SKINNI: Connecting coworkers using information kiosks in the...

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1 SKINNI: Connecting coworkers using information kiosks in the workplace Max Van Kleek MIT CSAIL 200 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139, USA [email protected] Tyler Horton MIT CSAIL 200 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139, USA [email protected] Elizabeth I. Boyle MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02142, USA [email protected] ABSTRACT SKINNI, the Smart K iosk I nformation N avigation and Note-posting I nterface, is an application designed for touch- screen information kiosks installed in public spaces of a workplace. SKINNI provides both members of an organization and visitors easy access to an organization’s announcements, event information, and forums for people to post contributions of their own. Users may attach comments to any of the postings, and contributions are displayed on all kiosks throughout the workplace, to promote communication and collaboration. To evaluate SKINNI within the context of an organization, we have chosen to design SKINNI for the new MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). We followed an iterative, user-centered design process, involving users (CSAIL lab members) at five different stages along the way. This paper describes our design process and our final design, concluding with a discussion of future work, that includes potential directions for the next phase of the project. Author Keywords Information Kiosks, Iterative Design, Interaction Design, Touch-screen interfaces, Electronic bulletin-boards, Information Architectures for Public Spaces. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2.f Information interfaces and presentation (HCI): Graphical user interfaces, H.5.2.q Information interfaces and presentation (HCI): User-centered design. INTRODUCTION Recent workplace studies have indicated that informal communication among the members of an organization is essential for building cross-organizational collaboration [4]. However, physical distance reduces the prevalence of such unplanned, informal communication, and as organizations grow larger, distances among members continues to increase. Moreover, the communication infrastructure in place in workplaces today is not well suited to supporting large-scale informal communication. Companies primarily use official internal e-mail mailing lists, or corporate internal home pages known as Enterprise Information Portals (EIPs) to disseminate information widely throughout the organization. EIPs are usually controlled by an internal publishing entity, which consolidates corporate information, such as company news and stock prices; EIPs are not forums where individuals can make their own contributions. Company-wide mailing lists are also generally used only for one-way, official information flow and have too many members for use in casual discussions. SKINNI is a system for supporting exchanges between members of a large organization through touch-screen kiosks installed in open public spaces throughout the workplace, such as lounges, hallways, break rooms, and elevator lobbies. SKINNI is an organized electronic bulletin board that conveys both the type of information that commonly appears on EIPs (such as news articles, official announcements, and events) and informal postings by individual members of the community. Additionally, SKINNI permits anyone to attach comment to any posting, further encouraging member participation. SKINNI kiosks are installed in public spaces and high-traffic areas, to increase the probability that users will experience face-to- face encounters in these spaces. RELATED WORK The CHI research community has investigated other techniques for maintaining social awareness and building a sense of community across space and time for over a decade. Media spaces [1, 5] have sought to unite physically separated workspaces through the use of live audio-visual feeds. More recently, blogs and wikis have gained much popularity as web-based authoring and collaboration tools [2].

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SKINNI: Connecting coworkers using information kiosksin the workplace

Max Van KleekMIT CSAIL

200 Technology SquareCambridge, MA 02139, USA

[email protected]

Tyler HortonMIT CSAIL

200 Technology SquareCambridge, MA 02139, USA

[email protected]

Elizabeth I. BoyleMIT

77 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02142, USA

[email protected]

ABSTRACTSKINNI, the Smart Kiosk Information Navigation andNote-posting Interface, is an application designed for touch-screen information kiosks installed in public spaces of aworkplace. SKINNI provides both members of anorganization and visitors easy access to an organization’sannouncements, event information, and forums for peopleto post contributions of their own. Users may attachcomments to any of the postings, and contributions aredisplayed on all kiosks throughout the workplace, topromote communication and collaboration.

To evaluate SKINNI within the context of an organization,we have chosen to design SKINNI for the new MITComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory(CSAIL). We followed an iterative, user-centered designprocess, involving users (CSAIL lab members) at fivedifferent stages along the way. This paper describes ourdesign process and our final design, concluding with adiscussion of future work, that includes potential directionsfor the next phase of the project.

Author KeywordsInformation Kiosks, Iterative Design, Interaction Design,Touch-screen interfaces, Electronic bulletin-boards,Information Architectures for Public Spaces.

ACM Classification KeywordsH.5.2.f Information interfaces and presentation (HCI):Graphical user interfaces, H.5.2.q Information interfacesand presentation (HCI): User-centered design.

