We studied minute-by-minute logs of computer interaction activity and on-line calendars to identify rhythms and patterns in workday activity among distributed group members. Beyond showing when people start and end working and break for lunch, other patterns that could help coordinate making contact with each other were found. The patterns showed regular rhythms in people's activity that were not represented in their calendars. Opportunities for future research and applications are discussed.

Many CSCW projects dealing with individual availability and interruption filtering achieve only limited success. Perhaps this is because designers of such systems have limited evidence to draw upon; most data on interruption management is at least a decade old. This study uses an empirical sampling method and qualitative interviews to examine attitudes toward availability and interruption. Specifically, we analyze how corporate research managers spend their time and look at how their attitudes toward interruption relate to their various activities. Attitudes toward interruption are marked by a complex tension between wanting to avoid interruption and appreciating its usefulness. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for design, suggesting that the notion of socially translucent systems may be a fruitful approach.

Successfully contacting colleagues while away from the office is especially difficult without information about their availability and location. HandiMessenger is a service designed to facilitate opportunistic communication by tightly integrating awareness and contact capabilities into a wireless, unified messaging and awareness application. Users can securely access intranet email, instant messages, and other messages from a handheld mobile device (e.g., a wireless PDA). Simultaneously, they are presented with awareness information about the sender to enable a reply in the most appropriate mode, given the situation of the participants. For example, they can read email and reply by initiating a phone call, if the sender is available by phone. Analysis of handiMessenger usage shows that users do request awareness information while inspecting message headers or content, and that users also take advantage of the ability to respond to a message with a different type or in a different mode than the original message.

This paper reports findings about teenagers' uses of IM. In addition to described what worked and what didn't this study offers insights into: adoption challenges for technologies at home, what IM tells us about pervasive communications, and how individuals manage the balance of presence and privacy.

Displays like stock tickers and load monitors are widely available, but little is known about their effectiveness in communicating information and the distraction they cause to other, often more important, tasks. This paper describes a series of experiments that examine the benefits and distractions caused by secondary displays on the desktop, considering various textual and graphical attributes of the information presented. The results suggest that many of the guidelines people currently follow seem not to be the best way to accomplish the desired tasks, and guidelines that may be appropriate when a display is the primary focus do not hold for the same display as a secondary focus.

A fundamental issue with user interfaces is how to help users stay aware of information without being overly intrusive or distracting. In this paper we describe Sideshow, a peripheral awareness interface designed to help users stay aware of people and information. We present data from a field trial of Sideshow where several hundred employees within our company used Sideshow over a seven-month period of time. The data indicate that Sideshow's design accomplishes the goal of providing awareness of important information without being overly distracting.

In this paper, we address the active device resolution problem of predicting the user interface desired by a user of a remote control when there are N nearby devices in a pervasive smart space. We collected real world traces of user behavior and applied several predictive algorithms, including Markov, naive Bayes, nearest neighbor, and decision tree algorithms. Our initial findings suggest that prediction of user behavior is feasible, and can achieve an 75-90% accuracy of choosing the correct UI depending on the length of the training set and the algorithm used.

We present an application of pervasive computing and sensor technology to enhance the sense of people and situation awareness in live meetings. We briefly discuss the initial study. We discuss mostly the design of the visual awareness, participant presence awareness, discussion situation awareness, and the dual interface approach supporting both public display, and a personal interface as an extension to the public interface. Finally, we briefly discuss our sensor technologies.

We describe Social Net, a novel interest-matching application that uses patterns of collocation, over time, to infer shared interests between users. Social Net demonstrates new possibilities and methods for using the capabilities of mobile devices equipped with RF-communications.

In previous work, we presented a software strategy called CASS (Cross Application Subscription Service) and an accompanying event notification server called CASSIUS (CASS Information Update Server). On-going work begged the question, how essential the CASSIUS server was to overall desire to support awareness? This present work examines that question through a three-fold evaluation of event notification servers more readily available than CASSISUS, namely Elvin and Siena.

We are investigating how situational awareness can enhance person-to-person audio-only communication, within the family or informal work team. As we explore innovative interpersonal communication interactions, we find the challenges in developing the engineering infrastructure and in accounting for social implications of the technology are just as critical to the research.

It is claimed that the worst errors in new system design are requirements errors. The author, along with a few other esteemed colleagues (e.g. the research team), wanted to understand what are requirements errors and what causes them. In examining these questions, we looked theoretically at the relationship between managerial choice of organization resource assignment, i.e. project selection, and requirements analysis. As a result of this investigation, the research team developed a theoretical model to represent the relationship. This study originated as a field examination of the model, i.e. how it matched what was observed in the field, where the model accurately represented what occurred and where it did not. Altogether, the research was done to capture and promote a deeper understanding of the issues and processes that exist at the start of a design cycle.

