What You See Is What I See Research Articles

Real-time collaborative GIS: A technological review

Collaborative Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) have become an important research area over the past two decades. This paper provides a critical review of the development of real-time CGIS, which is a branch under Collaborative GIS study. A real-time CGIS system provides a multi-user, real-time collaborative work environment, i.e., what you see is what I see (WYSIWIS), for spatial decision support and problem solving. The research about this kind of system has mainly focused on system architecture and modelling, collaborative awareness, concurrent control, collaborative behaviour modelling and other related key issues. The paper presents a two-stage historic development process of real-time CGIS, summarizes major research progress and representative developments by analysing their key technical issues, and based on the review discusses some research problems that need to be solved and some future research directions.

Investigation to Peer-to-Peer-based collaborative working platform for product development

The current globalising industry is highly desired for synchronous collaborative working environment to perform multisited and multiuser cooperation during complex product design among partners, to provide customisation-oriented service to fulfil market demands and to satisfy customer's requirement around the world. This paper introduces a preliminary research work about Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based collaborative communication environment that attempts to support codesign 3D CAD model in synchronous Collaborative Product Design (CPD) in the way of What You See Is What I see (WYSIWIS). A prototype with communication means of document cosharing and editing, draft codrawing, instant message and VRML-based visualisation space is developed on the basis of JXTA development platform. Collaborative model modification can be performed by the cooperation between document coediting space and VRML visualisation space.

Telematics-based online client–server/client collaborative environment for radiotherapy planning simulations

Customized cancer radiation treatment planning for each patient is very useful for both a patient and a doctor because it provides the ability to deliver higher doses to a more accurately defined tumor and at the same time lower doses to organs at risk and normal tissues. This can be realized by building an accurate planning simulation system to provide better treatment strategies based on each patient's tomographic data such as CT, MRI, PET, or SPECT. In this study, we develop a real-time online client-server/client collaborative environment between the client (health care professionals or hospitals) and the server/client under a secure network using telematics (the integrated use of telecommunications and medical informatics). The implementation is based on a point-to-point communication scheme between client and server/client following the WYSIWIS (what you see is what I see) paradigm. After uploading the patient tomographic data, the client is able to collaborate with the server/client for treatment planning. Consequently, the level of health care services can be improved, specifically for small radiotherapy clinics in rural/remote-country areas that do not possess much experience or equipment such as a treatment planning simulator. The telematics service of the system can also be used to provide continued medical education in radiotherapy. Moreover, the system is easy to use. A client can use the system if s/he is familiar with the Windows(TM) operating system because it is designed and built based on a user-friendly concept. This system does not require the client to continue hardware and software maintenance and updates. These are performed automatically by the server.

The design of an interface for student note annotation in a networked electronic classroom

Groupware that supports shared work surfaces generally adheres to the WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) paradigm which means that each user has the same view of the shared work surface at all times. We present a variation of the standard WYSIWIS paradigm which we call WYSIWISOW (What You See Is What I See, One Way) which has been found to be more appropriate than WYSIWIS for certain applications. The paradigm is motivated by describing an application that helps students and teachers share written information during class sessions using an electronic whiteboard and pen-based computers that communicate through a network. We next present a problem, which we call the collision problem, which is inherent to the new paradigm but not to the standard WYSIWIS paradigm. Several solutions to the collision problem are proposed, and our implementation of one of these solutions is described.

WYSIWIS revised: early experiences with multiuser interfaces

WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) is a foundational abstraction for multiuser interfaces that expresses many of the characteristics of a chalkboard in face-to-face meetings. In its strictest interpretation, it means that everyone can also see the same written information and also see where anyone else is pointing. In our attempts to build software support for collaboration in meetings, we have discovered that WYSIWIS is crucial, yet too inflexible when strictly enforced. This paper is about the design issues and choices that arose in our first generation of meeting tools based on WYSIWIS. Several examples of multiuser interfaces that start from this abstraction are presented. These tools illustrate that there are inherent conflicts between the needs of a group and the needs of individuals, since user interfaces compete for the same display space and meeting time. To help minimize the effect of these conflicts, constraints were relaxed along four key dimensions of WYSIWIS: display space, time of display, subgroup population, and congruence of view. Meeting tools must be designed to support the changing needs of information sharing during process transitions, as subgroups are formed and dissolved, as individuals shift their focus of activity, and as the group shifts from multiple parallel activities to a single focused activity and back again.