This paper presents a usability analysis of RECOLED, a shared document editor which supports recording of audio communication in remote collaborative writing sessions, and transparent monitoring of interactions, such as editing, gesturing and scrolling. The editor has been designed so that the collaboration results in the production of a multimedia document history which enriches the final product of the writing activity and can serve as a basis for post-meeting information retrieval. A discussion is presented on how post-meeting processing can highlight the usefulness of such histories in terms of tracking information that would be normally lost in usual collaborative editing settings.
This paper describes an integrated architecture for online collaborative multimedia (audio and text) meetings which supports the recording of participants' audio exchanges, automatic metadata generation and logging of users editing interaction and also information derived from the use of group awareness widgets (gesturing) for post-meeting processing and access. We propose a formal model for timestamping generation and manipulation of textual artefacts. Post-meeting processing of the interaction information highlight the usefulness of such histories in terms of tracking information that would be normally lost in usual collaborative editing settings. The potential applications of such automatic interaction history generation range from group interaction quantitative analysis, cooperation modelling, and multimedia meeting mining.
This paper presents a usability analysis of RECOLED, a shared document editor which supports recording of audio communication in remote collaborative writing sessions, and transparent monitoring of interactions, such as editing, gesturing and scrolling. The editor has been designed so that the collaboration results in the production of a multimedia document history which enriches the final product of the writing activity and can serve as a basis for post-meeting information retrieval. A discussion is presented on how post-meeting processing can highlight the usefulness of such histories in terms of tracking information that would be normally lost in usual collaborative editing settings.
From a HCI perspective, elucidating and supporting the context in which collaboration takes place is key to implementing successful collaborative systems. Synchronous collaborative writing usually takes place in contexts involving a “meeting” of some sort. Collaborative writing meetings can be face-to-face or, increasingly, remote Internet-based meetings. The latter presents software developers with the possibility of incorporating multimedia recording and information retrieval capabilities into the collaborative environment. The collaborative writing that ensues can be seen as an activity encompassing asynchronous as well as synchronous aspects. In order for revisions, information retrieval and other forms of post-meeting, asynchronous work to be effectively supported, the synchronous collaborative editor must be able to appropriately detect and record meeting metadata. This paper presents a collaborative editor that supports recording of user actions and explicit metadata production. Design and technical implications of introducing such capabilities are discussed with respect to document segmentation, consistency control, and awareness mechanisms. CATEGORIES AND SUBJECT DESCRIPTORS H.5.3 [Group and Organization Interfaces]: Computersupported cooperative work; H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems
