Challenges in Distributed Collaborative Space Mission Design (slides - PDF)

Presenter: Gloria Mark, Faculty, UCI/ISR

Abstract: In this work, I describe two field studies of collaborative space mission design work. In the first study, the use of a technology-equipped "warroom" was investigated for how it enabled people to exchange a large amount of results using both human and electronic networks. This study examined the role of the team, the affordances of the warroom, the technology, and the human networking as components that work together to enable people to design within a shared context. As part of this study, I report on an experiment using HDTV video-conferencing as a video "wall" between the design team who was distributed between two warrooms. The value of the HDTV was to show interactions in the remote room, but it did not support the networking across distance well. I also report preliminary results of a current study investigating group-to-group collaborative space mission design across distance. We are focusing on four aspects of the remote groups: differences in how requirements are conceived of and applied, the information flow across sites, the social networks, and technology use.

Bio: Gloria Mark is Assistant Professor at the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on the design and evaluation of collaborative systems. Her primary research interest is in developing and evaluating technologies to improve virtual collocation. Her current projects include studying technology use and group-to-group collaboration in space mission design, virtually collocated teams at Intel, and collaborative technology adoption in large distributed organizations. She also runs a groupware usability lab where she conducts experiments. She has examined the usability of a number of leading edge collaborative technologies including a collaborative hypermedia authoring system, an electronic shared workspace, application-sharing, and collaborative virtual environments.