Publication statistics
Pub. period:1989-2012
Pub. count:121
Number of co-authors:201
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Chris Greenhalgh:47Tom Rodden:22Boriana Koleva:20 Productive colleagues
Steve Benford's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
Nadia Magnenat-Tha..:146Carl Gutwin:116Alan J. Dix:108
“
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
”
-- Alice Kahn
Featured chapter
Read the fascinating history of Wearable Computing, told by its father, Steve Mann
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Steve Benford
Has also published under the name of:
"S. Benford"
Personal Homepage:
mrl.nott.ac.uk/people/68-steve-benford.html
I am Professor of Collaborative Computing and Head of the School of Computer Science at The University of Nottingham. I am also a member of the Mixed Reality Laboratory and of Horizon.
Publications by Steve Benford (bibliography)
Benford, Steve, Tolmie, Peter, Ahmed, Ahmed Y., Crabtree, Andy and Rodden, Tom (2012): Supporting traditional music-making: designing for situated discretion. In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW12 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2012. pp. 127-136.
“An ethnographic study of Irish music sessions in pubs elaborates the collaborative work involved in making traditional music. Central to this distinctive achievement is the sequencing of tunes so that they hang together and combine to form discrete "sets", which rely on a shared knowledge of musical repertoires. Our study shows how musicians develop this musical knowledge through the use of digital resources and social networks. It also reveals how musicians construct and make use of various paper props to help bring their knowledge to bear in the actual in vivo course of a session so as to maintain the moral order of making music together in a demonstrably traditional way. The social demands of musical "etiquette" sensitise CSCW to the need to design technologies to support the "situated discretion" that is essential to traditional practices. We elaborate this notion through a discussion of requirements for technologies that bridge between online resources and the collaborative sequencing of tunes during performance.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Marshall, Joe, Rowland, Duncan, Egglestone, Stefan Rennick, Benford, Steve, Walker, Brendan and McAuley, Derek (2011): Breath control of amusement rides. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011. pp. 73-82.
“Emerging robotic technologies are enabling the control of individual seats on rollercoasters and other thrill rides. We explore the potential of breathing as an effective and engaging way of driving this. Observations and interviews from trials of an enhanced bucking bronco ride show that breath-control is fun, challenging and intelligible, and reveal riders-x tactics as they battled the machine. We conclude that breath control is feasible and appropriate for controlling rides, unpack its important characteristics, and consider how it might be built into future ride systems. We argue that the combination of voluntary and involuntary factors in breathing is especially appealing for controlling rides as it balances game-like elements of skill and learning against the thrill of surrendering control to the machine.”
© All rights reserved Marshall et al. and/or their publisher
Marshall, Joe and Benford, Steve (2011): Using fast interaction to create intense experiences. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011. pp. 1255-1264.
“Several emerging strands of HCI involve connecting physical exercise activity with digital interactive systems to create intense combined experiences, for example pervasive games, GPS based exercise games and 'exertion interfaces'. Many of these systems are mobile, used outside in public, whilst moving quickly through the environment. In this paper, we argue that the combination of moving fast and interacting with a digital system allows us to create a powerfully intense experience for participants, and that key to this is careful attention to the way in which movement is combined with digital content. We study an interactive art experience in which a person runs whilst listening to poetry. Based on this study and other HCI research, we present a framework for mixing physical and interactive content, based on 3 dimensions, which describe ways that a movement activity may itself create intense experiences, followed by a set of tactics for combining intense movement and interactive content.”
© All rights reserved Marshall and Benford and/or their publisher
Durrant, Abigail, Rowland, Duncan, Kirk, David S., Benford, Steve, Fischer, Joel E. and McAuley, Derek (2011): Automics: souvenir generating photoware for theme parks. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011. pp. 1767-1776.
“Automics is a photo-souvenir service which utilises mobile devices to support the capture, sharing and annotation of digital images amongst groups of visitors to theme parks. The prototype service mixes individual and group photo-capture with existing in-park, on-ride photo services, to allow users to create printed photo-stories. Herein we discuss initial fieldwork in theme parks that grounded the design of Automics, our development of the service prototype, and its real-world evaluation with theme park visitors. We relate our findings on user experience of the service to a literature on mobile photoware, finding implications for the design of souvenir services.”
© All rights reserved Durrant et al. and/or their publisher
Marshall, Joe, Walker, Brendan, Benford, Steve, Tomlinson, George, Egglestone, Stefan Rennick, Reeves, Stuart, Brundell, Patrick, Tennent, Paul, Cranwell, Jo, Harter, Paul and Longhurst, Jo (2011): The gas mask: a probe for exploring fearsome interactions. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011. pp. 127-136.
“We introduce an interface for horror-themed entertainment experiences based on integrating breath sensors and WiFi into gas masks. Beyond enabling the practical breath control of entertainment systems, our design aims to heighten the intensity of the experience by amplifying the user's awareness of their breathing, as well as their feelings of isolation, claustrophobia and fear. More generally, this interface is intended to act as a technology probe for exploring an emerging research agenda around fearsome interactions. We describe the deployment of our gas masks in two events: as a control mechanism for an interactive ride, and to enhance a theme park horror maze. We identify six broad dimensions -- cultural, visceral, control, social, performance and engineering -- that frame an agenda for future research into fearsome interactions.”
© All rights reserved Marshall et al. and/or their publisher
Fischer, Joel E., Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (2011): Investigating episodes of mobile phone activity as indicators of opportune moments to deliver notifications. In: Proceedings of 13th Conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services 2011. pp. 181-190.
“We investigate whether opportune moments to deliver notifications surface at the endings of episodes of mobile interaction (making voice calls or receiving SMS) based on the assumption that the endings collocate with naturally occurring breakpoint in the user's primary task. Testing this with a naturalistic experiment we find that interruptions (notifications) are attended to and dealt with significantly more quickly after a user has finished an episode of mobile interaction compared to a random baseline condition, supporting the potential utility of this notification strategy. We also find that the workload and situational appropriateness of the secondary interruption task significantly affect subsequent delay and completion rate of the tasks. In situ self-reports and interviews reveal complexities in the subjective experience of the interruption, which suggest that a more nuanced classification of the particular call or SMS and its relationship to the primary task(s) would be desirable.”
© All rights reserved Fischer et al. and/or ACM Press
Rennick-Egglestone, Stefan, Whitbrook, Amanda, Leygue, Caroline, Greensmith, Julie, Walker, Brendan, Benford, Steve, Schnädelbach, Holger, Reeves, Stuart, Marshall, Joe, Kirk, David, Tennent, Paul, Irune, Ainoje and Rowland, Duncan (2011): Personalizing the Theme Park: Psychometric Profiling and Physiological Monitoring. In: Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization 2011. pp. 281-292.
“Theme parks are important and complex forms of entertainment, with a broad user-base, and with a substantial economic impact. In this paper, we present a case study of an existing theme park, and use this to motivate two research challenges in relation to user-modeling and personalization in this environment: developing recommender systems to support theme park visits, and developing rides that are personalized to the users who take part in them. We then provide an analysis, drawn from a real-world study on an existing ride, which illustrates the efficacy of psychometric profiling and physiological monitoring in relation to these challenges. We conclude by discussing further research work that could be carried out within the theme park, but motivate this research by considering the broader contribution to user-modeling issues that it could make. As such, we present the theme park as a microcosm which is amenable to research, but which is relevant in a much broader setting.”
© All rights reserved Rennick-Egglestone et al. and/or their publisher
Flintham, Martin, Reeves, Stuart, Brundell, Patrick, Glover, Tony, Benford, Steve, Rowland, Duncan, Koleva, Boriana, Greenhalgh, Chris, Adams, Matt, Tandavanitj, Nick and Farr, Ju Row (2011): Flypad: Designing trajectories in a large-scale permanent augmented reality installation. In: European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2011, Aarhus, Denmark. .
“A long-term naturalistic study reveals how artists designed, visitors experienced, and curators and technicians maintained a public interactive artwork over a four year period. The work consisted of a collaborative augmented reality game that ran across eleven networked displays (screens and footpads) that were deployed along a winding ramp in a purpose-built gallery. Reflections on design meetings and documentation show how the artists responded to this architectural setting and addressed issues of personalisation, visitor flow, attracting spectators, linking real and virtual, and accessibility. Observations of visitors reveal that while their interactions broadly followed the artists’ design, there was far more flexible engagement than originally anticipated, especially within visiting groups, while interviews with curators and technicians reveal how the work was subsequently maintained and ultimately reconfigured. Our findings extend discussions of `interactional trajectories' within CSCW, affirming the relevance of this concept to describing collaboration in cultural settings, but also suggesting how it needs to be extended to better reflect group interactions at multiple levels of scale.”
© All rights reserved Flintham et al. and/or Springer
Fischer, Joel E., Yee, Nick, Bellotti, Victoria, Good, Nathan, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (2010): Effects of content and time of delivery on receptivity to mobile interruptions. In: Proceedings of 12th Conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services 2010. pp. 103-112.
“In this paper we investigate effects of the content of interruptions and of the time of interruption delivery on mobile phones. We review related work and report on a naturalistic quasi-experiment using experience-sampling that showed that the receptivity to an interruption is influenced by its content rather than by its time of delivery in the employed modality of delivery -- SMS. We also examined the underlying variables that increase the perceived quality of content and found that the factors interest, entertainment, relevance and actionability influence people's receptivity significantly. Our findings inform system design that seeks to provide context-sensitive information or to predict interruptibility and suggest the consideration of receptivity as an extension to the way we think and reason about interruptibility.”
