CAREER: Awareness Mechanisms for Next Generation Virtual Collocation

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The nature of distributed work is changing as mobile and ubiquitous technologies are being used increasingly to enable collaboration anywhere, anytime. The success of distributed teamwork depends on the ability of collaborating partners to communicate essential social and task information, referred to as awareness information. Thus, the design of next generation mobile and ubiquitous technologies need to be based on a deep understanding of social and task requirements. The purpose of this project is to investigate how technology can support awareness requirements as people's environments change during distributed work. Empirical studies of physically collocated and distributed collaboration will be done to develop a theoretical framework for how awareness information is conveyed and utilized in these different settings. Five field sites have been selected in domains where distributed work is commonplace: space mission design, aerospace, software development, microprocessor development, and disk storage technologies. Prototype awareness mechanisms will be developed based on the requirements obtained in the field studies. These technologies will be evaluated both in the field and the laboratory to test the theoretical framework of how awareness information is utilized in distributed work. This research will be integrated into a graduate study program focused on computer-supported collaborative work and human-computer interaction.