Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
from reviewing those already made through the available nonverbal communication, the
discussion periods within the Implementation stage were considered as Reviewing stages.
By the end of the Implementation, a final Reviewing stage to agree on the final details of the
task was expected. The collaborative stages were then determined based on data logs as
follows:
Initial stage
- starts with the session and ends when the Planning stage starts.
Planning stage
- starts with the first discussion period and ends when the
Implementation stage starts.
Implementation stage
- starts when participants move the first piece of furniture.
Reviewing stage -
when discussion periods occur during the Implementation stage, and
at the end of it.
3.1.2 Results
At a first glance to the data it could be overseen that the pointing mechanism was barely
used; the speech content revealed that the users' had to make oral references to areas where
there were no furniture because they could not point them. Due to this misconception in the
design of the environment, pointing gestures were left out.
The changes in gazes were expected to be used to manage talking-turns. The number of
times subjects directed their gaze to their peers while they were talking or listening, was
relatively small compared to the number of times they were gazing to the workspace as
shown in Table 4. A first attempt to understand gazes was to identify possible problems for
the participants not using the mechanism as expected.
The possible identified problems in the experimental application were that when the user
was viewing the workspace area, he/she did not receive enough awareness about the other
users' gazes −see Figure 5. Users had sometimes to specify verbally whom they were
addressing if not to both members. Also, sometimes even if they knew their peers names,
they did not know which of the two avatars represented each of them.
An external person was asked to determine through the audio recorders, for each talking-
turns interchange whether the students were having an episode in which they were taking
decisions, making plans or reviewing one of those, that is, discussion periods. Only two
interchanges involving two of the three members had these characteristics and the rest of
them included the 43 discussion periods identified following the specifications. That is,
almost 96% of the talking-turn interchanges with the three members involved were
discussion periods.
Gazes
While Talking
While Listening
Group
Workspace
Peers
Workspace
Peers
1
93
29
172
89
2
270
19
474
36
3
108
4
217
10
5
188
45
369
68
Table 4. Number of gazes to the workspace or peers while talking or listening
