Remote Collaborative Work Research Articles

Exploring sex differences in collaborative virtual environments for participation equality and user experience

Communication technology plays a crucial role in facilitating remote collaborative work. This study investigated sex differences in Perceived Participation Equality and User Experience across different communication formats, i.e., face-to-face communication, conventional video conferences, and Virtual Reality (VR). An empirical study was conducted involving 15 groups, each comprising three participants, who engaged in a decision-making task. A research model was developed to evaluate the interplay between perceived participation equality, empathy, and immersion. This model was employed across three communication conditions and included both male and female participants. These findings on sex differences in user experience could help create a connected, cohesive, and productive remote collaborative work environment.

Perception-based high quality distributed virtual reality

Virtual reality has great potential to enable remote collaborative work from anywhere in the world. Developing virtual reality into a platform suitable for natural interaction and immersive collaboration requires the experience to be reliably stable. For a networked collaborative environment, perceived smoothness of motion is limited by the tick rate, that is, the frequency at which information is distributed. As tick rate increases, motion will appear increasingly smooth; however, excessive tick rates may introduce additional load on a network without any perceptible benefit to a user. This paper details two visual psychophysics experiments (N_1 = 16, N_2 = 11) carried out to evaluate participant sensitivity to tick rate in virtual reality. The influence of three variables, velocity, complexity, and digital medium were investigated. Both velocity and digital medium displayed a significant effect, whilst complexity did not show significance. A model was then built and validated from the results of these experiments. The model predicts for average walking speed within the desktop condition, that 90% of the population will perceive motion to be smooth at 56 Hz, whilst this 90% threshold lies at 113 Hz for the VR condition. This model can predict participant perception of tick rate under given conditions, enabling networks to intelligently optimise participant experience without adding unnecessary further load on the network.

Application of Augmented Reality for Remote Collaborative Work in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction – A Systematic Review

Augmented Reality (AR) enhances the user’s view of the existing world by adding a computer-generated model. AR technology is used in many domains to help users complete tasks more efficiently. This paper reports a systematic review of literature on where and how AR is used in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries for remote collaboration, identifying the devices adopted as well as their impact and challenges. The initial search resulted in a total of 695 studies, of which 12 were screened for final review. We found that integrating AR results in a significant reduction in time to complete the task, errors, and workload while at the same time improving the performance and accuracy of risk communication in construction projects. This review concludes with a discussion of the findings and the opportunities for future research

The Effect of Remote Collaborative Work on Design Processes During the Pandemic

At the beginning of 2020, the virus called "COVID-19" spread rapidly all over the world. One of the measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus was social distance rules. Hence, employees and students had to work remotely using communication tools. In the design field, professionals and students working remotely during the pandemic, were limited to the possibilities of the communication tools they used while developing the design process, and they found ways to use these facilities in line with their practice routines in the physical environment. In this article, the tools used during the collaborative design processes conducted remotely during the pandemic were examined with a questionnaire study. Even though designers worked digitally due to the necessity to continue their work in this period, it was observed that they had positive experiences with the special tools they used. However, the transfer of tacit knowledge to design projects in the collaborative design process has been restricted in the collaborative design process due to limited spatial communication. While many designers were discovering the tailored tools for this purpose they could already use, many improvements were suggested through the unaware needs became explicit ones.

Implementation of a high-presence immersive traditional crafting system with remote collaborative work support

A high presence immersive traditional crafting system was developed to provide users, who interact with the system through head-mounted displays, with a highly realistic traditional crafting presentation experience that allows moving functions, such as free walk-through and teleportation. Users can also interactively operate traditional craft objects in space. In addition, the system supports collaborative work in a virtual space shared by remote users. To evaluate the effectiveness of this system, a questionnaire survey was administered to 124 subjects, who provided overwhelmingly positive responses regarding all functions. However, there is still room for improvement in the operability and relevancy of the system.

Implementation of a high-presence immersive traditional crafting system with remote collaborative work support

A high presence immersive traditional crafting system was developed to provide users, who interact with the system through head-mounted displays, with a highly realistic traditional crafting presentation experience that allows moving functions, such as free walk-through and teleportation. Users can also interactively operate traditional craft objects in space. In addition, the system supports collaborative work in a virtual space shared by remote users. To evaluate the effectiveness of this system, a questionnaire survey was administered to 124 subjects, who provided overwhelmingly positive responses regarding all functions. However, there is still room for improvement in the operability and relevancy of the system.

An empirical study to investigate the efficacy of collaborative immersive virtual reality systems for designing information architecture of software systems

The ability of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) systems to mimic the real world has made it possible to use this technology to create environments for remote collaborative work. This study aimed to understand the feasibility of immersive virtual reality when conducting a collaborative Information Architecture (IA) design task-card sorting, with geographically dispersed participants. Using a between-subjects experimental design, thirty groups of two individuals each completed a card sorting activity using conventional in-person, video screen-sharing method or immersive virtual reality methods. The dependent measures included total time, percentage match with master card set, usability, presence and perceived workload. Overall usability was found to be significantly higher for the immersive virtual reality condition when compared to conventional in-person card sorting. In addition, the new immersive virtual reality technology performed as well as the other two conditions for other dependent variables. Qualitative data from the participants also indicated a positive reaction to the use of immersive virtual reality for this task. Overall, the participants felt they were productive and enjoyed the IVR condition, indicating the potential of IVR-based approaches as an alternative to conventional approaches for IA design.

