KDI: The Importance of Shared Visual Environments for Collaborative Tasks

研究表明，与他人交谈时看到对方对改善谈话效果没有多大帮助，但看到谈话对象却大有帮助。通过各种方式，共享的视觉环境导致了共同基础的发展——参与者之间对每个人在任何时刻所知道的细节的相互理解。本研究的主要目标是更全面地了解共享视觉空间在面对面和中介环境中的作用，发现视觉信息如何与任务和参与者交互的有用性，并确定基于视频的系统能够真正支持远程协作工作的方法。结果将是(1)对支持会话基础的共享视觉空间属性的理论理解，从而支持任务绩效；(2)对在复杂的协作任务中工作的视觉通信系统中产生差异的参数的详细了解；(3)允许在分布式设置中准确估计注意力焦点的技术。如果成功，该研究将为远程医疗、分布式教育和维修服务台人员配置等分布式活动的通信系统设计提供科学依据。

Research shows that seeing another person when talking to them does little to improve conversation, but seeing the objects being talked about helps a great deal. In various ways, the shared visual environment leads to the development of common ground--the detailed mutual understanding among participants about what each knows at any moment. The primary goals of this research are to understand more completely the role of shared visual spaces in both face-to-face and mediated settings, to discover how the usefulness of visual information interacts with tasks and participants, and to identify ways in which video-based systems can truly support remote collaborative work. The outcomes will be (1) theoretical understanding of the attributes of shared visual spaces that support conversational grounding and thus task performance, (2) detailed knowledge about the parameters that make a difference in visual communication systems for working on complex, collaborative tasks; and (3) technology that allows the accurate estimation of the focus of attention in distributed settings. If successful, the research will provide a scientific basis for the design of communication systems for such distributed activities as telemedicine, distributed education, and staffing of help desks for repair.