Gerhard Fischer - US grants

Modern high-function computer systems are difficult to master and use. This problem is attacked in an interdisciplinary project that combines the development of innovative systems with a theor- etical investigation of the cognitive processes involved in com- puter use. The goal is to develop design principles for systems that are radically easier to understand, and hence to use, than any now in existence. Rooted in a comprehension-centered theory of human-computer interaction, the principles are to be embodied in concrete applications, which will serve as testbeds for both principles and the theory they reflect. This project promises a fundamental contribution to the art and science of augmenting human intellectual productivity. The degree to which it integrates exploratory system design with fundamental research on user-system interaction is unique. If successful, it could yield theoretical results of unprecedented explanatory power and design principles of wide applicabilty to interactive systems.

This research is funded under the Special Initiative on Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology. This is one of eleven winners under that competition. The goal of this project is to develop a conceptual framework and a prototype system for collaboration in an asynchronous mode among members of design teams. The proposed design environments include knowledge-based and graphic construction components with issue-based hypermedia systems designed to support collaboration. The application domain for the prototype system is the design of communications networks within buildings. The complexity of such projects forces large and heterogeneous groups to work together over long periods of time. The large and growing discrepancy between in amount of potentially relevant knowledge for the design task and the amount any one designer can know and remember puts limits on progress in design. Overcoming this limit is a central challenge for developers of systems that support both individual and collaborative design efforts. The work in this project builds on previous developments embodied in the FRAMER system for the design of human-computer interfaces and the JANUS system for architectural design.

We propose to develop conceptual frameworks, system architectures, and domain-oriented knowledge-based design environments in support of learning on demand. Our approach will exploit the power of high-functionality computer systems in a project-oriented learning environment for under-graduate students (in computer science as well as in other related disciplines). We will place special emphasis on integrating working and learning and on supporting self- directed and group learning; we will study and evaluate these issues in a naturalistic setting.

IRI-9311839 Fischer, Gerhard University of Colorado-Boulder $70,000 - 12 mos. Human-Centered, Intelligent Agents Supporting Communication and Collaboration in Domain-Oriented Design Environments This is the third year funding of a three-year continuing award. There is a growing awareness among researchers and users of computer systems that systems based on a "tool" metaphor do not scale up to the information-rich, high-functionality systems of the future. The goals of this project are (1) the extension of theoretical and conceptual frameworks and (2) the design, implementation, and evaluation of prototype systems in order to accommodate the need for and to evaluate the contribution of intelligent agents for supporting communication and collaboration within domain-oriented design environments. The proposed research will explore the embedding of intelligent agents into domain-oriented design environments with the goals of reducing the cognitive load on designers through active behavior, and improving the quality of the designed artifact. Agents could, for instance, help designers avoid overlooking important possibilities and settling on suboptimal plateaus. Incorporating intelligent agents into design raises numerous conceptual, technical, and social issues. Technical problems will include user manipulation of agents through and agent editor, activation of agents in a shared context, presentation of agents, and creation of shared context through specification, construction, task representations, and interaction histories. Social issues will include the new role distributions between humans and computational agents, namely, the embedding of agents in human- centered cooperative problem solving systems supporting communication, coordination, and collaboration. These issues will be addressed by providing extended task representations and accountability through explanation.

9553371 Fischer The research methodology of our proposal rests on a tight integration of theory, innovative system development, and assessment. To achieve the focus on theory development, we will focus the innovative system development on one project, namely the Remote Exploratorium which combines design environments with networking. Our theory development will be supported through our strategic alliances-alliances that we have developed over the last few years ranging from K-12 schools (New Vista High School, Boulder), universities (Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, CU Boulder), and corporations (NYNEX Science and Technology; and Apple Computer). In the context of these alliances we will study specifically. * teachers as lifelong learners, and * the integration of learning into working rather than regarding learning as a separate activity. We will develop a conceptual framework founded on the objective that learners of all ages should be engaged in authentic, self- directed learning supported by innovative technologies. This framework, as it develops, needs to be radically different from most other approaches of using computers. ***