© All rights reserved Fischer et al. and/or their publisher
Marshall, Joe, Benford, Steve and Pridmore, Tony (2010): Deception and magic in collaborative interaction. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010. pp. 567-576.
“We explore the ways in which interfaces can be designed to deceive users so as to create the illusion of magic. We present a study of an experimental performance in which a magician used a computer vision system to conduct a series of illusions based on the well-known 'three cups' magic trick. We explain our findings in terms of the two broad strategies of misdirecting attention and setting false expectations, articulating specific tactics that were employed in each case. We draw on existing theories of collaborative and spectator interfaces, ambiguity and interpretation, and trajectories through experiences to explain our findings in broader HCI terms. We also extend and integrate current theory to provide refined sensitising concepts for analysing deceptive interactions.”
© All rights reserved Marshall et al. and/or their publisher
Rowland, Duncan, Porter, Dan, Gibson, Mel, Walker, Kevin, Underwood, Joshua, Luckin, Rose, Smith, Hilary, Fitzpatrick, Geraldine, Good, Judith, Walker, Brendan, Chamberlain, Alan, Egglestone, Stefan Rennick, Marshall, Joe, Schnädelbach, Holger and Benford, Steve (2010): Sequential art for science and CHI. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010. pp. 2651-2660.
“This paper illustrates our preliminary studies of new interactive tools that support the generation of sequential art for entertainment, learning and scientific discourse. In the first of two examples, primary school students document a practical science session through the creation of a photostory. In the second, participants in a study on the biological nature of thrill create a souvenir photostory by selecting images from a DVD. The paper is written in a comic-book format to further explore and highlight the communicative capabilities of the medium, one that can be visually attractive and facilitate rapid dissemination to a wide audience.”
© All rights reserved Rowland et al. and/or their publisher
Benford, Steve, Giannachi, Gabriella, Koleva, Boriana and Rodden, Tom (2009): From interaction to trajectories: designing coherent journeys through user experiences. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 709-718.
“The idea of interactional trajectories through interfaces has emerged as a sensitizing concept from recent studies of tangible interfaces and interaction in museums and galleries. We put this concept to work as a lens to reflect on published studies of complex user experiences that extend over space and time and involve multiple roles and interfaces. We develop a conceptual framework in which trajectories explain these user experiences as journeys through hybrid structures, punctuated by transitions, and in which interactivity and collaboration are orchestrated. Our framework is intended to sensitize future studies, help distill craft knowledge into design guidelines and patterns, identify technology requirements, and provide a boundary object to connect HCI with Performance Studies.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Bedwell, Ben, Schnädelbach, Holger, Benford, Steve, Rodden, Tom and Koleva, Boriana (2009): In support of city exploration. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 1171-1180.
“The novel experience Anywhere allowed participants to explore an urban area, tying together information not normally available, new points of views and interaction embedded into physical places. Guided by 'unseen', on-the-street performers in an ongoing conversation maintained over mobile phones, they gained access to locative media and staged performances. Our analysis demonstrates how Anywhere produced engaging and uniquely personalised paths through a complex landscape of content, negotiated by the performer-participant pair around various conflicting constraints. We reflect our analysis through the lens of the key characteristics exhibited by mechanisms that support city exploration, before focussing on possible extensions to the technological support of teams of professional and amateur guides.”
© All rights reserved Bedwell et al. and/or ACM Press
Fischer, Joel E. and Benford, Steve (2009): Inferring player engagement in a pervasive experience. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 1903-1906.
“We investigate the prediction of player engagement to address temporal issues arising from the long-term character of pervasive experiences such as interruptibility, mutual player state awareness, disengagement and synchronization on re-engagement. We introduce a model that operationalizes engagement in terms of the elapsed and response time in game messages. We designed and conducted an experiment based on the experience-sampling method to evaluate our model on the basis of a long-term SMS-based game called Day of the Figurines. Statistical analysis supports the hypothesis that player engagement can be predicted by the continuous data properties elapsed time and response time. Our findings point towards further research towards the adaptation of pervasive experiences to the player's temporal context.”
© All rights reserved Fischer and Benford and/or ACM Press
Villar, Nicolas, Izadi, Shahram, Fraser, Mike and Benford, Steve (eds.) TEI 2009 - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction February 16-18, 2009, Cambridge, UK.
Manches, Andrew, O'Malley, Claire and Benford, Steve (2009): Physical manipulation: evaluating the potential for tangible designs. In: Villar, Nicolas, Izadi, Shahram, Fraser, Mike and Benford, Steve (eds.) TEI 2009 - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction February 16-18, 2009, Cambridge, UK. pp. 77-84.
Villar, Nicolas, Izadi, Shahram, Fraser, Mike and Benford, Steve (eds.) Proceedings of Tangible and Embedded Interaction TEI 2009 February 16-18, 2009, Cambridge, UK.
Villar, Nicolas, Izadi, Shahram, Fraser, Mike and Benford, Steve (eds.) TEI 2009 - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction February 16-18, 2009, Cambridge, UK.
Rowland, Duncan, Flintham, Martin, Oppermann, Leif, Marshall, Joe, Chamberlain, Alan, Koleva, Boriana, Benford, Steve and Perez, Citlali (2009): Ubikequitous computing: designing interactive experiences for cyclists. In: Proceedings of 11th Conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services 2009. p. 21.
“This paper charts the distinctive challenges of designing mobile experiences for cyclists and presents two studies of mobile cycle-based experiences: one a heritage tour; the other an exploration of a city at dusk involving recording and listening to personal stories. To understand the cyclists' experiences questionnaires, interviews and observations are drawn on to derive eight lessons for designing cycle-based interaction including: cycling proficiency, physicality, impact of the environment, media and hardware design, collaboration, and safety. The conclusion is that design has to respect the distinctive nature of cycling as a mode of transport and needs to carefully interweave moments of interaction with it.”
© All rights reserved Rowland et al. and/or their publisher
Grinter, Rebecca E., Edwards, W. Keith, Chetty, Marshini, Poole, Erika S., Sung, Ja-Young, Yang, Jeonghwa, Crabtree, Andy, Tolmie, Peter, Rodden, Tom, Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (2009): The ins and outs of home networking: The case for useful and usable domestic networking. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 16 (2) p. 8.
“Householders are increasingly adopting home networking as a solution to the demands created by the presence of multiple computers, devices, and the desire to access the Internet. However, current network solutions are derived from the world of work (and initially the military) and provide poor support for the needs of the home. We present the key findings to emerge from empirical studies of home networks in the UK and US. The studies reveal two key kinds of work that effective home networking relies upon: one, the technical work of setting up and maintaining the home network, and the other, the collaborative and socially organized work of the home which the network is embedded in and supports. The two are thoroughly intertwined and rely upon one another for their realization, yet neither is adequately supported by current networking technologies and applications. Explication of the "work to make the home network work" opens up the design space for the continued integration of the home network in domestic life and elaboration of future support. Key issues for development include the development of networking facilities that do not require advanced networking knowledge, that are flexible and support the local social order of the home and the evolution of its routines, and which ultimately make the home network visible and accountable to household members.”
© All rights reserved Grinter et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve and Giannachi, Gabriella (2008): Temporal trajectories in shared interactive narratives. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 73-82.
“Temporal trajectories can represent the complex mappings between story time and clock time that are to be found in shared interactive narratives such as computer games and interactive performances. There are three kinds. Canonical trajectories express an author's intended mapping of story time onto clock time as part of the plot and schedule of an experience. Participant trajectories reflect a participant's actual journey through story time and clock time as they interact with the experience. Historic trajectories represent the subsequent selection and reuse of segments of recorded participant trajectories to create histories of past events. We show how temporal trajectories help us analyse the nature of time in existing experiences and can also generate new approaches to dealing with temporal issues such as: disengagement and reengagement, adapting to different paces of interaction, synchronising different participants, and enabling encounters and travel across time.”
© All rights reserved Benford and Giannachi and/or ACM Press
Schnädelbach, Holger, Egglestone, Stefan Rennick, Reeves, Stuart, Benford, Steve, Walker, Brendan and Wright, Michael (2008): Performing thrill: designing telemetry systems and spectator interfaces for amusement rides. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 1167-1176.
“Fairground: Thrill Laboratory was a series of live events that augmented the experience of amusement rides. A wearable telemetry system captured video, audio, heart-rate and acceleration data, streaming them live to spectator interfaces and a watching audience. In this paper, we present a study of this event, which draws on video recordings and post-event interviews, and which highlights the experiences of riders, spectators and ride operators. Our study shows how the telemetry system transformed riders into performers, spectators into an audience, and how the role of ride operator began to include aspects of orchestration, with the relationship between all three roles also transformed. Critically, the introduction of a telemetry system seems to have had the potential to re-connect riders/performers back to operators/orchestrators and spectators/audience, re-introducing a closer relationship that used to be available with smaller rides. Introducing telemetry to a real-world situation also creates significant complexity, which we illustrate by focussing on a moment of perceived crisis.”
© All rights reserved Schnädelbach et al. and/or ACM Press
Tolmie, Peter, Crabtree, Andy, Rodden, Tom and Benford, Steve (2008): "Are you watching this film or what?": interruption and the juggling of cohorts. In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW08 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2008. pp. 257-266.
