This project, enabling infrastructure to capture speech, motion, expressions, and gaze, supports research in collaboration and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Current interests in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) include understanding how people collaborate across multiple tasks with multiple partners, designing systems that interrupt users intelligently, supporting gestures and other types of nonverbal behavior in remote collaborations, and creating tools that can interpret meetings and other social behavior. The work contributes to the observation and analysis of fine details of human behavior, uses data for understanding human collaboration, especially the mechanics of face-to-face interaction in co-located and remote CSCW. A focus of fine details of human behavior, including facial expressions, body positions, gestures, and movements, is common to these projects, motivated by the belief that in depth analysis of behavior is necessary to move CSWC research and development into the future. CSWS is necessary for understanding the mechanics of face-to-face interaction, for identifying those aspects of face-to-face interaction that are most important to provide remote collaboration, and for programming intelligent collaborative systems. The infrastructure for a multimedia laboratory for research on computer-mediated collaborative behavior consists of the following four elements:
-Motion capture system, Mobile eye-tracking, -Multichannel video and audio recording.
The components, used independently or in combination, contribute to investigate a wide range of topics in human behavior. Examples include: large-scale collaboration in medical setting, interruptibility, tools for remote gestural communication, and multiple task performance. The enabled research should lead to an improved understanding of fundamental dimensions of interpersonal interaction, including the dynamics of group behavior, interruptibility and awareness, and interrelationships among gaze, gesture, speech, and actions. HCI, computer supported cooperative work, communication theory, social psychology, and organizational behavior might benefit from this work.
Broader Impact: The general public is expected to benefit by the creation of new tools to enhance collaboration in fields such as medicine and security. Additionally, the infrastructure contributes in the training of students and enhancing education in pertinent areas.
Our society has greater need than ever before for people to collaborate effectively, whether they be large virtual communities, teams of employees, neighborhoods or family groups. Collaboration is involved in many societal problems including energy use, law enforcement, disaster relief, and scientific research. Research in human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work has an impressive record of scholarship and the development of technology to support interpersonal communication and group interaction. The faculty and students of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University have been leaders in research on collaboration in a range of problem areas such as disruption of family schedules, multi-tasking and interruptions in the workplace, energy use in households, collaborative intelligence analysis, virtual organization, and collaborative learning. Our goal has been to leverage advances in new instrumentation to improve knowledge of how details of brain and behavior are related to the underlying meaning, processes, and outcomes of collaboration. With this grant we acquired instrumentation that supported advances in understanding collaboration and new technologies to support collaboration. For example, by carefully monitoring how passengers give driving instructions, we have improved navigation systems now used in General Motors’ advanced car designs. By studying the fine details of human behavior, including facial expressions, body positions, gestures, and movements, we have learned how students best learn and improved online tutoring and mentoring systems. We have contributed to the understanding of collaborative analysis in intelligence work and police work, showing how new tools need to be designed so they don’t just overwhelm analysts. The grant has enabled us to conduct scientific studies that undergrads and graduate students worked on. With their experience in "user-centered design," our students are at the best grad schools and companies, including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM’s research lab. One of the reasons that our students are attractive to companies is that they have an understanding of scientific methods and systematic empirical work, not just technology. Our purchases of computers, eye trackers, software for monitoring how people use systems, one-way mirrors for observation, and the like has brought our lab into the forefront of research in human-computer interaction and collaboration.