INTRODUCTIONRecent workplace studies have indicated that informal

communication among the members of an organization isessential for building cross-organizational collaboration [4].However, physical distance reduces the prevalence of suchunplanned, informal communication, and as organizationsgrow larger, distances among members continues toincrease. Moreover, the communication infrastructure inplace in workplaces today is not well suited to supportinglarge-scale informal communication. Companies primarilyuse official internal e-mail mailing lists, or corporateinternal home pages known as Enterprise InformationPortals (EIPs) to disseminate information widelythroughout the organization. EIPs are usually controlled byan internal publishing entity, which consolidates corporateinformation, such as company news and stock prices; EIPsare not forums where individuals can make their owncontributions. Company-wide mailing lists are alsogenerally used only for one-way, official information flowand have too many members for use in casual discussions.

SKINNI is a system for supporting exchanges betweenmembers of a large organization through touch-screenkiosks installed in open public spaces throughout theworkplace, such as lounges, hallways, break rooms, andelevator lobbies. SKINNI is an organized electronic bulletinboard that conveys both the type of information thatcommonly appears on EIPs (such as news articles, officialannouncements, and events) and informal postings byindividual members of the community. Additionally,SKINNI permits anyone to attach comment to any posting,further encouraging member participation. SKINNI kiosksare installed in public spaces and high-traffic areas, toincrease the probability that users will experience face-to-face encounters in these spaces.

RELATED WORKThe CHI research community has investigated othertechniques for maintaining social awareness and building asense of community across space and time for over adecade. Media spaces [1, 5] have sought to unite physicallyseparated workspaces through the use of live audio-visualfeeds. More recently, blogs and wikis have gained muchpopularity as web-based authoring and collaboration tools[2].

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SKINNI, however, differs from these technologies inseveral ways. First, unlike media spaces, the type ofawareness that SKINNI affords is lightweight; that is,awareness of others is gained only through reading theirpostings. Unlike workgroup blogs and wikis, which arefrequently used to serve as a form of group memory forwork-related items, we intend individuals’ contributions inSKINNI to extend beyond the context of work but withinthe context of the lab as a community, much as paperbulletin boards are used hallways today. Finally, whileblogs and wikis require manual layout and regularmaintenance, SKINNI is entirely self-maintaining.

CASE STUDYThe need for a collaboration-building system like SKINNIbecame apparent when the MIT Laboratory for ComputerScience (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratorymerged in June 2003 to form the Computer Science andArtificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). This new laboratory isnow one of the largest laboratories on campus, with severalhundred faculty, students, research scientists, and staffspread across thirteen research areas, each divided intosmaller faculty-supervised groups. Our initial hypothesis,based on our own observations, was that members ofresearch groups studying closely related research topics orlocated in close physical proximity were usually aware ofeach other’s research and social activities. However,among groups whose offices are physically far away,communication and awareness were much poorer, and thatmost members were not even aware of the existence ofcertain other groups or members of the lab.

Our second motivation for building SKINNI came from theobservation that traditionally, the LCS and AI labs havereceived hundreds of outside visitors each year. Many ofthese visitors have gotten lost within the building, or neededhelp locating a lab event or finding a lab member. Due to alack of an easily accessible global directory and map,members have resorted to taping paper signs with arrows,pointing the way to special events or frequently usedconference rooms. This motivated the need for anapplication that made it easy for visitors to find what theyare looking for and get a peek at life inside the lab.

DESIGN PROCESSOur design process followed a spiral model of softwaredevelopment, inspired by IBM’s Olympic MessagingSystem [3]. This approach was attractive because it was aniterative approach that involved target users throughout thedesign process. In particular, the spiral model involvedusers early in the design process to help answer the largestquestions about what the system should do and how itshould be organized.

TASK VALIDATIONWe began the design process by validating the need forSKINNI by surveying our prospective user population. Weconducted a survey with ten randomly chosen CSAIL lab

members, including eight students and two facultymembers. The survey asked users to estimate thepercentage of lab members with whom they wereacquainted (or at least familiar) that worked in theirimmediate proximity (i.e., on their floor), versus otherfloors within the lab. Among the eight students, the numberof colleagues each knew on floor varied widely, but allnumbers dropped sharply—to below ten percent—for theremaining floors. Another question from the survey askedmembers whether they regularly shared “fun stuff,” (e.g.,non-work related news articles, web links or e-mails withcolleagues at lab), how frequently they shared these items,and how they shared these items. All survey participantssaid they shared non-work items with their colleagues asfrequently as twice per day or as infrequently as once permonth. One participant responded that he wanted to sharenon-work related items more frequently, but refrained sincehe did not want to contribute to e-mail clutter. The finalquestion asked whether users had posted announcements tothe entire CSAIL community, and which method they used.Since the recent lab merger, several participants had not yetneeded to post an announcement to the whole lab, but thosewho needed to make announcements commented that therewas “no good way” to do it. Participants said they wouldsend an urgent announcement to the lab’s mass e-mail list,or poster the hallways to make a less urgent announcement.

