Designing Awareness with Attention-based Groupware

A design rationale for the implementation of awareness features in the attention-based GAZE Groupware System is discussed. Attention-based groupware uses a framework for the design of awareness features based on the capturing, conveyance and rendering of information about human attention. The aim is to integrally provide information about the focus of conversational as well as workspace activities of participants. Our design themes were: implicit capturing of awareness information; scalability of networked awareness information; and representation of awareness information using natural affordances. Eye tracking provides a direct and noncommand way of capturing human attention. It allows attentive information to be conveyed separate from the communication signal itself, in a machine-readable format. This eases the integration of Conversational and Workspace Awareness information, and allows network bandwidth consumption of this information to scale linearly with the number of users. Attentional focus also provides an organizationa l metaphor for the rendering of awareness information. By combining a more strict WYSIWIS general communilaboration tool (a 3D virtual meeting room) with more relaxed-WYSIWIS focused collaboration tools (2D editors), the attention of human participants can be guided and represented from broad to focused activity.

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