“A proliferation of mobile devices in everyday life has increased the likelihood of technologically mediated interruptions. We examine ethnographic data from an SMS-based pervasive game in order to explicate the situated character of interruption. Ethnomethodological analysis of gameplay in the context of participants' everyday lives shows that interruption handling is shaped by its accountability to the various people or 'cohorts' whose concerns participants need to juggle simultaneously. Findings inform existing approaches to design where certain presuppositions regarding the nature of interruption prevail. Accordingly, we propose an approach to interruption handling that respects the ways in which people orient to and reason about interruptions locally in the conduct of situated action.”
© All rights reserved Tolmie et al. and/or ACM Press
Oppermann, Leif, Koleva, Boriana, Benford, Steve, Watkins, Matt and Jacobs, Rachel (2008): Fighting with jelly: user-centered development of wireless infrastructure visualization tools for authoring location-based experiences. In: Inakage, Masa and Cheok, Adrian David (eds.) Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology - ACE 2008 December 3-5, 2008, Yokohama, Japan. pp. 322-329.
Kanjo, Eiman, Benford, Steve, Paxton, Mark, Chamberlain, Alan, Fraser, Danae Stanton, Woodgate, Dawn, Crellin, David and Woolard, Adrian (2008): MobGeoSen: facilitating personal geosensor data collection and visualization using mobile phones. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 12 (8) pp. 599-607.
Chen, Ling, Chen, Gen-Cai, Xu, Cheng-Zhe, March, Jack and Benford, Steve (2008): EmoPlayer: A media player for video clips with affective annotations. In Interacting with Computers, 20 (1) pp. 17-28.
“The development of multimedia annotation technique provides the possibility to redesign the interfaces of widely used media players, and EmoPlayer is such a media player that can be used to play video clips with affective annotations. A user can select a character in a video clip and view the distribution of his/her emotions along the video timeline through a colour bar based interface. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficiency of affective annotation. The results of these experiments indicate that affective annotation is effective in both improving the speed of locating a specific scene within a video clip and helping comprehend a video clip in a limited viewing time period. Based on the analysis of recorded operations of participants, the strategies employed by participants and the factors that might influence the utilization of affective annotation are also highlighted.”
© All rights reserved Chen et al. and/or Elsevier Science
Marshall, Joe, Pridmore, Tony P., Pound, Mike, Benford, Steve and Koleva, Boriana (2008): Pressing the Flesh: Sensing Multiple Touch and Finger Pressure on Arbitrary Surfaces. In: Indulska, Jadwiga, Patterson, Donald J., Rodden, Tom and Ott, Max (eds.) Pervasive 2008 - Pervasive Computing, 6th International Conference May 19-22, 2008, Sydney, Australia. pp. 38-55.
Marshall, Joe, Benford, Steve and Pridmore, Tony (2007): Eye-balls: juggling with the virtual. In: Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2007, Washington DC, USA. pp. 265-266.
“The authors will introduce and demonstrate a novel computer vision based system for augmented performance. Unlike previous systems, which have primarily focused on 'high art' forms such as modern dance, this system is designed for use during a juggling performance. The system allows a juggler to interact with a computer through their movements, and the movements of the balls, to create audio and visual projections which respond to their performance. This system has been designed in an iterative process involving amateur and professional performers, in order to create a system which is truly accessible. In particular, this project takes inspiration from mass market interactive entertainment and has been developed to only use commodity hardware and to be easily distributable, in order to allow it to be used within the small, self funded groups common in the circus arts community.”
© All rights reserved Marshall et al. and/or ACM Press
Chen, Ling, Chen, Gen-Cai, Chen, Hong, March, Jack, Benford, Steve and Pan, Zhi-Geng (2007): An HCI method to improve the human performance reduced by local-lag mechanism. In Interacting with Computers, 19 (2) pp. 215-224.
“Local-lag mechanism can maintain consistency for replicated continuous applications, but with a tradeoff of adding delay to local operations. To relieve the negative effects of the delay, this paper proposes an HCI method named echo. With the help of the echo method users can immediately perceive the results of their operations and how large the lag is. In order to evaluate the proposed method, a desktop collaborative virtual environment (CVE) system and a virtual object control task were employed to study the effects of the echo method on human performance (including task completion time, error count, and interaction quality). Experimental results indicate that when the lag exceeds 100 ms the echo method can improve human performance with the effects becoming more evident when a larger lag is used.”
© All rights reserved Chen et al. and/or Elsevier Science
Chamberlain, Alan, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Hampshire, Alastair, Tandavanitj, Nick, Adams, Matt, Oldroyd, Amanda and Sutton, Jon (2007): Professor Tanda: greener gaming & pervasive play. In: Proceedings of DUX07 Designing for User eXperiences 2007. p. 26.
“This study examines the development of a mobile phone-based pervasive game that related its user's environmental footprint. It discusses the design challenges, development and evaluation of the prototype game in order to identify the key strategies and mechanisms that relate to the production of pervasive systems for mass participation. Designing the user experience for such systems is particularly difficult, as the game had to educate and entertain without patronizing or preaching to the user. A prototype system was developed and trialed in order to identify and understand how users related to the experience and how the game may be further developed. We found that character-led tailored physical activities were generally found to be the most enjoyable, while players wanted more interaction with each other and more score-based content. Creating interdependent question sets and orchestrating the game arduous process. In the future a fully automated system will be key to its use.”
© All rights reserved Chamberlain et al. and/or ACM Press
Walker, Brendan, Schnädelbach, Holger, Egglestone, Stefan Rennick, Clark, Angus, Orbach, Tuvi, Wright, Michael, Ng, Kher Hui, French, Andrew, Rodden, Tom and Benford, Steve (2007): Augmenting amusement rides with telemetry. In: Inakage, Masa, Lee, Newton, Tscheligi, Manfred, Bernhaupt, Regina and Natkin, Stéphane (eds.) Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology - ACE 2007 June 13-15, 2007, Salzburg, Austria. pp. 115-122.
Chen, Ling and Benford, Steve (2007): Your way your missions: from location-based to route-based pervasive gaming. In: Inakage, Masa, Lee, Newton, Tscheligi, Manfred, Bernhaupt, Regina and Natkin, Stéphane (eds.) Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology - ACE 2007 June 13-15, 2007, Salzburg, Austria. pp. 232-233.
Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve, Drozd, Adam, Flintham, Martin, Hampshire, Alastair, Oppermann, Leif, Smith, Keir and Tycowicz, Christoph von (2007): Addressing Mobile Phone Diversity in Ubicomp Experience Development. In: Krumm, John, Abowd, Gregory D., Seneviratne, Aruna and Strang, Thomas (eds.) UbiComp 2007 Ubiquitous Computing - 9th International Conference September 16-19, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria. pp. 447-464.
Ng, Kher Hui, Koleva, Boriana and Benford, Steve (2007): The iterative development of a tangible pin-board to symmetrically link physical and digital documents. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11 (3) pp. 145-155.
Tolmie, Peter, Crabtree, Andy, Rodden, Tom, Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (2007): Making the Home Network at Home: Digital Housekeeping. In: Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2007. pp. 331-350.
“This paper exploits ethnographic findings to build on and elaborate Grinter et al's 2005 study of "the work to make the home network work". We focus particularly on the work involved in setting up and maintaining home networks, which we characterize as 'digital housekeeping'. Our studies reveal that it is through digital housekeeping that the home network is 'made at home' or made into an unremarkable and routine feature of domestic life. The orderly ways in which digital housekeeping 'gets done' elaborate a distinct 'social machinery' that highlights some important implications for the continued development of network technologies for the home. These include a requirement that designers take existing infrastructure into account and pay considerable attention to how future technologies may be incorporated into existing routines. The preoccupation of household members with making the home network transparent and accountable so that it is available to practical reasoning suggests designers should also consider the development of dedicated management interfaces to support digital housekeeping.”
© All rights reserved Tolmie et al. and/or Springer
Flintham, Martin, Giannachi, Gabriella, Benford, Steve and Adams, Matt (2007): Day of the Figurines: Supporting Episodic Storytelling on Mobile Phones. In: Cavazza, Marc and Donikian, Stéphane (eds.) ICVS 2007 - Virtual Storytelling. Using Virtual Reality Technologies for Storytelling, 4th International Conference December 5-7, 2007, Saint-Malo, France. pp. 167-175.
Bell, Marek, Chalmers, Matthew, Barkhuus, Louise, Hall, Malcolm, Sherwood, Scott, Tennent, Paul, Brown, Barry, Rowland, Duncan and Benford, Steve (2006): Interweaving mobile games with everyday life. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2006. pp. 417-426.
“We introduce a location-based game called Feeding Yoshi that provides an example of seamful design, in which key characteristics of its underlying technologies-the coverage and security characteristics of WiFi-are exposed as a core element of gameplay. Feeding Yoshi is also a long-term, wide-area game, being played over a week between three different cities during an initial user study. The study, drawing on participant diaries and interviews, supported by observation and analysis of system logs, reveals players' reactions to the game. We see the different ways in which they embedded play into the patterns of their daily lives, augmenting existing practices and creating new ones, and observe the impact of varying location on both the ease and feel of play. We identify potential design extensions to Feeding Yoshi and conclude that seamful design provides a route to creating engaging experiences that are well adapted to their underlying technologies.”
© All rights reserved Bell et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Crabtree, Andy, Reeves, Stuart, Sheridan, Jennifer, Dix, Alan J., Flintham, Martin and Drozd, Adam (2006): Designing for the opportunities and risks of staging digital experiences in public settings. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2006. pp. 427-436.
