Architectures for Synchronous Groupware

Multi-user realtime systems, often called synchronous groupware systems, are distressingly difficult to build well. Issues in the user interface, application architecture, and run-time distribution architecture are separately difficult to solve and can easily become entangled with one another.

This research effort seeks to understand these issues in greater detail, in order to develop an architectural style that directly supports the analysis, design and implementation of high-quality groupware. This architectural style, which is now partially complete, is called the Workspace Model.

Publications (6)

Investigators: Greg Philllips, T.C. Nicholas Graham (Queen's University), Chris Wolfe (Queen's University)

Enhanced Map Manipulation Using Speed-Dependent Automatic Zoom

The current implementation of pan and zoom techniques in digital map based command and control applications suffers from significant usability problems. Over the past several years, a number of alternative view manipulation techniques have been proposed. Of these, a technique known as Speed-Dependent Automatic Zoom appears to be particularly promising. This research will investigate and compare a Speed-Dependent Automatic Zoom interface with the traditional pan and zoom interface tools used in current command and control applications, by means of a formal usability experiment.

Motivation and grounding for this study was provided by an exploratory observational study undertaken during the June 2004 Exercise Final Drive at the Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College. In this eight-day study over 2000 individual observations were recorded, then analyzed and documented in a technical report (below). To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first time that the Canadian Army's command and control suite has been the subject of a rigorous observational study, and we expect the results of the study to be independently useful as the Army's command and control systems continue to evolve.

This work is partially funded by grants from the Director of Land Command Systems Program Management and the Director of Land Command and Information.

Publications (2)

Investigators: Major Ian Krepps, Greg Phillips

Evaluating Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation is a "discount usability" technique for evaluating the usability of a product's interface and interaction methods. Proposed by Jakob Neilsen in the early 1990s it has since gained relatively wide acceptance in industry. However, there have been relatively few rigorous studies of the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of the technique. In this study we are comparing Heuristic Evaluation against formal usability testing, which is the traditional (and much more labour intensive) usability defect-finding mechanism.

The application being used as a sample in the study is the Athena Tactical System version 1.2, an Army Command and Control Information System (C2IS). As a side benefit of this study, we expect to produce a list of usability issues in this product which should be of use to the Canadian Army's C2IS enhancement program.

This research is funded by a grant from the Director of Land Command Systems Program Management.

Investigators: Captain Michel Hutchison, Greg Phillips

Modelling Customer and User Expectations for Interactive Software

The Canadian Army's recently acquired command and control information system (C2IS) has met a significant amount of disapproval from the commanders and staff officers for whom it was procured. A preliminary investigation suggests that the system's deficiencies stem from an inadequate modelling and analysis of the Army's expectations for the software's use within its command and control process. This research will investigate alternative techniques for modelling and analysing customer and user expectations for human-in-the-loop process control software. The research will be based on a case study in which a number of candidate techniques for modelling and analysing the salient customer and user expectations for army C2IS software will be compared. The results of the specific case study will then be analytically generalised to the wider class of human-in-the-loop process control software.

Investigators: Major T.S. (Scott) McLean, Greg Phillips

Trust and Performance in Human-Robotic Interaction

This work, which is in the initial planning stages, will explore trust-based issues arising in Human-Robotic Interaction.

Investigators: Second Lieutenant David Leblanc, Greg Phillips