WYSIWIS Revised: Early Experiences with Multiuser Interfaces

1. WYSIWIS Revised: Early Experiences with Multiuser Interfaces Stefik, Bobrow, Foster, Lanning, and Tatar

2. Terms • Colab is an experimental meeting room developed at Xerox PARC in which computers support collaborative processes in face-to-face meetings. • Meeting tools provide operations in terms of visible, manipulable objects • WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) • In strict WYSIWIS, everyone sees exactly the same image of the written meeting information and can see where everyone is (tele) pointing. • Public vs. Private Windows (I.e., multiuser vs. single user windows) • 4 dimensions for relaxing strict WYSIWIS • Space Only a subset of the visible objects are wysiwis (e.g, windows and cursors) • Synchronization Allow delays in updating or viewing • Population Only subgroups of meeting share viewing • Congruence Alternate views of same image

3. Case 1: Boardnoter(The humble chalkboard) • Provides white board, chalk, eraser, keyboard, and pointer • Issue: Display of cursors from multiple users is too distracting • Solution: Display only local implements and those used for telepointing • Issue: Small grain-size transmission of data is computationally expensive • Solution Broadcast changes to information when the user indicates completion or after a reasonable time interval • Issue: Meetings often need multiple chalkboard, but there is room to show only one display at a time • Solution: Provide multiple visible boards by arranging shrunken ver4sion of them as icons in a stampsheet

4. Case 2: COGNOTER(Collaboration in the organization of ideas) • A meeting tool for organizing ideas for a presentation • Organizes its meeting process into a sequence of stages: brainstorming, ordering and grouping, evaluation, and outline generation. • Problem: Participants needed to fiddle with window sizes and placements too much. • Exacerbated by having a mix of public and private windows • Two proposals for organizing displays • Stampsheet • Rooms

5. Stampsheet approach • Issue: Screen can be crowded with windows used mainly by other participants • Solution: Allow participants to select independently which windows are full scale • Issue: When windows are it is not longer possible to assess quickly the locus of activity or which information has changed • Solution: Stampsheet icons should actively indicate when info is changing • Issue: Identifying recent changes is also important for full-size windows • Solution: provide a facility for highlighting recent changes • Issue: Subgroups need to cause other group members to attend to a particular item without interfering with activities of other subgroups • Solution: Provide telepointers that work only within subgroups

6. Stampsheet (Continued) • Issue: Subgroups need to be able to bring information to the attention of a full meeting • Solution: Provide both full and subgroup telepointing • Issue: Participant wants to join a subgroup but cannot find the stamp corresponding to a subgroup window • Solution: label windows and stamps • Issue: When new public window is created , putting the window on all displays may disrupt the activities of other subgroups • Solution: Automatically display new window on the displays of those participants who have the spawning window at full scale • Issue: Public and private windows compete for display space. Adding a new window to the display of subgroup can occlude windows of other participants • Solution: Participants can control the placement of all windows are their display

7. Rooms • Issue: Screen can be crowded with windows used mainly by other participants • Solution: Provide separate rooms for each subgroup. Rooms are connect by doors. • Issue: When subgroups in separate rooms, not possible to track overall progress or progress in other rooms • Solution: Create an overview room from which one can watch the overall activities of the meeting. • Issue: Identifying recent changes is also important when a participant reenters a room. • Solution: Provide a facility for highlighting recent changes in a room

8. Rooms (continued) • Issue: Subgroups need to cause other group members to attend to a particular item without interfering with the activities of other groups • Solution: Provide supgroup pointer that who only within a room • Issue: Bringing information to the attention of the full meeting • Solution: Provide a full-group telepointer that teleports all participants to the room of interest

9. Comparisons • Different approaches to placement of public windows • Stampsheet Place of public windows is privately determined • Rooms Public windows in the same place for everybody • Rooms create harder boundaries between subgroups because participants must leave room to visit other subgroups • Reconsidering division of items between two sets of ideas being worked on by two different subgroups • Stampsheet Participant just opens relevant windows • Rooms Greater overhead because a participant must either create a new room for the comparison or involve all the other members of one of the subgroups with the extra windows