“Mobile experiences that take place in public settings such as on city streets create new opportunities for interweaving the fictional world of a performance or game with the everyday physical world. A study of a touring performance reveals how designers generated excitement and dramatic tension by implicating bystanders and encouraging the (apparent) crossing of normal boundaries of behaviour. The study also shows how designers dealt with associated risks through a process of careful orchestration. Consequently, we extend an existing framework for designing spectator interfaces with the concept of performance frames, enabling us to distinguish audience from bystanders. We conclude that using ambiguity to blur the frame can be a powerful design tactic, empowering players to willingly suspend disbelief, so long as a safety-net of orchestration ensures that they do not stray into genuine difficulty.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Schnadelbach, Holger, Penn, Alan, Steadman, Phil, Benford, Steve, Koleva, Boriana and Rodden, Tom (2006): Moving office: inhabiting a dynamic building. In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW06 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2006. pp. 313-322.
“Mixed Reality Architecture (MRA) supports distributed teams in their everyday work activities by linking multiple physical spaces across a shared three-dimensional virtual world. User configurable audio-visual connections give the inhabitants of MRA full control over whom they want to be in contact with and when they make themselves available, as well as over the overall configuration. We report on the design of MRA, its deployment in an office environment and results from a long-term observational study. The study shows that MRA supports the management of awareness, social interaction and privacy well, that the architectural design features are crucial for this process and that the dynamic architectural topology of MRA and social interaction within it are linked in a fundamental way.”
© All rights reserved Schnadelbach et al. and/or ACM Press
Reeves, Stuart, Pridmore, Tony, Crabtree, Andy, Green, Jonathan, Benford, Steve and O'Malley, Claire (2006): The spatial character of sensor technology. In: Proceedings of DIS06: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 2006. pp. 31-40.
“By considering the spatial character of sensor-based interactive systems, this paper investigates how discussions of seams and seamlessness in ubiquitous computing neglect the complex spatial character that is constructed as a side-effect of deploying sensor technology within a space. Through a study of a torch (aka 'flashlight') based interface, we develop a framework for analysing this spatial character generated by sensor technology. This framework is then used to analyse and compare a range of other systems in which sensor technology is used, in order to develop a design spectrum that contrasts the revealing and hiding of a system's structure to users. Finally, we discuss the implications for interfaces situated in public spaces and consider the benefits of hiding structure from users.”
© All rights reserved Reeves et al. and/or ACM Press
Crabtree, Andy, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Tennent, Paul, Chalmers, Matthew and Brown, Barry (2006): Supporting ethnographic studies of ubiquitous computing in the wild. In: Proceedings of DIS06: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 2006. pp. 60-69.
“Ethnography has become a staple feature of IT research over the last twenty years, shaping our understanding of the social character of computing systems and informing their design in a wide variety of settings. The emergence of ubiquitous computing raises new challenges for ethnography however, distributing interaction across a burgeoning array of small, mobile devices and online environments which exploit invisible sensing systems. Understanding interaction requires ethnographers to reconcile interactions that are, for example, distributed across devices on the street with online interactions in order to assemble coherent understandings of the social character and purchase of ubiquitous computing systems. We draw upon four recent studies to show how ethnographers are replaying system recordings of interaction alongside existing resources such as video recordings to do this and identify key challenges that need to be met to support ethnographic study of ubiquitous computing in the wild.”
© All rights reserved Crabtree et al. and/or ACM Press
Crabtree, Andy, French, Andrew, Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve, Cheverst, Keith, Fitton, Dan, Rouncefield, Mark and Graham, Connor (2006): Developing Digital Records: Early Experiences of Record and Replay. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 15 (4) pp. 281-319.
“In this paper we consider the development of 'digital records' to support ethnographic study of interaction and collaboration in ubiquitous computing environments and articulate the core concept of 'record and replay' through two case studies. One focuses on the utility of digital records, or records of interaction generated by a computer system, to ethnographic inquiry and highlights the mutually supportive nature of digital records and ethnographic methods. The other focuses on the work it takes to make digital records support ethnography, particularly the work of description and representation that is required to reconcile the fragmented character of interaction in ubiquitous computing environments. The work involved in 'making digital records work' highlights requirements for the design of tools to support the endeavour and informs the development of a Replay Tool. This tool enables ethnographers to visualize the data content of digital records; to extract sequences of relevance to analysis and remove non-relevant features; to marry recorded content with external resources, such as video; to add content from internal and external resources through annotation; and to reorder digital records to reflect the interactional order of events rather than the recorded order of events.”
© All rights reserved Crabtree et al. and/or Kluwer Academic Publishers
Benford, Steve, Crabtree, Andy, Flintham, Martin, Drozd, Adam, Anastasi, Rob, Paxton, Mark, Tandavanitj, Nick, Adams, Matt and Row-Farr, Ju (2006): Can you see me now?. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 13 (1) pp. 100-133.
“We present a study of a mobile mixed reality game called Can You See Me Now? in which online players are chased through a virtual model of a city by 'runners' (professional performers equipped with GPS and WiFi technologies) who have to run through the actual city streets in order to catch the players. We present an ethnographic study of the game as it toured through two different cities and draws upon video recordings of online players, runners, technical support crew, and also on system logs of text communication. Our study reveals the diverse ways in which online players experienced the uncertainties inherent in GPS and WiFi, including being mostly unaware of them, but sometimes seeing them as problems, or treating the as a designed feature of the game, and even occasionally exploiting them within gameplay. In contrast, the runners and technical crew were fully aware of these uncertainties and continually battled against them through an ongoing and distributed process of orchestration. As a result, we encourage designers to deal with such uncertainties as a fundamental characteristic of location-based experiences rather than treating them as exceptions or bugs that might be ironed out in the future. We argue that designers should explicitly consider four potential states of being of a mobile participant: connected and tracked, connected but not tracked, tracked but not connected, and neither connected nor tracked. We then introduce five strategies that might be used to deal with uncertainty in these different states for different kinds of participant: remove it, hide it, manage it, reveal it, and exploit it. Finally, we present proposals for new orchestration interfaces that reveal the 'seams' in the underlying technical infrastructure by visualizing the recent performance of GPS and WiFi and predicting the likely future performance of GPS.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Drozd, Adam, Benford, Steve, Tandavanitj, Nick, Wright, Michael and Chamberlain, Alan (2006): Hitchers: Designing for Cellular Positioning. In: Dourish, Paul and Friday, Adrian (eds.) UbiComp 2006 Ubiquitous Computing - 8th International Conference September 17-21, 2006, Orange County, CA, USA. pp. 279-296.
Oppermann, Leif, Broll, Gregor, Capra, Mauricio and Benford, Steve (2006): Extending Authoring Tools for Location-Aware Applications with an Infrastructure Visualization Layer. In: Dourish, Paul and Friday, Adrian (eds.) UbiComp 2006 Ubiquitous Computing - 8th International Conference September 17-21, 2006, Orange County, CA, USA. pp. 52-68.
Schnädelbach, Holger, Koleva, Boriana, Paxton, Mark, Twidale, Michael, Benford, Steve and Anastasi, Rob (2006): The Augurscope: Refining its Design. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15 (3) pp. 278-293.
Crabtree, Andy, Rodden, Tom and Benford, Steve (2005): Moving with the Times: IT Research and the Boundaries of CSCW. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14 (3) pp. 217-251.
“The field of CSCW research emerged with the development of distributed computing systems and attempts to understand the socially organized ('collaborative' or 'cooperative') nature of work in order to embed such systems in the workplace. As a field of interdisciplinary inquiry CSCW was motivated by technological developments and the need to understand the particular contexts within which those developments were intended to resonate. In other words, it is no mere accident that CSCW took work as its topic and resource - the historical nature of IT research from which the field emerged meant that for all practical purposes it could not be otherwise. Yet times change. IT research moves on. Today mobile, ambient, pervasive, ubiquitous, mixed reality and wearable computing, et cetera, are of fundamental concern to the contemporary computing research community. Furthermore, these developments are accompanied by a movement away from the workplace to focus on diverse settings in everyday life: homes, games, museums, photography, tourism, performances, indeed diverse bodies of people and pursuits that generally fall under the conceptual rubric of the 'ludic'. Accompanying this shift away from work is a call for new approaches and concepts that will enable researchers to better understand the ludic and inform design appropriately. In this paper we seek to address the boundaries of CSCW and the ability of CSCW to respond to contemporary research agendas. We present an ethnomethodological study of a location-based mixed reality game to demonstrate the continued relevance of CSCW approaches and concepts to contemporary agendas in IT research.”
© All rights reserved Crabtree et al. and/or Kluwer Academic Publishers
Benford, Steve (2005): Pushing the boundaries of interaction in public. In Interactions, 12 (4) pp. 57-58.
Benford, Steve, Rowland, Duncan, Flintham, Martin, Drozd, Adam, Hull, Richard, Reid, Josephine, Morrison, Jo and Facer, Keri (2005): Life on the edge: supporting collaboration in location-based experiences. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 721-730.
“We study a collaborative location-based game in which groups of 'lions' hunt together on a virtual savannah that is overlaid on an open playing field. The game implements a straight-forward approach to location-based triggering in which players must be in the same spatial locale in order to share information and act together. Comparison of video recordings of physical play with system recordings of game events reveals subtle and complex interactions between highly dynamic player behavior and the underlying technology. While players exhibit a fluid approach to group formation, the system embodies a more rigid view, leading to difficulties with sharing context and coordinating actions, most notably when groups of players span virtual locale boundaries or initiate actions while on the move. We propose techniques for extending locales to support more flexible grouping and also discuss the broader implications of our findings for location-based applications in general.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Reeves, Stuart, Benford, Steve, O'Malley, Claire and Fraser, Mike (2005): Designing the spectator experience. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 741-750.