This paper describes a proposed research project to investigate the use of shared context as a way to increase the habitability of voice user interfaces.

Individuals with cognitive disabilities are often unable to live independently due to inability to perform daily tasks. Computationally enhanced prompting systems can mitigate this problem. High levels of assistive technology abandonment are driven by poor user interfaces. MAPS provides an effective prompting system with an intuitive interface for configuration.

In order to truly move forward on pervasive information access, devices must be engineered with cognitive models of users, and use these cognitive models concretely to create better interfaces. We present this position by illustrating an application that utilizes a cognitive model of how user surfs for information called Information Scent.

The arrangements allowing mobile co-workers to coordinate their activities are investigated based on an observation-based workplace-study. This is done with a special focus on the construction and maintenance of conventions and mutual understandings used in interaction in shared physical environments, and in mobile and distributed interaction.

We evaluate a stereo face tracking technique for perceptually driven pointing and selection tasks. Our algorithm is non-invasive, robust to illumination and large pose change, and self-initialized. The intersection of a "frontal face ray" with a display surface plane can be used as a primary or secondary stream of input for pointing or selection. Alone, pointing accuracy with head pose proved comparable to novice trackball use, and was more accurate than reports of eye gaze-based tracking. We also evaluated the performance of dual head and hand input on a box selection and coloring task. We found that performance with head and one hand was similar to dual hand performance but not significantly better than single hand performance. Our results are consistent with previously reported dual hand conflict in symmetric pointing tasks, and suggest that a head-based input stream should be used for asymmetric control.

MessyDesk and MessyBoard are designed to entice users into creating a context that will enhance their memory. MessyDesk, a replacement desktop, is useful for decoration and information management. MessyBoard, a shared bulletin board, allows remote collaborators to share information. We discuss several observations about how people use these programs.

The combination of an interactive large screen display and wireless handheld devices in a meeting room setting can augment and enhance collaborative activities. This work examines the issues in developing applications to provide collaborative meeting support in that setting. We situate this work with related meeting support systems, examine design challenges for an affinity diagram construction task, and describe evaluation issues in this meeting room environment.

Digital video is becoming ubiquitous, yet intrinsic properties of video make it difficult to edit. Based on interviews with professional video editors, we developed a video editor, called Silver. We are exploring how to use metadata and interaction techniques such as zooming to simplify video editing.

Is it possible to convert Web applications' users into power users of Web applications? Yes, if supported by model based authoring tools. By integrating tools for a Web application design and evolution into the Web application itself, users are empowered to act as co-designers in the creation and the evolution of the Web application.

Handheld devices, such as cell-phones and PDAs, can be used for more than just communication. What happens when every person has a handheld that ubiquitously communicates with every appliance in the environment? As part of the Pebbles project, we are exploring technologies that allow handhelds to monitor and control appliances. This paper is also available as: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/papers/HCIC2002puc/hcic2002puc.html

Individual users are the central feature of traditional models of information seeking. Yet, the dominant setting for information work in organizations is multifunctional teams. Therefore, understanding how people work together to find and use information is critical to designing effective systems for collaborative work. In this paper, I discuss organizational features that affect individuals' ability to collaborate on information seeking activities.

Many current proposals for electronic voting systems focus on security, accuracy, and technical infrastructure. Concern for the human aspects of electronic voting involve ballot design, but not the social context. Here I argue for an approach to electronic voting that situates the act of voting in multiple dialogues involving culture and community, that supports personal decision making and evaluation, and that creates personal voter histories.

We describe a community computing project in which senior citizens and middle school students cooperatively develop and discuss visual simulations of community situations. The goal is to enhance awareness of local issues and one another, while also developing competencies in visual programming and design. This paper reports a participatory design workshop in which teachers and senior citizens critiqued and then developed design concepts for community simulations.

We propose to address the key issues of aging in place that have this strong social component: peace of mind for extended family members, social isolation from grandchildren, and socially appropriate self-presentation of medical reminder aids. We address each of these issues with three technological interventions- the Digital Family Portrait, Dude's Magic Box and MedicineBox.

Requirements analysis for IT support of complex coordinated work in dynamic environment. A yearlong ethnographic field study of geographically dispersed professionals maintaining permission structure that allows students to transfer course credits among colleges and universities. Examines boundary objects which facilitate routine coordination in the nexus created by these professionals.

This paper reports the findings of an experiment conducted to determine whether graphical or textual representations of a simulated load monitor are more effective at communicating information in a dual-task environment. Results include guidelines for design tradeoffs based on significant differences in display facilitation of information awareness, communication, and introduction of distraction. This research is critical in developing a framework for dual-task evaluation that should guide the design and use of systems that require a division of user attention.