Assignment 3

there are numerous resources about the EDC available, e.g:
Arias, E. G., Eden, H., Fischer, G., Gorman, A., & Scharff, E. (2000) "Transcending the Individual Human Mind—Creating Shared Understanding through Collaborative Design," ACM Transactions on Computer Human-Interaction, 7(1), pp. 84-113.
at: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/tochi2000.pdf

read this article and articulate one question / one comment

some responses from Hal

Michael Otte – Has the EDC been used in a real world application since this paper was written in 2000? if so, do you have any comments from the users about their experiences?

Guy Cobb – Is the concept of a 2-dimensional display screen (even a touch display) fundamentally limiting as an interaction device, or is it that such devices haven't been used properly in the past and haven't been living up to their full potential?

Paul Marshall – The paper mentions that the EDC is attempting to move the focus away from the computer screen and towards creating an integrated environment - is this to say that the previous research in HCI is nearing an end (or peak) and that the primary path forward for HCI is "rethinking computational media?"

David Gnabasik – Externalizations are used to extend our cognitive abilities by allowing all stakeholders to engage in a "conversation with the materials". Would it be the primary purpose of artificial intelligence to make the materials "speak" to the domain problem and its participants, or to bridge the gulf between the physical and the computational environments?

Jeffrey LaMarche – The prototype for the EDC is presented in an ideal fashion, but there is generally disagreement in group collaborations. There are people who are not team players and who have their own non-cooperative agendas; they will try to halt or impede the progress that can be achieved using the EDC method. Is there a fail-safe in the EDC to prevent destruction of the shared knowledge or from people poisoning the pool of knowledge with their own agendas?

Kyuhan Koh – The idea for the EDC sounds promising and interesting, but I wonder why there is
no experimental data and statistical data for the idea. This paper mentioned about social aspects and human factors a lot, and I think it would be better to cover some experiments dealt with participants' satisfaction or frustration because even a great idea on the desk sometimes might not be a good one in the real world. The description of the idea is quite clear but when it deals with social or human factors, we may need at least small size of experiments to make it sure as I've learned.

Saroch Panichsakul - Is it going to take too long to overcome HCI challenging problems? If we cannot do that in the near future, how is it going to affect the EDC research and the development of real-world applications in this area?

Shumin Wu – The article made claims on the importance of collaboration to foster creativity. Is it possible that any specific collaborative system, which invariably requires a common interface, will be too rigid that it may stem individual creativity?

John Michalakes – The constraints and underlying assumptions built into collaborative environments, not to mention their sheer novelty, may cloud or otherwise affect the outcome of the collaborative process. Further, since extending the environment to address unanticipated aspects of the design problem may require technical skill or system access unavailable to many stakeholders, the fairness of the results might be in question. Lastly, one may not be able to assume that all participants are honest agents in the process. I would be interested in reactions to these concerns.

Caleb Phillips – My question is basically the same as Kyuhan's. I'm curious if subsequent work made a statistical survey of the effectiveness of the process or satisfaction of the participants. And, if so, what those results were. As a related follow-up question, how does the experimental design here differ from what a Psychology researcher would devise? In other words, is there a pattern of experimental design that is unique to HCI problems?

Yifei Jiang – I am interested in the open system and system evolution mentioned in this paper as a part of collaborative design. This paper also builds simulations within the EDC. I was wondering how the evolution is processed by the systems/user (or both) with a right direction.

Yuli Liang – It's very possible that every stakeholder have much different view of points. When there are many participants, would the system evolving causes the redundancy of the system? How to make a system evolve "efficiently"?

Ashok Basawapatna– The EDC convergence system idea interested me. Do you ever foresee a point in time wherein people attack any problem they percieve to be interdisciplinary, collaborative, or multi-system in nature through the construction of something resembling an EDC convergence system and the active recruitment of people outside their discipline or end-users who the problem solution will effect?

Jinho Choi - I think HCI system should be designed in a way that provides different services for distinct individuals; however, there doesn't appear to be an obvious solution to the matter for EDC. Clearly individuals weigh each variable differently, so the question is how we decide the weights that satisfy everyone. If we go by statistics, there is a possibility to satisfy the major group (which must be still hard because not all variables are independent), but the minor group will never be treated well since it's not likely that they will change their normal routes for transportations. How do you get around with the problem?

Nwanua Elumeze - My idea of a perfect school would be one where children sew electronic circuits and build automata for physics class; design handbags and shirts with graphs of their favorite equations for maths class, as well as write and act in their own plays for history class. Teachers would be "guides on the side" who help children independently and collaboratively construct their own knowledge, rather than "sages on the stage" who need to transfer a huge body of knowledge. How could some of the conceptual principles behind the EDC be applied successfully (and non-trivially) to a school environment where it may not even make sense to talk of "collaborative design"?

Mohammad Al-Mutawa - As mentioned in the paper the EDC framework is applicable to many domains, not just urban planning, Do you think that in the very near future, with the advancement in technology, it would be possible to build an EDC system that is highly flexible/customizable and can service any domain?

Keith Maull - Conflict and competing alternatives often arise in the design problem, especially collaborative design. It seems that even in collaborative situations, humans may not have access to or explore alternatives. Considering the collabortive design of the transporation planning problem in the paper, there are many issues that may create tension between the balance of cost, maintability, neighborhood impact, environmental impact and scheduling constraints. How can the EDC be extended to provide deeper support for handling these issues? For example, when the cost of the bus began to exceed the users' threshold, the system might suggest alternatives such as light rail, or alternately become a "stakeholder-player" and suggest a change to the route that would accomodate viewpoints that are not represented.

Rhonda Hoenigman - The article talks about citizens working collaboratively to address traffic conjestion in their neighborhood. What role would city planners and statistics about population centers and frequently traveled roads play in this development process?

Soumya Ghosh – The article mentions that future work involves applying EDC to real life situations. Has there been any progress on this front since the article was published?

Lee Becker - The introduction of the paper talks of the summary of challenging problems for the future of HCI. In these items there is a lot of discussion about accessibility, however it seems that for much of the world accessibility is more limited by cost than anything else. Is cost a consideration in this research or is there an assumption that things can be made affordable after revising the methods?

Jane Meyers - Does the EDC allow participants to visualize/model the problem before allowing them to articulate/describe possible solutions? To what extent would including or excluding this hinder the creativity of the participants? For example, because a certain bus route is underutilized will the first, not necessarily most creative or best, instinct be to modify this component?

Joel Pfeiffer - Has any work been done for networking between cities? For instance, Boulder and Denver would each have an EDC and, using the information in each EDC, improve the bus system between them to maximize efficiency and lower cost?

Dan Knights - In the section on civic discourse, the paper mentions a proposal to develop a system that allows humans to browse through 500 or more TV channels. It seems possible that human productivity could actually decrease when the individual is given too many options–it is in our nature to try to choose the best one, but in reality we may be hampered by this desire. Is anyone in HCI asking at what point humans stop benefiting from more options and more information?

Dola Saha - EDC seems to be an interesting system; what improvements have been made to the system in 7 years after the publication?

Last modified 7 December 2007 at 10:59 pm by sahad