“Interaction is increasingly a public affair, taking place in our theatres, galleries, museums, exhibitions and on the city streets. This raises a new design challenge for HCI - how should spectators experience a performer's interaction with a computer? We classify public interfaces (including examples from art, performance and exhibition design) according to the extent to which a performer's manipulations of an interface and their resulting effects are hidden, partially revealed, fully revealed or even amplified for spectators. Our taxonomy uncovers four broad design strategies: 'secretive,' where manipulations and effects are largely hidden; 'expressive,' where they tend to be revealed enabling the spectator to fully appreciate the performer's interaction; 'magical,' where effects are revealed but the manipulations that caused them are hidden; and finally 'suspenseful,' where manipulations are apparent but effects are only revealed as the spectator takes their turn.”
© All rights reserved Reeves et al. and/or ACM Press
Ng, Kher Hui, Benford, Steve and Koleva, Boriana (2005): PINS push in and POUTS pop out: creating a tangible pin-board that ejects physical documents. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 1981-1984.
“There is an asymmetry in many tangible interfaces: while phicons can be used to manipulate digital information, the reverse is often not possible - the digital world cannot push back. We describe a tangible pin-board that pushes back by physically ejecting paper documents when they are digitally deleted. This is realized using pouts, addressable pin-like devices that communicate with a Pin&Play board and that can eject themselves by contracting an internal Muscle Wire actuator to trigger a mechanical latch. To demonstrate and begin to evaluate the technology we have developed an initial application of pouts involving a game where online players vote to eject physical pictures from a pin-board.”
© All rights reserved Ng et al. and/or ACM Press
Capra, Mauricio, Radenkovic, Milena, Benford, Steve, Oppermann, Leif, Drozd, Adam and Flintham, Martin (2005): The multimedia challenges raised by pervasive games. In: Zhang, Hongjiang, Chua, Tat-Seng, Steinmetz, Ralf, Kankanhalli, Mohan S. and Wilcox, Lynn (eds.) Proceedings of the 13th ACM International Conference on Multimedia November 6-11, 2005, Singapore. pp. 89-95.
Dix, Alan J., Sheridan, Jennifer G., Reeves, Stuart, Benford, Steve and O'Malley, Claire (2005): Formalising Performative Interaction. In: Gilroy, Stephen W. and Harrison, Michael D. (eds.) DSV-IS 2005 - Interactive Systems, Design, Specification, and Verification, 12th International Workshop July 13-15, 2005, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. pp. 15-25.
Tallyn, Ella, Koleva, Boriana, Logan, Brian, Fielding, Dan, Benford, Steve, Gelmini, Giulia and Madden, Neil (2005): Embodied Reporting Agents as an Approach to Creating Narratives from Live Virtual Worlds. In: Subsol, Gérard (ed.) ICVS 2005 - Virtual Storytelling, Using Virtual Reality Technologies for Storytelling, Third International Conference November 30 - December 2, 2005, Strasbourg, France. pp. 179-188.
Bannon, Liam J., Benford, Steve, Bowers, John and Heath, Christian (2005): Hybrid design creates innovative museum experiences. In Communications of the ACM, 48 (3) pp. 62-65.
Benford, Steve, Magerkurth, Carsten and Ljungstrand, Peter (2005): Bridging the physical and digital in pervasive gaming. In Communications of the ACM, 48 (3) pp. 54-57.
Crabtree, Andy, Benford, Steve, Rodden, Tom, Greenhalgh, Chris, Flintham, Martin, Anastasi, Rob, Drozd, Adam, Adams, Matt, Row-Farr, Ju, Tandavanitj, Nick and Steed, Anthony (2004): Orchestrating a mixed reality game 'on the ground'. In: Dykstra-Erickson, Elizabeth and Tscheligi, Manfred (eds.) Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria. pp. 391-398.
“Successfully staging a mixed reality game in which online players are chased through a virtual city by runners located in the real world requires extensive orchestration work. An ethnographic study shows how this concerted achievement extends beyond the control room to the runners on the street. This, in turn, suggests the need to 'decentralize' orchestration and develop support for collaboration 'on the ground'. The study leads to design proposals for orchestration interfaces for mobile experiences that augment situational awareness and surreptitious monitoring among mobile participants and support troubleshooting in situations where participants are disconnected or are unable to access positioning systems such as GPS.”
© All rights reserved Crabtree et al. and/or ACM Press
Gutwin, Carl, Benford, Steve, Dyck, Jeff, Fraser, Mike, Vaghi, Ivan and Greenhalgh, Chris (2004): Revealing delay in collaborative environments. In: Dykstra-Erickson, Elizabeth and Tscheligi, Manfred (eds.) Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria. pp. 503-510.
“Delay is an unavoidable reality in collaborative environments. We propose an approach to dealing with delay in which 'decorators' are introduced into the interface. Decorators show the presence, magnitude and effects of delay so that participants can better understand its consequences and adopt their own natural coping strategies. Two experiments with different decorators show that this approach can significantly reduce errors in specific collaborative activities. We conclude that revealing delays is one way in which groupware can benefit from accepting and working with the reality of distributed systems, rather than trying to maintain the illusion of copresent interaction.”
© All rights reserved Gutwin et al. and/or ACM Press
Fielding, Dan, Fraser, Mike, Logan, Brian and Benford, Steve (2004): Extending game participation with embodied reporting agents. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology June 3-5, 2004, Singapore. pp. 100-108.
Benford, Steve, Seager, Will, Flintham, Martin, Anastasi, Rob, Rowland, Duncan, Humble, Jan, Stanton, Danae, Bowers, John, Tandavanitj, Nick, Adams, Matt, Row-Farr, Ju, Oldroyd, Amanda and Sutton, Jon (2004): The Error of Our Ways: The Experience of Self-Reported Position in a Location-Based Game. In: Davies, Nigel, Mynatt, Elizabeth D. and Siio, Itiro (eds.) UbiComp 2004 Ubiquitous Computing 6th International Conference September 7-10, 2004, Nottingham, UK. pp. 70-87.
Schnädelbach, Holger, Koleva, Boriana, Twidale, Michael and Benford, Steve (2004): The Iterative Design Process of a Location-Aware Device for Group Use. In: Davies, Nigel, Mynatt, Elizabeth D. and Siio, Itiro (eds.) UbiComp 2004 Ubiquitous Computing 6th International Conference September 7-10, 2004, Nottingham, UK. pp. 329-346.
Rodden, Tom and Benford, Steve (2003): The evolution of buildings and implications for the design of ubiquitous domestic environments. In: Cockton, Gilbert and Korhonen, Panu (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. pp. 9-16.
Gaver, William W., Beaver, Jacob and Benford, Steve (2003): Ambiguity as a resource for design. In: Cockton, Gilbert and Korhonen, Panu (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. pp. 233-240.
Flintham, Martin, Benford, Steve, Anastasi, Rob, Hemmings, Terry, Crabtree, Andy, Greenhalgh, Chris, Tandavanitj, Nick, Adams, Matt and Row-Farr, Ju (2003): Where on-line meets on the streets: experiences with mobile mixed reality games. In: Cockton, Gilbert and Korhonen, Panu (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. pp. 569-576.
Fraser, Mike, Stanton, Danae, Ng, K. H., Benford, Steve, Malley, C. O., Bowers, John, Taxen, G., Ferris, K. and Hindmarsh, Jon (2003): Assembling history: Achieving coherent experiences with diverse technologies. In: Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2003. pp. 179-198.
Ghali, Ahmed, Benford, Steve, Bayoumi, Sahar, Green, Johnathan and Pridmore, Tony (2003): Visually-tracked Flashlights as Interaction Devices. In: Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT03: Human-Computer Interaction 2003, Zurich, Switzerland. p. 487.
Crabtree, Andy, Rodden, Tom, Hemmings, Terry and Benford, Steve (2003): Finding a Place for UbiComp in the Home. In: Dey, Anind K., Schmidt, Albrecht and McCarthy, Joseph F. (eds.) UbiComp 2003 Ubiquitous Computing - 5th International Conference October 12-15, 2003, Seattle, WA, USA. pp. 208-226.
Schnadelbach, Holger, Koleva, Boriana, Flintham, Martin, Fraser, Mike, Izadi, Shahram, Chandler, Paul, Foster, Malcolm, Benford, Steve and Rodden, Tom (2002): The augurscope: a mixed reality interface for outdoors. In: Terveen, Loren (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota. pp. 9-16.
Benford, Steve, Reynard, Gail, Koleva, Boriana, Greenhalgh, Chris and Fraser, Mike (2002): CSCP. In: Herczeg, Michael and Oberquelle, Horst (eds.) Mensch and Computer 2002 September 2-5, 2002, Hamburg, Germany. .
Izadi, Shahram, Fraser, Mike, Benford, Steve, Flintham, Martin, Greenhalgh, Chris, Rodden, Tom and Schnädelbach, Holger (2002): Citywide: Supporting Interactive Digital Experiences Across Physical Space. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 6 (4) pp. 290-298.
Radenkovic, Milena, Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (2002): Deployment issues for multi-user audio support in CVEs. In: Shi, Jiaoying, Hodges, Larry F., Sun, Hanqiu and Peng, Qunsheng (eds.) VRST 2002- Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology November 11-13, 2002, Hong Kong, China. pp. 179-185.
