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Knowledge is commonly socially constructed, through collaborative efforts towards shared objectives or by dialogues and challenges brought about by different persons' perspectives.

-- G. Salomon (in "Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations")

 
 

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Ernesto Arias

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Publications by Ernesto Arias (bibliography)

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2000
 
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Arias, Ernesto, Eden, Hal, Fischer, Gerhard, Gorman, Andrew and Scharff, Eric (2000): Transcending the Individual Human Mind -- Creating Shared Understanding through Collaborative Design. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7 (1) pp. 84-113.

Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical, and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although the EDC framework is applicable to different domains; our initial effort has focused on the domain of urban planning (specifically transportation planning) and community development.

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1997
 
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Arias, Ernesto, Eden, Hal and Fischer, Gerhard (1997): Enhancing Communication, Facilitating Shared Understanding, and Creating Better Artifacts by Integrating Physical and Computational Media for Design. In: Proceedings of DIS97: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1997. pp. 1-12.

Frequently, the design of interactive systems focuses exclusively on the capabilities provided by the dynamic nature of computational media. Yet our have provided many examples in which physical models provide certain strengths not found in computational models. Rather than viewing this as a dichotomy -- where one must choose between one or the other -- we are exploring the creation of computational environments that build on the strengths of combined physical and virtual approaches. Over the last decade, we have developed different design environments to support stakeholders engaged in design processes by enhancing communication, facilitating shared understanding, and creating better artifacts. Until a few years ago, our work explored physical and computational media separately. In this paper we present our efforts to develop integrated design environments linking physical and computational dimensions to attain the complementary synergies that these two worlds offer. Our purpose behind this integration is the development of systems that can enhance the movement from conceptual thinking to concrete representations using face-to-face interaction to promote the negotiation of meaning, the direct interaction with artifacts, and the possibility that diverse stakeholders can participate fully in the process of design. To this end, we analyze the strengths, affordances, weaknesses, and limitations of the two media used separately and illustrate with our most recent work the value added by integrating these environments.

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Perrone, Corrina, Spencer, Sarah and Arias, Ernesto (1997): Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood: A Visual Language Case Study for Community Education. In: VL 1997 1997. pp. 391-396.

 
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27 Feb 2010: Modified
16 Jun 2009: Added
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28 Apr 2003: Added

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URL: http://www.interaction-design.org/references/authors/ernesto_arias.html
May 23

Knowledge is commonly socially constructed, through collaborative efforts towards shared objectives or by dialogues and challenges brought about by different persons' perspectives.

-- G. Salomon (in "Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations")

 
 

Featured chapter

Read the fascinating history of Wearable Computing, told by its father, Steve Mann

Read Steve's chapter !

 
 

Help us help you!