CDA - 9529549 Fischer, Gerhard Arias, Ernesto Eden, Hal University of Colorado at Boulder Shared Interaction in Support of Design, Learning, and Planning Two InterSim (Interactive Simulation) stations are being developed, each composed of a large interactive surface and multiple 3-D interactors. These systems allow us to move beyond the interaction model of single user/single computer--with an emphasis upon shared interaction to mediate social aspects of learning, design, and planning. These paradigms integrate the use of physical objects--to support and encourage face-to-face interaction among the participants--with virtual objects--to provide computational support for the model underlying the simulation. When linked across a network, these systems can allow the interaction with simulations and among individuals at a distance. A two-phase prototyping process is being used: First, an initial version utilizing front-surface projection is being developed, allowing us to deal with some of the software and device-controller issues and demonstrating the applicability of the approach. Subsequent development will utilize newer technology to create a back-imaged system to resolve shadowing problems. To test and guide its development, applications of the technology are underway in the form parallel efforts in the areas of Conflict Resolution, Decision Making and Planning; Learning by Design: Cross-Cultural Science Classroom Interchange; and Human-Centered, Intelligent Agents Supporting Communication and Collaboration.

This research investigates computer support for learning, working, and collaborating. It focuses on communities of practice (such as local area network managers and research teams) as subgroups within and across organizations. It involves work with specific communities to study their actual and potential learning processes. Based on the interpretation and assessment of these observations and theories from the research literature and previous work the project will develop and articulate a new conceptual framework for computational support of organizational learning. The research issues to be addressed include (1) how to capture knowledge and integrate the contexts of work; (2)how to sustain timeliness and utility of evolving information, and (3) how to deliver relevant information actively and adaptively. To assess and develop this framework, organizational memories will be created in collaboration with these communities, that include (1) mechanisms to capture and represent task specifications, work artifacts, and group communications; (2) facilities for practitioners to reorganize and sustain the usefulness of the memory; and (3)techniques of access and delivery for knowledge relevant to current tasks,. The project will extend emerging WWW technologies with structured web-site interactivity, version control of evolving information, software critiquing agents, and end-user programmability. Finally, the memory and learning prototypes will be assessed in naturalistic settings.

This request would support college students (graduate and undergraduate) to attend an international conference on "Computer Support for Collaborative Learning" (CSCL) of about 700 researchers and practitioners in Boulder Colorado in January 2002. The theme for the conference is: foundations of the research field in theory, technology, methodology, and community building.

The requested funds will support activities at conference such as creating a "community memory" which involves digital video, the Web, and DVD media to capture and disseminate ideas from the conference. It will also support activities that involve teachers directly in the conference process in order to provide the other participants with the perspective of practitioners. Also, it will support a doctoral consortium to introduce graduate students to the research community as they explain their dissertation work.

Whereas much of teaching in our educational culture presumes an omniscient teacher transmitting knowledge to unknowing learners, most learning that takes place outside of the classroom is based on breakdowns in the context of real-world activities leading to reflection and learning. The traditional approach has some validity for situations in which "basic knowledge" needs to be communicated, but it is not well suited to the highly situated nature of lifelong learning and design problem solving.

Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, the role of interaction and collaboration with other individuals is critical. Much of our intelligence and creativity results from exploiting the "symmetry of ignorance" (between different communities) as a source of power. Social creativity emphasizes that the heart of intelligent human performance is not the individual human mind but groups of minds in interaction with each other and in interaction with tools and artifacts. Meta-design characterizes objectives, techniques, and processes for creating new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and contribute to and benefit from the creativity of the group.

The project will: (1) develop a theoretical framework and systems to support social creativity as a specific form of lifelong learning; (2) investigate principles of meta-design and how they support social creativity in the context of learning and working; (3) work with specific communities to demonstrate the scalability and sustainability of our approach; (4) focus on specific domains such as the collaborative design of course information environments; (5) explore the role of social creativity and meta-design in practice by changing classroom environments and undergraduate education; and (6) assess how our theoretical attributes of lifelong learning, social creativity, and meta-design map onto practice and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our approach in realistic settings.

