Awareness in general was probably the most relevant course concept with regards to the class video conference on Tuesday. Technically we were not working on a task, but you could regard everyone’s individual area as a workspace, and the speaker’s explanations of their work to us as the job they were trying to accomplish. For example Erik from UMich’s workspace was his laptop and the area behind him. He was working to explain the charts and studies to us and their importance to his research. His actions were like the Neisser’s Perception-Action Cycle. His environment was modified in order to decrease the pixilation on his screen so that he could convey to us useful knowledge. This directed more exploration of both our spaces and in turn increased sampling of our different environments through increased communication. Once he knew we could see and understand his workspace, more collaboration and interaction could occur.
Presence awareness another subset of this was even more relevant. It was easy to see who was a part of the conversation and what was going on during the different actual conversation as well. When the two professors were not in the room at the start of the conversation it was easy to realize this and turn off their screen until they arrived. Still this was a violation of concepts such as confidentiality. Although it was easy for us as a class to know who was speaking, it was not easy for our guests to understand the “where” part of presence awareness very easily. This was due to different camera angles as well as the size of the classroom. For instance one of the Olson’s stated that our camera angles made it seem like were not actually looking at them during the conversation. This could be detrimental to communication as eye contact is crucial for building trust and positive feedback. Also, when one of our classmates was speaking it was not easy to know exactly who that was and in one instance he was not even in the camera view. Still, with more sophisticated camera systems and camera movements this would not be something too hard to fix.
Privacy within awareness is also an issue with this system. Possible solutions here could be through regulating information fidelity through blurring or darkening the screen. Likewise, individuals in our class who may have wanted to relax and not be noticed now had more of an incentive to pay attention and listen to the speakers.
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Even though awareness through video conferencing is usually pretty satisfactory and useful, I agree with your point that the “where” part of presence awareness is still lacking. Due to different camera angles, it is difficult for people on the receiving end to tell where the sound is coming from. I imagine their orientation of the room is completely distorted also. This created a problem for eye contact. The Olsons thought that we were looking away at something else, while we were actually looking directly at them. The camera angle had created the illusion that we were not looking at them.
ReplyDeleteI like how you discuss privacy in terms of the video conferencing. People who were sitting in on the lecture did not have as much privacy as they would normally be used to in a such a room. This was because of all of the cameras, the cameras zoom capability and their ranges. The person in control of the cameras and software had the ultimate control of their own privacy as well as the rest of the people in the room.
ReplyDeleteLike Rachel said, the 'where' issue is interesting. I forgot to think about that because we could easily tell who was talking when our 'endpoints' were only 1 or 2 people. When faced with a room full of people though, I guess this can really be socio-technical gap with regards to feeling like you're actually interaction with the person, and not just that endpoint in general. Maybe they'll come up with technology to detect where sound is coming from, and puts a box around the person who's talking, or highlight them in some way.
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