Paper PrototypeWe conducted the first user evaluation of our system designusing paper prototypes made from layers of paper and Post-It Notes™ (See Figure 1). Three users performed threetasks using our paper UI. This experience turned out to betremendously important, since it identified problems at alllevels, from the cosmetic (e.g., choosing better text forlabels) to the fundamental (e.g., identifying which featuresto keep or discard). For example, when users immediatelyexpressed confusion when choosing which tab to select, werealized that there was a usability problem since we had toomany tabs with labels that were too closely related. Wereduced the number of main application tabs from eight tofour for the next version.

Figure 1 User testing with the SKINNI Paper Prototype.

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HTML-based Computer Prototype EvaluationFor our second design evaluation, we created a simpleHTML-based mockup of SKINNI, redesigned based uponour results from the paper prototype. We then asked threerandomly chosen students who were enrolled in a graduate-level user interface design class to perform an expertevaluation of our interface. The evaluators worked with ourHTML prototype for one week, and produced individualwritten evaluations. Our evaluators recommended a furthersimplification of the UI, and encouraged us to optimize ourapplication for ease of use and responsiveness to meet thedemands of both first-time and experienced users.

Java prototype User StudyAs described in the design section, we implemented ourfirst working prototype in Java using the Swing UI toolkit.When we completed this prototype, we tested it in a studywith three users, performing six tasks each in random order.Each user spent approximately 20 minutes interacting withthe system. These tests helped us identify problems withour design at nearly all levels, from missing features tovisibility and layout issues. One of the most criticalfeatures SKINNI lacked was a way for the user to browsethrough all events to find a particular event; the timeline-based event arrangement performed badly for this purpose.Therefore, we created a toggle-able list view of events,which will be described in the next section.

Java Prototype Expert EvaluationAlso after we completed our first Java implementation, weasked Prof. Robert Miller and Jaime Teevan, for an expertevaluation of our interface. Their feedback proved mosthelpful in identifying potentially important but subtle issuesthat were not identified in the user study, includingproblems with internal consistency (such as the ordering ofannouncements), color choice (lowering saturation forreadability), and widget choice and placement.

DESIGN GOALSOur early iterations helped us set our final design goals forour implementation. First, we had to make SKINNIsuitable for use by two major user audiences: lab membersand visitors. While lab members are likely to be veryexperienced with exploring new graphical user interfaces,visitors to the lab may not. Thus, SKINNI must have a verylow threshold of use, to ensure that first-time users willimmediately be able to use the system to find theinformation they are seeking. Second, since users willoften be in a hurry, SKINNI must be highly responsive, andusers must be able to converge to the information they arelooking for quickly. Third, since a number of users may useSKINNI for several tasks in succession, the UI mustprovide clear indications of its current state, and must allowusers to switch “paths” within the application. Finally,since users will interact with the system using touch-screens, the look-and-feel of the user interface componentsmust be optimized for directly touching and tapping thescreen with one’s fingers instead of a mouse.

SKINNI DESIGN DESCRIPTION

Kiosk HardwareSKINNI will run on an assortment of active signs—smalltouch-screen TabletPCs mounted along hallway corridors—and perceptual kiosks—larger installations equipped formultimodal interaction, with multiple touch-screendisplays, a camera, microphone, and directional speaker.Both signs and kiosks will be installed in public circulationroutes, open spaces and lounges in the new CSAILbuilding, when it opens in spring 2004. Kiosk hardwaredesign is discussed in greater detail in [6].

GUI DesignThe SKINNI GUI is comprised of four sections, “Today”,“Directory”, “Map”, and “Help”, accessible via tabs alongthe top of the display (See Figure 2).

“Today” SectionThe “Today” section is SKINNI’s main section, andcontains three subsections as follows: current lab events onthe left, current announcements on the right, and a shared,collapsible/maximizable details display on the bottom.When a user approaches a CSAIL kiosk, SKINNI displaysthis pane by default.