ABSTRACT
SEL - 0204277
Gerhard Fischer
U of Colorad @ Boulder

Title: A Social-Technical Approach to the Evolutionary Construction of Reusable Software Component Repositories PIs: Gerhard Fischer and Yunwen Ye
Although software reuse improves both the quality and productivity of software development, systematic reuse has not yet met its expected success due to difficulties in creating and maintaining reuse repositories and enabling software developers to build new systems with components from the reuse repository. The two issues are in a deadlock: if software developers are unable to reuse, the investments on reuse cannot be justified; if companies are unwilling to invest in reuse, software developers have little to reuse. This project takes a social-technical approach to address both issues. It will develop reuse-conducive environments based on the Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding (SER) model to guide thedevelopment and evolution of reuse repositories. It will instantiate the conceptual framework for reuse by creating a set of tools to support each phase of the SER model: SEEDER, BROKER, ENHANCER, and RESEEDER. This research will create a new understanding of the social, cognitive, and technical issues in software reuse, and explore new approaches and develop innovative tools to support reuse. The results of the research will make a significant impact on the design of information repository systems and human-centered software development environments.

The PI and his colleagues, as members of the Cognitive Levers (CLever) research team within the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at the University of Colorado at Boulder, have suggested that a suitable mobile architecture could support activities for daily living for people with cognitive disabilities. The PI argues that in order to design cost-effective, intelligent technologies to connect caregivers and members of the target community, we must leverage existing handheld and data network technologies and identify critical technologies necessary to complement and address gaps in current mobile, ubiquitous computing environments and platforms. The PI notes that the recent commercial introduction of a new generation of mobile handheld devices that combine Wi-Fi and wide-area cellular data technology provides a potentially cost-effective platform upon which to build and evaluate prototype components. In this exploratory project, the PI and his team will investigate the feasibility of their ideas. They will design mobile architectures based on theories of distributed intelligence ranging from "thin client" architectures to peer-to-peer networks. They will obtain performance data from real-world systems while carrying out authentic tasks, thereby obtaining specific content specifications. They will investigate the limits of the targeted technologies with respect to: connectivity between base and mobile stations, data accessibility, and throughput; location-awareness; technical sufficiency of commercial handheld devices; and overall architecture design. The PI expects that project outcomes will enable him to develop grounded theories and effective architectures for the use of new technologies in this field.

Broader Impacts: The target community for this research has traditionally been under-served by society. This exploratory "stress test" of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile technologies with laboratory prototype components (MfA, MAPS, LifeLine), while performing real-world tasks, in order to understand current capabilities, constraints, and technical requirements, should catalyze rapid and innovative advances in the design of a robust, mobile socio-technical environment to effectively support people with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers in authentic everyday living activities.

We are now entering a new phase for software development where millions of people are not only using software but also becoming involved in its development to widely varying degrees. Existing software design methodologies that focus primarily on productivity-driven systems are insufficient to cope with the emergence of situated uses and fluctuating requirements encountered by such wide and diversified user involvement. Rather, a new class of participative software systems is needed, the design of which does not end at the time of deployment. For participative systems success hinges on continued user participation, and an important goal is to achieve the "best fit" between the software system and its ever-changing context of use, problems, domains, users, and communities of users. In this project, the PI will develop a meta-design framework to address fundamental challenges and guide software developers in the design of such systems. Grounded in an assessment of existing design theories as well as the systematic analysis of successful participative software systems, this research will start with a partially articulated meta-design framework, founded on the assumption that meta-designed systems can be supported by the Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding (SER) process model. The PI will identify and correlate the technical and social characteristics of participative software systems that support users to collaboratively engage in the design of solutions to their own problems. The identified characteristics will be used to guide future development of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC), which will be used by real users to solve complex real-world problems in different design domains. The work will be integrated with a specific major, multi-year urban planning project relating to public transportation, for which an initial collaboration among the stakeholders has already been formed. Careful and systematic assessment of design decision impacts, guided by the initial meta-design framework, on this real-world problem-solving situation will feed back into the refinement of the meta-design framework. The resulting meta-design framework will delineate a design space, define a design process, and identify a set of evaluation criteria for the creation of participative software systems.

Broader Impacts: As software systems are being increasingly woven into our daily lives and reshape the way people interact, collaborate, work, and think, requirements for software systems have become more individually differentiated and continuously change during their ongoing use. This research will create the scientific foundation for the design of participative software systems that do not have fixed requirements at any point in time, and necessitate user participation and contribution as a fundamental part of the system. The research will contribute to a better understanding of the complicated interactions of technical and social aspects essential to this challenging domain of a science of design. The project will bring together researchers from design theory, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science to gain insight into how to put owners of problems in charge and make them independent of "high-tech scribes." The many undergraduate and graduate students who will be involved in the research activities will as part of their experience be exposed to new approaches to software design.