Bayon, Victor, Rodden, Tom, Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (2002): Going Back to School: Putting a Pervasive Environment into the Real World. In: Mattern, Friedemann and Naghshineh, Mahmoud (eds.) Pervasive 2002 - Pervasive Computing, First International Conference August 26-28, 2002, Zürich, Switzerland. pp. 69-83.
Greenhalgh, Chris, Flintham, Martin, Purbrick, Jim and Benford, Steve (2002): Applications of Temporal Links: Recording and Replaying Virtual Environments. In: VR 2002 2002. pp. 101-108.
Craven, Mike, Taylor, Ian, Drozd, Adam, Purbrick, Jim, Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve, Fraser, Mike, Bowers, John and Hoch, Michael (2001): Exploiting Interactivity, Influence, Space and Time to Explore Non-Linear Drama in Virtual Worlds. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel and Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 31 - April 5, 2001, Seattle, Washington, USA. pp. 30-37.
“We present four contrasting interfaces to allow multiple viewers to explore 3D recordings of dramas in on-line virtual worlds. The first is an on-line promenade performance to an audience of avatars. The second is a form of immersive cinema, with multiple simultaneous viewpoints. The third is a tabletop projection surface that allows viewers to select detailed views from a bird's-eye overview. The fourth is a linear television broadcast created by a director or editor. A comparison of these examples shows how a viewing audience can exploit four general resources - interactivity, influence, space, and time - to make sense of complex, non-linear virtual drama. These resources provide interaction designers with a general framework for defining the relationship between the audience and the 3D content.”
© All rights reserved Craven et al. and/or ACM Press
Koleva, Boriana, Taylor, Ian, Benford, Steve, Fraser, Mike, Greenhalgh, Chris, Schnadelbach, Holger, Lehn, Dirk vom, Heath, Christian and Adams, Matt (2001): Orchestrating a Mixed Reality Performance. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel and Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 31 - April 5, 2001, Seattle, Washington, USA. pp. 38-45.
“A study of a professional touring mixed reality performance called Desert Rain yields insights into how performers orchestrate players' engagement in an interactive experience. Six players at a time journey through an extended physical and virtual set. Each sees a virtual world projected onto a screen made from a fine water spray. This acts as a traversable interface, supporting the illusion that performers physically pass between real and virtual worlds. Live and video-based observations of Desert Rain, coupled with interviews with players and the production team, have revealed how the performers create conditions for the willing suspension of disbelief, and how they monitor and intervene in the players experience without breaking their engagement. This involves carefully timed performances and "off-face" and "virtual" interventions. In turn, these are supported by the ability to monitor players' physical and virtual activity through asymmetric interfaces.”
© All rights reserved Koleva et al. and/or ACM Press
Stanton, Danae, Bayon, Victor, Neale, Helen, Ghali, Ahmed, Benford, Steve, Cobb, Sue, Ingram, Rob, Wilson, John and O'Malley, Claire (2001): Classroom Collaboration in the Design of Tangible Interfaces for Storytelling. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel and Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 31 - April 5, 2001, Seattle, Washington, USA. pp. 482-489.
“We describe the design of tangible interfaces to the KidPad collaborative drawing tool. Our aims are to support the re-enactment of stories to audiences, and integration within real classroom environments. A six-month iterative design process, working with children and teachers in school, has produced the "magic carpet", an interface that uses pressure mats and video-tracked and barcoded physical props to navigate a story in KidPad. Reflecting on this process, we propose four guidelines for the design of tangible interfaces for the classroom. (1) Use physical size and physical props to encourage collaboration. (2) Be aware of how different interfaces emphasize different actions. (3) Be aware that superficial changes to the design can produce very different physical interactions. (4) Focus on open low-tech technologies rather than (over) polished products.”
© All rights reserved Stanton et al. and/or ACM Press
Koleva, Boriana, Schnadelbach, Holger, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (2001): Experiencing a presentation through a mixed reality boundary. In: Ellis, Clarence and Zigurs, Ilze (eds.) Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work 2001 September 30 - October 3, 2001, Boulder, Colorado, USA. pp. 71-80.
“We describe a pilot study of the use of a mixed reality environment for distributed presentations involving virtual and physical audiences and speakers. Our aims were to establish mutual awareness between all participants; to present physical and virtual worlds as being spatially integrated; and to support moderate sized audiences. We used a mixed reality boundary to join a physical space to a collaborative virtual environment so that the two appeared to be adjacent but distinct components of a single space. Two presentations were staged to a mixed physical and virtual audience, one by a virtual speaker and one by a physical speaker. Each presentation was followed by a question and answer session. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews and video recordings revealed that some degree of mutual awareness was established between participants and that physical participants may have viewed the environment as being more spatially integrated than virtual participants. We propose that improving avatars and video textures in the virtual environment may further enhance the experience.”
© All rights reserved Koleva et al. and/or ACM Press
Drozd, Adam, Bowers, John, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris and Fraser, Mike (2001): Collaboratively improvising magic: An approach to managing participation in an on-line drama. In: Ecscw 2001 - Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 16-20 September, 2001, Bonn, Germany. pp. 159-178.
Benford, Steve, Bowers, John, Chandler, Paul, Ciolfi, Luigina, Flintham, Martin, Fraser, Mike, Greenhalgh, Chris, Hall, Tony, Hellström, Sten-Olof, Izadi, Shahram, Rodden, Tom, Schnädelbach, Holger and Taylor, Ian (2001): Unearthing Virtual History: Using Diverse Interfaces to Reveal Hidden Virtual Worlds. In: Abowd, Gregory D., Brumitt, Barry and Shafer, Steven A. (eds.) Ubicomp 2001 Ubiquitous Computing - Third International Conference September 30 - October 2, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. pp. 225-231.
Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve and Craven, Michael P. (2001): Patterns of Network and User Activity in an Inhabited Television Event. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 10 (1) pp. 35-50.
Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Rodden, Tom and Pycock, James (2001): Collaborative virtual environments. In Communications of the ACM, 44 (7) pp. 79-85.
Koleva, Boriana, Schnadelbach, Holger, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (2000): Traversable Interfaces Between Real and Virtual Worlds. In: Turner, Thea, Szwillus, Gerd, Czerwinski, Mary, Peterno, Fabio and Pemberton, Steven (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2000 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 1-6, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 233-240.
“Traversable interfaces establish the illusion that virtual and physical worlds are joined together and that users can physically cross from one to the other. Our design for a traversable interface combines work on tele-embodiment, mixed reality boundaries and virtual environments. It also exploits non-solid projection surfaces, of which we describe four examples. Our design accommodates the perspectives of users who traverse the interface and also observers who are present in the connected physical and virtual worlds, an important consideration for performance and entertainment applications. A demonstrator supports encounters between members of our laboratory and remote visitors.”
© All rights reserved Koleva et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Bederson, Benjamin B., Akesson, Karl-Petter, Bayon, Victor, Druin, Allison, Hansson, Par, Hourcade, Juan Pablo, Ingram, Rob and Neale, Helen (2000): Designing Storytelling Technologies to Encouraging Collaboration between Young Children. In: Turner, Thea, Szwillus, Gerd, Czerwinski, Mary, Peterno, Fabio and Pemberton, Steven (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2000 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 1-6, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 556-563.
“We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Dourish, Paul and Rodden, Tom (2000): Introduction to the Special Issue on Human-Computer Interaction and Collaborative Virtual Environments. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7 (4) pp. 439-441.
Hindmarsh, Jon, Fraser, Mike, Heath, Christian, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (2000): Object-Focused Interaction in Collaborative Virtual Environments. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7 (4) pp. 477-509.
“This paper explores and evaluates the support for object-focused interaction provided by a desktop Collaborative Virtual Environment. An experimental "design" task was conducted, and video recordings of the participants' activities facilitated an observational analysis of interaction in, and through, the virtual world. Observations include: problems due to "fragmented" views of embodiments in relation to shared objects; participants compensating with spoken accounts of their actions; and difficulties in understanding others' perspectives. Implications and proposals for the design of CVEs drawn from these observations are: the use of semidistorted views to support peripheral awareness; more explicit or exaggerated representations of actions than are provided by pseudohumanoid avatars; and navigation techniques that are sensitive to the actions of others. The paper also presents some examples of the ways in which these proposals might be realized.”
© All rights reserved Hindmarsh et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Craven, Mike, Walker, Graham, Regan, Tim, Morphett, Jason and Wyver, John (2000): Inhabited Television: Broadcasting Interaction from Within Collaborative Virtual Environments. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7 (4) pp. 510-547.
“Inhabited television combines collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) with broadcast television so that on-line audiences can participate in television shows within shared virtual worlds. We describe a series of experiments with inhabited television, beginning with the NOWninety6 poetry performance, The Mirror, and Heaven&Hell -- Live. These early experiments raised fundamental questions for inhabited television concerning the extent to which it is possible to establish fast-paced social interaction within a CVE, and to which it is possible to produce a coherent and engaging broadcast of this action. We then present a fourth more recent experiment, Out of This World, that directly addressed these questions. We describe how the formulation of inhabited television design principles, combined with the use of dedicated production software for scripting and directing a show and for controlling virtual cameras, enabled us to create a fast-moving and more coherent experience.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Greenhalgh, Chris, Purbrick, Jim, Benford, Steve, Craven, Michael P., Drozd, Adam and Taylor, Ian (2000): Temporal links: recording and replaying virtual environments. In: ACM Multimedia 2000 2000. pp. 67-74.
