PNNL

Abstract

"Computing systems that attempt to automate safety-critical operations, such as those found in hospitals, traffic control centers, and military command posts, often do not account for the way that physical artifacts and human language constitute a medium for collaborative activity in those environments. Consequently, these approaches fail to win the favor of these naturally conservative end-users. In this paper we examine ethnographies of these three environments to understand their common characteristics and the artifacts used in them. Based on these comparisons, we argue that when automating these types of environments, designers must begin to deliver tools that: (1) support co-present collaboration, and (2) are reliable in the extreme. Otherwise, our solutions will continue to fall into the chasm that separates early and late-adopters of technology. Consequently, we propose a technique for augmenting physical artifacts by observing the use of multimodal language coincident with them. This approach blends the benefits of computation with those of physical artifacts, thereby bridging a technology chasm which separates early adopters from conservative users."