Using effective and adequate IT tools for developing teachers' skills

This article describes preliminary results of the implementation of Work Package 4 'Selection and testing new IT tools' within the framework of the international research network IRNet (www.irnet.us.edu.pl) and by researchers from partner institutions from Portugal, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Turkey. These results relate to an analysis and study of a category of IT tools for making presentations and didactic videos, for formative continuous assessment (real-life and online), remote collaborative work and virtual meetings, virtual rooms, learning management systems for educational process support, online tutoring and social media. The package period has been divided into main stages: 1-5.

Product model and whiteboard connection to support integration between synchronous and asynchronous phases in cooperative product development

Product development was deeply modified by globalisation. New practises to ease remote collaborative work are expected. Many methods and tools were developed for this objective in a fragmented vision depending on the usage contexts. The Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community defined tools dedicated to generic collaboration without specialisation about a specific business, but each of these tools is mainly dedicated either to synchronous or asynchronous collaboration. Under this classification, whiteboards are dedicated to synchronous remote work around unstructured sketches. On the other point of view, the design community developed new shared models for structured information about the product. This paper proposes the integration of both in order to create whiteboards dedicated to technical business activities. This is obtained by enabling a collaborative manipulation of product model representations within a shared whiteboard environment.

A Collaborative Drawing Model Based on RMI

With the issue in the traditional remote collaborative work, proposed a collaborative drawing model based on RMI technology. It is easily to work in phase among the remote people by this method and the efficiency of project design and resolve problem has been increased effectively. With the base of anglicizing the principle of the RMI distribute technology, expatiating the key technology go the system.

Tele-immersive environment with tiled display wall for intuitive remote collaborative work

In remote collaborative work via WAN, sharing and recognizing various high-quality visual contents such as photography, visualization image, and real video streaming is extremely important. Supporting a high-quality display of these contents on a large-scale display system is necessary to support intellectual remote collaborative work. However, these contents are currently magnified in low resolution on a general projector used as large-sized display equipment, and these equipments are difficult to display the contents with sufficient quality. In this paper, we have focused on the tiled display wall technology which configure a wide-area screen with two or more LCD and tried to display realistic high-resolution visual contents to solve these issues. We have constructed a tele-immersive environment with a tiled display wall, and have studied the availability for intuitive remote collaborative work by implementing various collaborative applications for the effective display of high-resolution contents as well as developing interaction techniques for enormous visual contents in this environment. As a result, we have showed that the practical use of a tiled display wall is useful in the construction of intellectual remote collaborative environment.

Tele-immersive collaborative virtual environment for intuitive interpretation

The purpose of tele-immersive collaboration is to enable people in separate locations to work together effectively by the Virtual Reality (VR) technology facilitating the human intuitive insight and interpretation. Consequently, it is important to cogitate with figures and characters as well as voice communication in Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). In this paper, we constructed tele-immersive CVE with annotation capability and free-hand drawing of characters and figures into Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) environment. In addition, participants from remote sites connected over a Wide Area Network (WAN) were enabled to interact with each other by sharing annotations via a PDA application. Moreover, we developed applications for scientific visualization and, for intellectual work based on KJ Method inside a tele-immersive CVE. From these results, we are able to maintain essential information for thinking by making annotation on IPT environment, and have proved the system can support intuitive understanding in remote collaborative work.

IPビデオ会議システムにおける共有的形状操作機能の有効性に関する研究(G12-2 コラボレーション・ユニバーサルデザイン,G12 設計工学・システム部門一般講演)

Since IT technology is becoming popular in recent years, the support method and technology of the remote collaborative communication work using the Internet is becoming to familiar. Although many systems which offer multimedia communication for remote collaborative work have been reported so far, such systems as share the contents interactively are hardly reported yet. In this paper, we report development of FLAVA system which makes it possible to communicate by voice telephone call while two or more users perform shape manipulation interactively sharing form data as Web contents.

2806 三箇所の離れた現場の仮想的統合を支援するターンテーブルの開発

This paper proposes a turntable system, which supports communication among three remote locales. This interface system is mainly composed of three co-actuated disk devices and a LCD projector for projecting remote locale situations on a table. Three disks are arranged like a triangle on a tabletop. Existence of remote users is generated around a table by rotating a disk and by projecting remote locales situations. Virtually shared table is expected to support remote collaborative work.

Remote participation at JET Task Force work: users’ experience

The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment is now operated with strong involvement of physicists from outside research laboratories, which often requires remote participation in JET physics experiments. Users’ experience with tools for remote collaborative work is reported, including remote computer and data access, remote meetings, shared documentation and various other communication channels.