Koleva, Boriana, Schnädelbach, Holger, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (2000): Developing mixed reality boundaries. In: Designing Augmented Reality Environments 2000 2000. pp. 155-156.
Koleva, Boriana, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (1999): The properties of mixed reality boundaries. In: Bødker, Susanne, Kyng, Morten and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 99 - Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 12-16 September, 1999, Copenhagen, Denmark. p. 119.
Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Craven, Mike, Walker, Graham, Regan, Tim, Morphett, Jason, Wyver, John and Bowers, John (1999): Broadcasting on-line social interaction as inhabited television. In: Bødker, Susanne, Kyng, Morten and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 99 - Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 12-16 September, 1999, Copenhagen, Denmark. p. 179.
Fraser, Mike, Benford, Steve, Hindmarsh, Jon and Heath, Christian (1999): Supporting Awareness and Interaction through Collaborative Virtual Interfaces. In: Zanden, Brad Vander and Marks, Joe (eds.) Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology November 07 - 10, 1999, Asheville, North Carolina, United States. pp. 27-36.
“This paper explores interfaces to virtual environments supporting multiple users. An interface to an environment allowing interaction with virtual artefacts is constructed, drawing on previous proposals for 'desktop' virtual environments. These include the use of Peripheral Lenses to support peripheral awareness in collaboration; and extending the ways in which users' actions are represented for each other. Through a qualitative analysis of a design task, the effect of the proposals is outlined. Observations indicate that, whilst these designs go some way to re-constructing physical co-presence in terms of awareness and interaction through the environment, some issues remain. Notably, peripheral distortion in supporting awareness may cause problematic interactions with and through the virtual world; and extended representations of actions may still allow problems in re-assembling the composition of others' actions. We discuss the potential for: designing representations for distorted peripheral perception; and explicitly displaying the course of action in object-focused interaction.”
© All rights reserved Fraser et al. and/or ACM Press
Bullock, Adrian and Benford, Steve (1999): An Access Control Framework for Multi-User Collaborative Environments. In: Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work 1999 November 14-17, 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. pp. 140-149.
“A vital component of any application or environment is security, and yet this is often one of the lower priorities, losing out to performance and functionality issues, if it is considered at all. This paper considers a spatial approach to enabling, understanding and managing access control that is generally applicable across a range of collaborative environments and applications. Access control is governed according to the space within which subjects and objects reside, and the ability to traverse space to get close to an object. We present a framework that enables the SPACE access model [4], previously presented as an access model solely for collaborative virtual environments, to be applied across a number of collaborative systems. This framework is exemplified through mappings of the model to 3D and 2D collaborative environments, namely Spline [1], TeamRooms [19] and Orbit [16]. One particularly interesting feature of the model is the way in which it handles group access by considering how group credentials are determined. These credentials are presented to the model in the usual manner. We conclude by presenting some limitations of our approach, and workarounds.”
© All rights reserved Bullock and Benford and/or ACM Press
Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (1999): Supporting Rich and Dynamic Communication in Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8 (1) pp. 14-35.
Normand, Véronique, Babski, Christian, Benford, Steve, Bullock, Adrian, Carion, Stephane, Chrysanthou, Yiorgos, Farcet, Nicolas, Harvey, John, Kuijpers, Nico, Magnenat-Thalmann, Nadia, Musse, Soraia Raupp, Rodden, Tom, Slater, Mel and Smith, Gareth (1999): The COVEN project: exploring applicative, technical and usage dimensions of collaborative virtual environments. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8 (2) pp. 218-236.
Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve and Craven, Michael P. (1999): Patterns of network and user activity in an inhabited television event. In: VRST 1999 1999. pp. 34-41.
Lloyd, David, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (1999): Formations: explicit group support in collaborative virtual environments. In: VRST 1999 1999. pp. 162-163.
Vaghi, Ivan, Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (1999): Coping with inconsistency due to network delays in collaborative virtual environments. In: VRST 1999 1999. pp. 42-49.
Greenhalgh, Chris, Benford, Steve and Reynard, Gail (1999): A QoS architecture for collaborative virtual environments. In: ACM Multimedia 1999 1999. pp. 121-130.
Reynard, Gail, Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris and Heath, Christian (1998): Awareness Driven Video Quality of Service in Collaborative Virtual Environments. In: Karat, Clare-Marie, Lund, Arnold, Coutaz, Joëlle and Karat, John (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 98 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California. pp. 464-471.
“We extend previous work on texture mapping video streams into virtual environments by introducing awareness driven video QoS. This uses movements within a shared virtual world to activate different video services. In turn, these services have different settings for underlying QoS parameters such as frame-rate, resolution and compression. We demonstrate this technique through a combined conferencing/ mediaspace application which uses awareness driven video for facial expressions and for views into remote physical environments. We reflect on the issues of spatial consistency, privacy, seamless shifts in mutual involvement and making underlying QoS mechanisms more visible, malleable and flexible.”
© All rights reserved Reynard et al. and/or ACM Press
Hindmarsh, Jon, Fraser, Mike, Heath, Christian, Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (1998): Fragmented Interaction: Establishing Mutual Orientation in Virtual Environments. In: Poltrock, Steven and Grudin, Jonathan (eds.) Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work November 14 - 18, 1998, Seattle, Washington, United States. pp. 217-226.
“This paper explores and evaluates the support for object-focused collaboration provided by a desktop Collaborative Virtual Environment. The system was used to support an experimental 'design' task. Video recordings of the participants' activities facilitated an observational analysis of interaction in, and through, the virtual world. Observations include: problems due to fragmented views of embodiments in relation to shared objects; participants compensating with spoken accounts of their actions; and difficulties in understanding others' perspectives. Design implications include: more explicit representations of actions than are provided by pseudo-humanoid embodiments; and navigation techniques that are sensitive to the actions of others.”
© All rights reserved Hindmarsh et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Reynard, Gail, Brown, Chris and Koleva, Boriana (1998): Understanding and Constructing Shared Spaces with Mixed-Reality Boundaries. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 5 (3) pp. 185-223.
“We propose an approach to creating shared mixed realities based on the construction of transparent boundaries between real and virtual spaces. First, we introduce a taxonomy that classifies current approaches to shared spaces according to the three dimensions of transportation, artificiality, and spatiality. Second, we discuss our experience of staging a poetry performance simultaneously within real and virtual theaters. This demonstrates the complexities involved in establishing social interaction between real and virtual spaces and motivates the development of a systematic approach to mixing realities. Third, we introduce and demonstrate the technique of mixed-reality boundaries as a way of joining real and virtual spaces together in order to address some of these problems.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Taylor, Ian and Benford, Steve (1998): Data Containers for Relation Based Visualisation. In: IV 1998 1998. pp. 128-130.
Benford, Steve, Greenhalgh, Chris, Snowdon, David N. and Bullock, Adrian (1997): Staging a Public Poetry Performance in a Collaborative Virtual Environment. In: Hughes, John F., Prinz, Wolfgang and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 7-11 September, 1997, Lancaster, UK. pp. 125-140.
Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris (1997): Introducing Third Party Objects into the Spatial Model of Interaction. In: Hughes, John F., Prinz, Wolfgang and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 7-11 September, 1997, Lancaster, UK. pp. 189-204.
Benford, Steve, Snowdon, David N., Colebourne, Andy, O'Brien, Jon and Rodden, Tom (1997): Informing the Design of Collaborative Virtual Environments. In: Payne, Stephen C. and Prinz, Wolfgang (eds.) Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work 1997 November 11-19, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. pp. 71-80.
“This paper addresses the design of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs). More specifically, it considers key design issues concerning the use of either real world 'facsimile' representations or more abstracted means of delivering CVEs. We suggest that the use of ethnographic studies of the context-of-use of the CVE under development is a useful means of informing these design issues in contrast to more in-principle means of drawing conclusions. This approach is illustrated by informing the development of a virtual environment from and ethnographic study of work.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Churchill, Elizabeth F., Snowdon, Dave, Benford, Steve and Dhanda, Parmjit (1997): Using VR-VIBE: Browsing and Searching for Documents in 3D-Space. In: Smith, Michael J., Salvendy, Gavriel and Koubek, Richard J. (eds.) HCI International 1997 - Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - Volume 2 August 24-29, 1997, San Francisco, California, USA. pp. 857-860.
Bullock, Adrian and Benford, Steve (1997): Access control in virtual environments. In: VRST 1997 1997. pp. 29-35.
Benford, Steve, Brown, Chris, Reynard, Gail and Greenhalgh, Chris (1996): Shared Spaces: Transportation, Artificiality, and Spatiality. In: Olson, Gary M., Olson, Judith S. and Ackerman, Mark S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work November 16 - 20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. pp. 77-86.
“We review current spatial approaches to CSCW (mediaspaces, spatial video conferencing, collaborative virtual environments and telepresence) and classify them along the proposed dimensions of transportation, artificiality and spatiality. This classification leads us to identify new shared space applications; so called mixed realities. We present an example of a mixed reality called the Internet Foyer, an application which provides a unified entry point into an organisation's physical and electronic environments and which supports awareness and chance encounters between the occupants of physical and synthetic space.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Bowers, John, Fahlen, Lennart E., Greenhalgh, Chris and Snowdon, David N. (1995): User Embodiment in Collaborative Virtual Environments. In: Katz, Irvin R., Mack, Robert L., Marks, Linn, Rosson, Mary Beth and Nielsen, Jakob (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 95 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference May 7-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado. pp. 242-249.