The proposed research will create environments that go beyond existing Wikis (being primarily focused on hypertext) to permit the integration (not just attachment) of other forms of media ranging from movies and animations, to sharing of datasets, to the creation and utilization of social network information to support community interaction, to conceptual mind-mapping media.

The proposed research will
- examine how current wiki-like environments are limited in supporting the different ways in which creative people might represent and contribute to a body of knowledge and study what other types of objects, context and interfaces (beyond hyperlinked text) would be desirable, usable, and useful;
- analyze and create specifically the following entities: mind maps, videos, anecdotes/stories and how these could be designed to allow them to be readily and rapidly developed and extended by participants;
- explore different (potentially intertwined) "modes" interacting with such an environment (including: face-to-face activities, synchronous, and asynchronous activities); and
- utilize new paradigms (such as the emerging Web 2.0 framework) for developing systems that are open and extensible, permitting the inclusion of new forms of information and representation within the community memory.

The proposed research meets specifically the following SGER criteria:
- having urgency with regard to availability of, or access to unique opportunities - the opportunity to study the creation and support of the CreativeIT research community, as represented by efforts already undertaken to seed an initial Swiki for the workshop held November 1-3, 2006. The opportunity to study this community building effort and supporting it with a new class of wiki represents a unique opportunity.
- ventures into emerging and transformative research ideas - the emerging efforts to establish a program within NSF linking IT with creative endeavors will catalyze the self application of the programs goals to the development of the program.
- application of new expertise or new approaches to established research topics - the synergy of a challenging task, the involvement of the emerging research community, and the expertise and experience of the proposing researchers will offer unique perspectives on the creation and evolution of a new generation of web-based tools for community development.

Intellectual Merit. The proposed activity will permit the development of grounded theories and effective architectures for the use of new technologies in this field.

Broad Impact. The socio-technical environment developed will have the potential for broad impact by supporting creative communities, which are a critical resource for the competitive ability of the US workforce. The effort to create a community around the CreativeIT Initiative within CISE provides an opportunity to study the use of community-building creativity-support tools for a community where support for development and sharing of creative ideas is critical.

DRL- 0823670
PI: Elisa Giaccardi

ABSTRACT

In this Communicating Research to Public Audiences project, the University of Colorado at Boulder, in partnership with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, the CU- Boulder Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, is building on the work they have done via their NSF research award, A Meta-Design Framework for Participative Software Systems, in which they have been developing participative software systems (PPS) and applications of the software.

Community of Soundscapes will employ newly developed mobile computing and collaborative mapping technology in programs that help users gain greater insights and stake into the shared environment in which they live and visit. Sound Camera, a digital recording device outfitted with GPS mapping software, allows users to collect audio clips of their sonic experiences as they explore their cities, parks and other environments and upload them online onto a digital map through a Web 2.0 application. They can then compose, annotate, and share soundscapes of the places where the sounds were recorded. A Web site will be developed to expand the project?s reach to audiences not in the Boulder programs. Professional development training will be provided for collaborators and through the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.

The educational goals are to promote literacy of PSS and engage the public in personally meaningful activities that benefit environmental education (cognitive goal) and expand environmental awareness (affective goal). The project work and its evaluation processes (by Wells Resources, Inc.) are intended to advance the field of informal science education with respect to PSS and to study how these new technologies might affect shifts in the kinds of experiences various audiences prefer to have.

Existing wiki technology has successfully encouraged the collaborative development of content from a distributed and large set of individuals. However, a typical wiki does not encourage the community to actively collaborate or communicate with each other, unless they are required to collaborate. This project identifies a framework for addressing the shortcomings in typical wiki technology that encompasses ideas from social computing to develop a more community focus for the CreativeIT wiki. This project creates a socio-technical environment to support researchers, practitioners, and students to become a vibrant community focused on Creativity and IT, based on the formative evaluation of the existing CreativeIT wiki and related research in the field. A theoretically grounded and empirically evaluated framework is developed for the creation and evolution of a participation culture. Grounding the proposed research in a real problem provides a unique opportunity to assess the strengths and weaknesses on an ongoing basis. This research effort contributes to broaden the theme of Creativity and IT, involves more people to participate, and sustain the effort in the long-term future. The project identifies insights, mechanisms, guidelines, and support environments for participation cultures.

