Ernesto Arias
Abstract
Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical, and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although the EDC framework is applicable to different domains; our initial effort has focused on the domain of urban planning (specifically transportation planning) and community development.
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Index Terms
- Transcending the individual human mind—creating shared understanding through collaborative design
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Reviews
Joseph L. Podolsky
The authors have organized this overview into five parts. After a brief introduction, they devote Part 2 to a summary of challenging problems for the future of human-computer interaction. While there is little original work in this section, the authors have done a fine job of selecting and organizing current research so that readers may gain an excellent overview of this important, complex, and rapidly evolving subject. Just the subtitles in Part 2 are tantalizing. For example, section 2.2 is “Exploiting the Symmetry of Ignorance.“ The term “symmetry of ignorance,” first proposed by H. Rittel in a 1984 book, refers to the resolution of problems emerging from tacit knowledge carried in the minds of individual stakeholders. The symmetry of ignorance requires the creation of spaces and places that serve as boundary objects (shared objects to talk about and think with). Part 3 describes the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) collaborative design tool constructed by the authors. They detail a neighborhood planning process that used this tool. The EDC is novel in that it separates an action space, in which people simulate their individual needs and wants, from a “reflection space” that encourages more abstract discussion and that helps resolve problems and conflicts that were discovered in the action space. In addition to describing this specific EDC experiment, Part 3 discusses the architecture of the EDC process in general, and the way that action and reflection can be integrated to move toward a collaborative resolution of issues. Part 4 discusses the assessment of human-computer interaction activities, focusing, of course, on assessment of EDC processes. The EDC is an open system where the outcomes are unforeseeable, so assessment has a strong subjective element, determined primarily by the reactions of the participants. Part 5 is a proposal for future work. Specifically, the authors suggest that the EDC process be studied in various contexts, especially in those where there are many possible outcomes, rather than binary decisions. Readers who are actively engaged in human-computer interaction projects will find the whole article useful, but even those of us with just a general interest in the topic, simply because we are humans who interact with computers, will find insights here, especially in the background material in Part 2.
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