Current events are displayed in either a vertical timeline ora list format, and the user may change the display formatvia a graphical radio-button along the bottom of the view.The timeline representation allows users to quicklyascertain the temporal relationship of the day’s events at aglance. Our user study revealed that when users weresearching for an item they saw previously, the list formatwas faster and less frustrating. To help sort events, eachevent belongs to a category, such as seminars, meetings,social, or special events, and is color-coded accordingly.Users may filter the view of events by category using a

Figure 2 SKINNI with typical “Today” pane configuration.

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drop-down box. Users may post a new event by clicking onthe button at the bottom of the view.

The announcements view is nearly identical to the eventslist view, and there is no announcements timeline viewbecause announcements do not occur between specifiedtimes. Announcements are ordered in the list viewaccording to their recency. Like events, announcements areassigned to categories, and are color-coded and filterableaccordingly. Users may post new announcements bypressing a button on the bottom of the announcements view.

If a user touches an item in either the events orannouncement view, the selected item is displayed in thedetails pane at the bottom. All information about the item,including author, date and time of posting, and contents aredisplayed in this view. Any comments that people haveattached to the item are also displayed in an expandable list(See Figure 3). Users may attach their own comments bypressing the “Add a comment” button, which displays adialog box with an input form.

If users find something interesting posted on SKINNI, theycan e-mail the item to themselves, or their colleagues usingthe Mail button on the title bar of the details view. Atkiosks equipped with thermal roll printers, users can printitems by pressing the Print button, which results in a small,receipt-like printout they can take with them.

The Directory, Map and Help SectionsThe remaining sections in SKINNI are primarily providedfor our secondary target audience, lab visitors. The“Directory” section features a searchable alphabetized listof all lab members, their office locations, phone numbersand e-mail addresses. When the user clicks on a labmember’s name, a miniature map appears, directing them tothe selected person’s office.

The “Map” section displays the layout of a specified floorin the lab and provides navigation buttons for locatingrooms or floors. Users may select a floor manually andscan for their destination room, or can use the search box tofind a room automatically – SKINNI selects the appropriatefloor and highlight the room.

Touch-screen Interaction ConsiderationsThe graphical objects in SKINNI were designed so thatusers may easily interact with the system via a touch-screendisplay, which is inherently less precise than using a mouse.

All GUI widgets and custom SKINNI components areoversized to account for the disparity in granularity betweena mouse pointer and a finger. In particular, scrollbars,buttons, and tabs are all sized at two to three times largerthan normal. Because hovering, double clicking and right-clicking mouse gestures are impossible with touch-screens,all mouse gestures are implemented as single left-clicks

FUTURE WORKThe largest question that we have not yet been able to test iswhether SKINNI will fulfill its original ambitions to makeCSAIL members more aware of each other. When the newCSAIL laboratory building opens this spring, we willperform a follow-up study to measure how frequentlySKINNI is used, how it is used, and how users perceive thesystem. Although SKINNI can currently be launched as aJava applet on the web, we may develop a desktop versionas well.

Another important step is to design an effective form ofcommunity moderation for SKINNI so that more popularpostings could be shown more prominently than otherpostings. Another related problem is that of spam; if acommunity member or visitor floods SKINNI with postingsthat the community does not want to see, what could thecommunity do directly? We will address these questions inthe next design iteration for SKINNI.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank Prof. Rob Miller and Jaime Teevan for theirguidance and instruction, and Dr. Howard Shrobe for hiscontinued support of our research. This project is funded byMIT’s Project Oxygen.

REFERENCES1. Dourish, P. and Bly, S. Portholes: Supporting

Awareness in a Distributed Work Group. CHI 92, ACMPress (1992), 541-547.

2. Ernst, J. A Taxonomy of Work Groups and theirRelationships. R-Objects Inc. May 2003.

3. Gould, J.D., Boies, S., Levy, S., Richards, J.T., andSchoonard, J. The 1984 Olympic Message System: atest of behavioral principles of system design. CACMv.30, (9), ACM Press(1987), 758-769.

4. Grinter, R., Herbsleb, J., and Perrey, D.E. TheGeography of Coordination: Dealing with Distance inR&D Work. GROUP 99, ACM Press (1999), 306.

5. Sawhney, N., Wheeler, S., and Schmandt, C. AwareCommunity Portals: Shared Information Appliances forTransitional Spaces. Personal and UbiquitousTechnologies, vol. 5(1). Springer-Verlag, 2001.

6. Van Kleek, M. Intelligent Environments for InformalPublic Spaces: the Ki/o Kiosk Platform. Master's Thesis.MIT, Cambridge, MA. February 2003

Figure 3 Close-up view of comments in the details window.