The rise in social computing facilitated and supported by Web 2.0 cyberinfrastructures has resulted in a rise in cultures of participation---in which all people are provided with the means to participate actively in personally meaningful problems and problems within their community. Boulder, Colorado was recently named the first "smart grid" city such that many choices about the allocation of electrical power and use decisions will be accessible at the individual household and community level under the notion that this will lead to the most intelligent use of resources. This development represents opportunities and challenges for exploring a possible transformation of learning and discovery including: (1) allowing passive consumers to become active decision makers and contributors; (2) democratizing participation; and (3) solving systemic problems that necessitate computational approaches that transcend the individual human mind and require collaborative actions.

The overarching research question addressed by this CDI Type I proposal is: What fundamental transformations of learning and discovery can be achieved by supporting and fostering cultures of participation? The project will make use of active ongoing participation of students as well as focus groups and interviews. The project has the support of the University's Renewable and Sustainable Energy institute, the City of Boulder, Tendril Inc., and a university student alliance. The project will also include an afterschool club program and a summer school program that serves underrepresented audiences.

The vision for the Smart Grid is to support new ways of producing, transmitting, distributing, and consuming energy to change and improve the sustainability of future energy environments. This represents a unique opportunity for synergy between research in social-computational systems and the Smart Grid application domain. This project will demonstrate that on the one hand, for the Smart Grid effort to live up to its vision and expectations, technological developments are necessary but not sufficient: fostering and supporting changes in human behavior are equally important. On the other hand, social-computational systems face interesting, specific, and unique research questions to cope with the challenges associated with Smart Grids.

The project will design and develop: (a) components of an initial theoretical framework for social-computational systems based on cultures of participation and (b) initial architecture and interaction mechanisms for HYDRA, an open, collaborative, living knowledge environment to foster and support ecologies of different levels of participation. Evaluation in naturalistic settings will provide requirements and guidelines for future developments as a major outcome.

The project will transcend existing technological research by creating prototypes of new socio-technical systems to empower human beings and provide opportunities, incentives, and rewards for changing their behaviors. Collaborations with local technology companies, local governments, and international researchers will ensure the broad impact of our research. Beyond the lessons learned from our specific developments, the theoretical grounding of our research will make our methodologies, components, architectures, requirements, and guidelines applicable to a large number of social-computational systems.

Energy sustainability is a theme of national and worldwide importance. Smart-Grid environments are focused on creating and using information and communication technologies to support new and potentially more sustainable ways of producing, transmitting, distributing, and consuming electricity. This project focuses on creating a socio-computational system that enables citizens to make informed choices about their energy consumption, share their decisions with others and visualize the consequences of their own actions.

New social-computational systems are needed to facilitate this sort of citizen engagement with the energy economy because (1) most citizens are unaware of these new technological developments; (2) information presentation is poorly designed; and (3) the social context of individual energy use is ignored resulting in few social interactions and collaborations. All of these challenges lie at the intersection of human behavior (both individual and social levels) and technology.

Intellectual Merit: The two overarching goals of this project are (a) the creation of transformative theoretical frameworks for understanding social-computational foundations for these settings, making our methodologies, components, architectures, requirements, and guidelines applicable to a large number of other social-computational systems (for example, smart cities and health-care) and (b) the development of human-centered systems for fostering smart communities in Smart-Grid environments that will turn passive consumers of energy into informed, active decision makers.

Broader Impacts: The project will lead to new tools and strategies to increase the use of Smart-Grid technologies, thereby reducing overall national energy usage and dependence on foreign energy sources. In addition, the project will make strides in including and supporting the ability of marginal and underrepresented populations to use these technologies, thereby avoiding a digital-energy divide. The Principle Investigators are working with the El Pueblo Mágico after-school effort at Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette, Colorado, to engage students and their families in fostering energy awareness and responsibility, providing broader views on end-user energy concerns.