The Same Old Remote Misunderstandings: Object-Focused Interaction in e-Social Science Mike Fraser University of Bristol

e-Science and collaboration Use of Grid systems (Foster & Kesselman, 1999) to support and enhance remote collaboration between groups of scientists distributed resource discovery ‘ collaboration support ’ remote problem solving across social and physical sciences is receiving widespread attention from computer science developers

Collaboration support on the Grid development of ontologies of scientific process to form workflows to structure collaborative work use of multiparty video centres such as Access Grid Nodes (AGNs) to enable remote meetings with data visualizations and presentations

Usability in e-Science Aim for technologies to provide coherent support for distributed science implicit reliance on assumptions of distributed work practice subject of continued questioning through studies of practice across a range of work domains

Remote misunderstandings Strength in new paradigms for computing Weakness in providing access to services ‘ on the ground ’ Developers are adopting the same old remote misunderstandings lack of studies of working scientific practice in e- Science has led to simplistic notions of collaboration embedding notions into middleware and interfaces users themselves are encountering the same old remote misunderstandings

Object-focused interaction One notion is ‘ object-focused interaction ’ e-Science designs information on remote users (e.g. video streams) remote data (e.g. presentations, visualizations) Assumption that delivery of data is enough Strategy questioned in some systems supporting groups ’ collaboration with and around mutual objects of interest media spaces (Gaver et al., 1993), multi-user virtual reality (Hindmarsh et al., 1998), remote embodiment with robot proxies (Heath et al, 2000).

VidGrid VidGrid project How to support social scientists in the remote collaborative analysis of video data prototype system based upon the use of distributed projected interfaces using Mimio pens for annotation

Imitation and Exaggeration Corresponding on-going studies of co-located data analysis sessions Reference in data analysis is not just explicit deictic reference (i.e. pointing) analysts embody imitations and exaggerations of the human behaviour they notice In the sequence of such conduct these activities are coordinated and co-produced with respect to both the data display and other analysts ’ activities

The Access Grid AGNs might remotely deliver video of analysts video data under scrutiny no explicit representation of analysts ’ evolving orientation to one another and the data at a remote site Two Key Issues Data-oriented activity Activity ‘ outside ’ the Grid

1. Data-oriented activities participants need access to one another ’ s activities with respect to the data Difficulties reconciling viewpoints and perspectives on action Fragmenting the relationship between analyst and data generates significant difficulties in communicating insights Reconstructing a sense of the analytic process requires that such relationships are preserved in recordings of analysis

2. Outside the Grid The process of work with datasets across AGNs remains largely ‘ in the world ’ and outside the Grid. Storage will be supported pen-based scribbling approach Difficult to weave co-analysts and data reference simultaneously Lacking sufficient resolution to convey impression of behaviour

Mobile/Ubiquitous solutions significant benefits in rendering data of the relationships between embodied activities and the local environment to be used in the remote representation Wearable location and orientation sensors tracked mobile tools contextual information on the local relationships between body and ‘ physical ’ objects Local mobility in remote representation

Conclusions parallels in object-focused interaction between current e-Science technologies and remote problem solving in distributed CSCW Sensor systems provide promising avenues to embed the embodied practices of data analysis into the remote representation of analytic activities Ubicomp offers opportunities to embed remote embodied practice into distributed interfaces, but addressing the co-production of local mobility in context

Acknowledgements VidGrid is funded by the ESRC (award number RES A) under the e-Social Science programme VidGrid is a collaborative project involving Mike Fraser (Mobile and Wearable Computing, Bristol) Jon Hindmarsh and Christian Heath (Work, Interaction & Technology, Kings College London) Chris Greenhalgh and Steve Benford (Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham)