across the board, the understanding of their expressions and gaze is more sensitive to temporal resolution. This work begins to tell us where bandwidth should be critical, and provides an empirical underpinning for understanding the face-to-face/video-mediation comparison. This theme is also the focus of the paper by O’Malley et al., using the well-known ‘map task, a much-studied collaboration task sensitive to communication differences. Here the relationship between the level of information sought through both spoken and visual cues, and the level of mutual understanding achieved, is examined. We begin to see that trade-offs between dialogue, gaze, and task variables will make it very dangerous to offer any kind of generalisations about the broad impact of video-mediated communication, without a much firmer science base. In the paper by Anderson et aI., a collaborative task which simulates a service encounter between a travel agent and a potential traveller is used to compare video communication with face-to-face and audio-only conditions. The results support the conclusions of the O’Malley et al. paper, confirming that with these tasks and these subjects and this technology, video-mediated communication is certainly not the same as face-to-face. However, this work raises many possibilities for explaining why this is so, and demonstrates the need for a great deal more of this kind of careful, empirically-based, analysis. In the fourth paper, McAndrew et al. describe one of the first distance learning applications of broadband networks, in this case a system designed to support second language learning. This system, HIPERNET, involves remote learners enacting a role-play using video-mediated communication, and supported by various multimedia resources. It is hard to think of a more suitable application for videoconferencing than language learning, allowing learners to locate on the network other learners who wish to learn through the very act of communicating. 164
Interacting
with Computers
~018 no 2 (1996)
This paper describes the design issues, and reports on the early trials, of what is sure to prove to be the first of many similar applications. Overall, the first three papers make a coherent case for a cognitive science approach to this rich area of HCI, while the fourth bridges to an applied theme. In the next issue the remaining papers from the workshop will turn to more explicitly educational aspects of videoconferencing.
Mayes
and Foubister
165