Perspective on and Re-Orientation of Physical Proxies in Object-Focused Remote Collaboration

Feick, M., Mok, T., Tang, A., Oehlberg, L., and Sharlin, E. (2018). Perspective on and Re-Orientation of Physical Proxies in Object-Focused Remote Collaboration. In CHI 2018: Proceedings of the 2018 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paper 281.

Acceptance: 25.7% - 667/2595. Honourable Mention Award - Top 5% of all submissions; 10 pages

Abstract

Remote collaborators working together on physical objects have difficulty building a shared understanding of what each person is talking about. Conventional video chat systems are insufficient for many situations because they present a single view of the object in a flattened image. To understand how this limited perspective affects collaboration, we designed the Remote Manipulator (ReMa), which can reproduce orientation manipulations on a proxy object at a remote site. We conducted two studies with ReMa, with two main findings. First, a shared perspective is more effective and preferred compared to the opposing perspective offered by conventional video chat systems. Second, the physical proxy and video chat complement one another in a combined system: people used the physical proxy to understand objects, and used video chat to perform gestures and confirm remote actions.

Materials

PDF File (http://hcitang.org/papers/2018-chi2018-rema.pdf)
URL (http://chi2018.acm.org)
Video (http://hcitang.org/papers/2018-chi2018-rema.mp4)
DOI (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3173574.3173855)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{feick2018rema,
  notes = {Honourable Mention Award - Top 5% of all submissions; 10 pages},
  acceptance = {25.7% - 667/2595},
  pages = {Paper 281},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3173574.3173855},
  url = {http://chi2018.acm.org},
  videourl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2018-chi2018-rema.mp4},
  pdfurl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2018-chi2018-rema.pdf},
  type = {conference},
  title = {Perspective on and Re-Orientation of Physical Proxies in Object-Focused Remote Collaboration},
  booktitle = {CHI 2018: Proceedings of the 2018 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  author = {Feick, Martin and Mok, Terrance and Tang, Anthony and Oehlberg, Lora and Sharlin, Ehud},
  abstract = {Remote collaborators working together on physical objects have difficulty building a shared understanding of what each person is talking about. Conventional video chat systems are insufficient for many situations because they present a single view of the object in a flattened image. To understand how this limited perspective affects collaboration, we designed the Remote Manipulator (ReMa), which can reproduce orientation manipulations on a proxy object at a remote site. We conducted two studies with ReMa, with two main findings. First, a shared perspective is more effective and preferred compared to the opposing perspective offered by conventional video chat systems. Second, the physical proxy and video chat complement one another in a combined system: people used the physical proxy to understand objects, and used video chat to perform gestures and confirm remote actions.},
}