Media Space and Video-mediated Interaction

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Media Space and Video-mediated Interaction

These projects draw on workplace studies to suggest enhancements to innovative systems to support collaborative work. Video technology has recently shown it can offer great support for real-time collaboration between people in different physical locations. This support would seem to resonate with the increasingly globalised nature of work and recent efforts to develop flexible and hybrid working.

Whilst enhancing some forms of communication the conventional systems we use, such as Zoom, Teams and Skype, offer limited capabilities for access to objects, artefacts and features in the remote environment. They tend to focus on ‘face-to-face’ interaction and principally provide just head and shoulders view of the other participants.

We have been engaged in a number of projects that explore the development of media spaces that seek to enhance video communication and collaboration.

Our studies draw on the detailed analysis of interaction in everyday environments to consider how

visual conduct is transformed when undertaken through video technologies;
the performative impact of conduct such as glances and gestures is diminished through video;
in video-conference systems and conventional media spaces there is limited access to the physical resources that are essential for collaborative work.

These analyses have informed the development of a series of novel enhancements to media spaces with colleagues in Japan and the United Kingdom. These have included using complex video-projection technologies, life sized displays of human co-participants and ways of controlling and transforming access to the remote environment.

To assess these enhancements we have designed and undertaken a number of 'quasi-naturalistic’ experiments where participants engage in open ended tasks that resonate with everyday work practices.

Publications

Licoppe, Christian; Luff, Paul; Heath, Christian; Kuzuoka Hideaki; Yamashita, Naomi, and Sylvaine Tuncer (2017) Showing Objects: holding and manipulating artefacts in video-mediated collaborative settings. Proceedings of CHI 2017, Denver. CO. ACM Press. DOI 10.1145/3025453.3025848

Luff, Paul; Heath, Christian; Yamashita, Naomi; Kuzuoka, Hideaki & Marina Jirotka (2016) Embedded Reference: Translocating gestures in video-mediated interaction. 49, 4, 342-361. Research on Language and Social Interaction. DOI 10.1080/08351813.2016.1199088

Luff, Paul; Menisha Patel, Hideaki Kuzuoka & Christian Heath (2014) Assembling Collaboration: Informing the Design of Interaction Spaces, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Vol 47 (3) 1-13.

Luff, Paul, Jirotka, Marina, Heath, Christian, Eden, Grace, Yamashita, Naomi, Kuzuoka, Hideaki, (2013) Embedding Interaction: the accomplishment of actions in everyday and video-mediated environments (submitted to Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction: Theory And Practice Of Embodied Interaction In HCI And Interaction Design) vol 20 no 1, March. 6: 1-22.

Norris, James; Schnadelbach; Holger and Paul Luff (2013). Putting Things in Focus: Establishing Co-Orientation Through Video in Context, Proceedings of CHI 2013, (1329-1338), Paris France.

Luff , P., Yamashita, N., Kuzuoka, H., and Heath, C. C. 2011. "Hands on Hitchcock: Embodied Reference to a Moving Scene,." pp. 43-52 in CHI 2011. Vancouver.

Luff, P., Kuzuoka, H., Heath, C., Yamazaki, K., and Yamashita, J. 2009. Creating Assemblies in Media Space: Recent Developments in Enhancing Access to Workspaces." in Media Space: 20+ Years of Mediated Life, edited by S. Harrison: Springer.

Heath, Christian and Paul Luff (1992) ‘Media Space and Communicative Asymmetries: Preliminary Observations of Video Mediated Interaction’, Human-Computer Interaction. Vol. 7. No. 3, 315-346.

Publications

Norris, James; Schnadelbach; Holger and Paul Luff (2013). Putting Things in Focus: Establishing Co-Orientation Through Video in Context, Proceedings of CHI 2013, (1329-1338), Paris France.

Luff , P., Yamashita, N., Kuzuoka, H., and Heath, C. C. 2011. "Hands on Hitchcock: Embodied Reference to a Moving Scene,." pp. 43-52 in CHI 2011. Vancouver.

Heath, Christian and Paul Luff (1992) ‘Media Space and Communicative Asymmetries: Preliminary Observations of Video Mediated Interaction’, Human-Computer Interaction. Vol. 7. No. 3, 315-346.

Project status: Ongoing