“This paper explores the issue of user embodiment within collaborative virtual environments. By user embodiment we mean the provision of users with appropriate body images so as to represent them to others and also to themselves. By collaborative virtual environments we mean multi-user virtual reality systems which explicitly support co-operative work (although we argue that the results of our exploration may also be applied to other kinds of collaborative system). The main part of the paper identifies a list of embodiment design issues including: presence, location, identity, activity, availability, history of activity, viewpoint, actionpoint, gesture, facial expression, voluntary versus involuntary expression, degree of presence, reflecting capabilities, physical properties, active bodies, time and change, manipulating your view of others, representation across multiple media, autonomous and distributed body parts, truthfulness and efficiency. Following this, we show how these issues are reflected in our own DIVE and MASSIVE prototype systems and also show how they can be used to analyse several other existing collaborative systems.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (1995): Virtual Reality Tele-Conferencing: Implementation and Experience. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 165-180.
“This paper describes the implementation of and early experiences with a virtual reality tele-conferencing system called MASSIVE. This system includes a full realisation of the spatial model of interaction and its concepts of aura, awareness, focus, nimbus and adapters as was presented at ECSCW'93. This model supports users in interacting over ad-hoc combinations of audio, graphical and textual media through both 3-D and 2-D interfaces. Observations arising from the use of MASSIVE to support laboratory meetings are discussed; these include the need to support richer peripheral awareness, the need to improve the sensitivity of navigation, problems with lack of engagement between users, the need to support varying degrees of presence and problems arising from different perceptions of space between 2-D and 3-D users. Possible solutions to these problems are proposed.”
© All rights reserved Greenhalgh and Benford and/or Kluwer Academic Publishers
Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (1995): MASSIVE: A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Teleconferencing. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2 (3) pp. 239-261.
“We describe a prototype virtual reality teleconferencing system called MASSIVE which has been developed as part of our on-going research into collaborative virtual environments. This system allows multiple users to communicate using arbitrary combinations of audio, graphics, and text media over local and wide area networks. Communication is controlled by a so-called spatial model of interaction so that one user's perception of another user is sensitive to their relative positions and orientations. The key concept in this spatial model is the (quantitative) awareness which one object has of another. This is controlled by the observing object's focus and the observed object's nimbus, which describe regions of interest and projection, respectively. Each object's aura defines the total region within which it interacts. This is applied independently in each medium. The system (and the spatial model which it implements) is intended to provide a flexible and natural environment for the spatial mediation of conversation. The model also provides a basis for scaling to relatively large numbers of users. Our design goals include supporting heterogeneity, scalability, spatial mediation, balance of power, and multiple concurrent meetings; MASSIVE meets all of these goals. Our initial experiences show the importance of audio in collaborative VR, and they raise issues about field of view for graphical users, speed of navigation, quality of embodiment, varying perceptions of space, and scalability.”
© All rights reserved Greenhalgh and Benford and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve, Bowers, John, Fahlen, Lennart E., Greenhalgh, Chris, Mariani, John A. and Rodden, Tom (1995): Networked Virtual Reality and Cooperative Work. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 4 (4) pp. 364-386.
Ingram, Rob and Benford, Steve (1995): Legibility Enhancement for Information Visualisation. In: IEEE Visualization 1995 1995. pp. 209-216.
Benford, Steve, Snowdon, Dave, Greenhalgh, Chris, Ingram, Rob, Knox, Ian and Brown, Chris (1995): VR-VIBE: A Virtual Environment for Co-operative Information Retrieval. In Comput. Graph. Forum, 14 (3) pp. 349-360.
Benford, Steve and Fahlen, Lennart E. (1994): Viewpoints, Actionpoints and Spatial Frames for Collaborative User Interfaces. In: Cockton, Gilbert, Draper, Steven and Weir, George R. S. (eds.) Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers IX August 23-26, 1994, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. pp. 409-423.
“Synchronisation is a key issue for collaborative user interfaces. An examination of current approaches, in particular the concept WYSIWIS and the use of Video as a communication medium, highlights a number of issues in this area including lack of a common spatial frame of reference, lack of appropriate embodiment of users and inflexible and rigid communication channels between users. The paper then proposes a new framework for designing collaborative user interfaces which addresses these issues. This framework is based on the notion of a common spatial frame within which embodied users are free to move autonomously, being casually aware of each other's activities. Embodiment is considered in terms of both individual viewpoints and actionpoints (e.g. telepointers) within the display space. We propose that, in many cases, synchronisation of the spatial frame is necessary but synchronisation of viewpoints and actionpoints may actually inhibit collaboration. We finish by describing some prototype systems which provide one (of possibly many) examples of how our framework might be employed; in this case to create shared cooperative virtual environments.”
© All rights reserved Benford and Fahlen and/or Cambridge University Press
Benford, Steve and Fahlen, Lennart E. (1993): A Spatial Model of Interaction in Large Virtual Environments. In: Michelis, Giorgio de, Simone, Carla and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 93 - Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 1993. pp. 109-124.
“We present a spatial model of group interaction in virtual environments. The model aims to provide flexible and natural support for managing conversations among large groups gathered in virtual space. However, it can also be used to control more general interactions among other kinds of objects inhabiting such spaces. The model defines the key abstractions of object aura, nimbus, focus and adapters to control mutual levels of awareness. Furthermore, these are defined in a sufficiently general way so as to apply to any CSCW system where a spatial metric can be identified -- i.e. a way of measuring position and direction. Several examples are discussed, including virtual reality and text conferencing applications. Finally, the paper provides a more formal computational architecture for the spatial model by relating it to the object oriented modelling approach for distributed systems.”
© All rights reserved Benford and Fahlen and/or Kluwer
Benford, Steve, Bullock, Adrian, Cook, Neil, Harvey, Paul, Ingram, Rob and Lee, Ok-Ki (1993): From Rooms to Cyberspace: Models of Interaction in Large Virtual Computer Spaces. In Interacting with Computers, 5 (2) pp. 217-237.
“Room metaphors have become increasingly popular as a basis for CSCW systems. The paper describes how such metaphors might be extended to support large scale communication through the introduction of a spatial model for mediating conversations in virtual computer spaces. The model is described in terms of an abstract mathematical framework and the paper then outlines how this might be applied to various kinds of CSCW system. As a next step, the combination of rooms into larger virtual structures is considered and this results in proposals for structuring, navigating and mapping a large virtual cyberspace for cooperation. Finally, the paper describes a current prototype application and reflects on some of the architectural issues involved in its realisation as a distributed system.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or Elsevier Science
Benford, Steve, Mariani, John, Navarro, Leandro, Prinz, Wolfgang and Rodden, Tom (1993): MOCCA: An Environment for CSCW Applications. In: Kaplan, Simon M. (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Organizational Computing Systems 1993 November 1-4, 1993, Milpitas, California, USA. pp. 172-177.
“Our belief is that in the future Computer Supported Cooperative Work will by necessity involve a heterogeneous collection of applications, paradigms and models and that no single system will meet all the requirements of all groups. We propose a CSCW Environment which facilitates inter-working between many different CSCW applications. We describe the key requirements of such an environment, followed by a set of models which offer different perspectives on the environment and which collectively define its functionality. We then discuss how these models might be used to specify the components of an open distributed architecture for implementing the model.”
© All rights reserved Benford et al. and/or ACM Press
Benford, Steve and Fahlen, Lennart E. (1993): Awareness, Focus, and Aura: A Spatial Model of Interaction in Virtual Worlds. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 1993. pp. 693-698.
“We present a spatial model of group interaction in virtual environments. The model aims to provide flexible and natural support for managing conversations among large groups of people in virtual space. It can also be used to control more general interactions among other kinds of objects inhabiting such spaces. The model defines the key abstractions of aura, focus, nimbus and adapters to control levels of awareness between objects. These key concepts are defined in a sufficiently general way so as to apply to any CSCW system where a spatial metric can be identified -- i.e. a way of measuring position and direction. Also, some possible domains of usage are discussed, such as virtual reality, database and text conferencing applications. The model described in this paper is being developed as part of the COMIC project, a European ESPRIT Basic Research Action on computer-based mechanisms of interaction in cooperative work.”
© All rights reserved Benford and Fahlen and/or Elsevier Science
Benford, Steve (1989): Requirements of activity management. In: EC-CSCW 89 - Proceedings of the First European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 13-15 September, 1989, Gatwick, London. pp. 276-286.
“Recent years have witnessed the development of several theoretical models of cooperative group working based on the concept of role playing within structured activities. This paper proposes that the widespread implementation and adoption of products based on these models is critically dependent on a framework for managing and integrating activities within working environments. The term activity management is introduced to refer to the process of planning, administrating and executing activities according to the various management policies defined within local environments. The requirements of activity management are then discussed with particular emphasis on two key concepts: the use of a high-level notation for expressing management requirements and the need for an activity management activity architecture supporting the management of activities within distributed computer systems. The overall goal of this paper is therefore to define a program of research to progress activity based models of group working towards viable and useful implementations.”
© All rights reserved Benford and/or ACM Press
Hennessy, P. A., Benford, Steve and Bowers, John (1989): Modelling group communication structures: Analysing four European projects. In: EC-CSCW 89 - Proceedings of the First European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 13-15 September, 1989, Gatwick, London. pp. 406-420.
“This paper was first published in the Singapore International Conference on Networks '89, pages 56-61. It describes the COSMOS, AMIGO MHS+, AMIGO Advanced, and MacAll II models of group communication, and compares them from four key perspectives. The need for an integrated approach to modelling group working is stated, and features that should be included in any model are identified.”
© All rights reserved Hennessy et al. and/or ACM Press
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