Handheld or Handsfree?

Abstract

Emerging wearable and mobile communication technologies, such as lightweight head-mounted displays (HMDs) and handheld devices, promise support for everyday remote collaboration. Despite their potential for widespread use, their effectiveness as collaborative tools is unknown, particularly in physical tasks involving mobility. To better understand their impact on collaborative behaviors, perceptions, and performance, we conducted a two-by-two (technology type: HMD vs. tablet computer; task setting: static vs. dynamic) between-subjects study where participants (n = 66) remotely collaborated as "helper" and "worker" pairs in the construction of a physical object. Our results showed that, in the dynamic task, HMD use enabled helpers to offer more frequent directing commands and more proactive assistance, resulting in marginally faster task completion. In the static task, while tablet use helped convey subtle visual information, helpers and workers had conflicting perceptions of how the two technologies contributed to their success. Our findings offer strong design and research implications, underlining the importance of a consistent view of the shared workspace and the differential support collaborators with different roles receive from technologies.

Stabilized Annotations for Mobile Remote Assistance

“…in the moment. I also found that head-mounted displays offered no meaningful benefit in terms of making or using annotations, but consistent with prior work, facilitated feedback on the current actions be carried out (Johnson et. al., 2015).…”

“…al., 1999, Gauglitz et. al., 2012, Johnson et al, 2015. One of the classic challenges in supporting remote collaboration is the need to reference objects or locations efficiently through video (Buxton 2009, Fussel et.…”

“…Mobile scenarios-where people hold the camera and can move it freely-present new challenges, including: providing the right camera view for the remote expert (Gauglitz et. al., 2012, Johnson et. al., 2015, Jones et.…”

A Collaborative Previsualization Tool for Filmmaking in Virtual Reality

“…Technological solutions for remote collaboration have taken many different forms. From letters, telephone, video-conference systems to more advanced forms of technology that are now starting to show potential for creating efficient and natural forms of collaboration [Celata et al 2018;Fussell et al 2003;Johnson et al 2015;Khan et al 2016;Piumsomboon et al 2016]. However, most of these authors also claim that the lack of developed technology can hinder good collaboration.…”

“…3.2.9 Asymmetric user interface. It has been shown that by making use of specialized roles, as well as the knowledge-in-common of participants, collaboration can turn out to be more effective [Carroll et al 2006;Johnson et al 2015]. As such, similarly to [Elvezio et al 2018], we adopt an asymmetric user interface where we emphasize how certain users can be specialized in certain tasks.…”