HxI: A national research initiative in

ICT-Augmented Human Interactivity

Rudi Vernik1,2, Belinda Kellar1, Julien Epps1,3, Claudia Schremmer1,4
1
HxI Initiative – Project [braccetto]
2
DSTO, West Avenue, Edinburgh SA 5111 Australia
3
National ICT Australia, Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh NSW 1430 Australia
4
CSIRO ICT Centre, Cnr Pembroke & Vimiera Roads, Marsfield NSW 2122 Australia
rudi.vernik@dsto.defence.gov.au, belinda.kellar@nicta.com.au,
julien.epps@nicta.com.au, claudia.schremmer@csiro.au

Abstract than simply providing more information at an employee’s

Three of Australia’s publicly funded research
organisations (CSIRO, DSTO and NICTA) have recently
joined forces to lead a new national initiative in ICT-
Augmented Human Interactivity. The HxI Initiative
focuses on the “x” factor of Human Interactivity, where
the effective application of ICT itself is used to augment
human cognitive and social abilities, often seen as the
limiting factor in highly networked organisations and
societies. This paper describes the context, scope, and
vision for the initiative. A reference model has been
developed to help define the scientific and technical
challenges to be addressed and to support a
multidisciplinary and cross-organisational program of
research. This reference model is discussed, along with
the approach and scientific challenges that have been
devised for HxI projects such as Braccetto, the first and
foundational project of the initiative .
Keywords: Human interactivity, distributed intense
collaboration, creative teamwork.
1 Introduction
The rapid pace of change in business environments over
the last 10 years has been enabled by the increasing use
of information and communication technology. This has
resulted in significant challenges for those involved in
highly networked organisations. One challenge for the
future will be addressing the many human factors that
need to be considered in this changing environment. A
New York Times article titled “Meet the Life Hackers”
(Thompson, 2005) suggests that “Information is no
longer a scarce resource – attention is!” As computers
become more ubiquitous in the workplace, multi-tasking
has become paramount in business as time and
productivity drivers have moved the computer into the
hub of almost every conceivable activity. Dealing with
copious amounts of information in net-enabled
organisations is itself a major challenge, and there is a
greater emphasis on interactions between people and
providing approaches to enable effective teamwork rather
Copyright © 2007, CSIRO, DSTO, NICTA.
Reproduction for not-for profit purposes permitted provided this
text is included.
finger tips.
The HxI Initiative was initiated by the National ICT
Roundtable, a body formed in response to the
recommendations of the Australian Government’s
Framework for the Future report (DCITA, 2003). This
report highlighted the need to focus on collaborative
national initiatives that address some of these future
challenges and opportunities facing Australia. The
Roundtable comprises members of the Publicly Funded
ICT Research Organisations, University representatives,
and representation from the Cooperative Research
Centres (CRCs). Through a commissioned report, the
Roundtable identified the area of ICT-enabled Human
Interaction as an area requiring deep investigation. This
report noted that related research areas in Australia which
focused on the inter-relationships between people and
ICT, such as Human Computer Interaction (HCI),
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW),
Ubiquitous Computing, Interaction Design and
Information Visualisation, were fragmented, and on a
world scale Australia was seen as a minor player. The
report suggested that researchers engaged in these areas
(i.e., computer scientists, social scientists, designers,
engineers, and artists) dwelt in separate communities and
seldom mixed. However, the researchers were seen to
have different but related visions of how to address the
dream of ubiquitous computing, i.e. where ICT moves
into the background of human activity. The HxI Initiative
was established to focus on a number of identified
limitations within the national research community: a
lack of leadership, uncoordinated activities, a lack of
scale, little research infrastructure and a limited focus on
exploitation and commercialisation.
The term ‘HxI’ was coined to describe these trends
towards ubiquity and human experience. The “x” in the
term ‘HxI’ represents research from a number of
disciplines that collectively enhance the ability of humans
to interact with information, with each other, and with
their environments through the effective application of
ICT. This defines the focus and context for the HxI
Initiative which has been designed to support a number of
related collaborative projects.
The development of a distributed cross-organisational and
multi-project program of research, such as that envisaged
for the HxI Initiative, poses significant challenges in
itself. Issues to be addressed include providing a common
vision and frame of reference for the multi-disciplinary
teams engaged in the research, providing a common
research infrastructure to support the geographically
distributed teams, and providing the cultural basis for
undertaking the work. This paper introduces a reference
model which has been developed to provide the context
for the research thrusts, science challenges and research
activities of the HxI Initiative and its projects. It provides
a common framework to support effective collaboration
between organisations and between multi-disciplinary
teams engaged in coordinated research activities.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the
research context and drivers for the HxI Initiative,
thereby providing the background for the HxI Reference
Model which is described in Section 3. Section 4 then
describes the Braccetto project and provides an example
of how the HxI Reference Model can be used to define
and develop cross-organisational and multi-disciplinary
projects.
2 Research Context and Drivers
This section provides an overview of some of the
economic and business factors that may drive future
change and describes areas of science and technology that
could perpetuate and support these changes. We conclude
this section by discussing how these drivers and
characteristics shape the challenges for the HxI Initiative
in terms of the “x” factor of human interactivity.
2.1 Economic and Business Factors
The HxI Initiative focuses on addressing many of the
challenges facing business and organisations into the
future. The advent of global networks, workforce
virtualisation and increasing information overload require
new tools and processes. Gloria Mark (Mark et al., 2003)
describes the need to merge communication technologies
with information-sharing technologies to create a
synchronous environment for collaboration to support
these new economic and business drivers. Dawson
(Dawson, 2005) recognises the importance of face-to-face
human interactions to the quality of knowledge work
stating that “despite technological advancements that
allow people to telecommute and work in different
locations, organisations are effective chiefly because
people who work closely together have the opportunity
for rich interaction and learning on an ongoing and often
informal basis.” This is reiterated by Ware (Ware, 2003)
who suggests that “Despite the hype and the growing
belief that the internet and information technology
generally have meant the ‘death of distance’, managing
distributed work and a distributed workforce remains
incredibly difficult”.
Technologies such as teleconferencing, email, WebEx,
and Instant Messenger assist in coordinating action
between teams, but they still fall short on fostering
effective social relations. This is evidenced by the
continuing growth in air travel for business purposes. In
2006, physical co-location through airline travel is still
the most effective, although costly, means of supporting
creative teamwork activities.
2.2 Related Science and Technology
The HxI Initiative science and technology program under
development is intended to support humans in their
interactions with machines, with their environments, with
information, and between each other. The work includes
the development of innovative interaction technologies,
novel interactive visualisation approaches, ubiquitous
computing environments, and integrated telepresence for
cooperative work. This section provides an overview of
some of these aspects, setting the context for the scope,
focus and challenges of the HxI Initiative.
Ubiquitous computing relates to a future where
computers become embedded in our natural movements
and interactions with our environments, both physical and
social. In his seminal article on “The Computer of the
21st Century”, Weiser (1991) described a future where
computers will become largely invisible to users, being
“woven into the backdrop of natural human
interactions”. A community of researchers in this area
has been focusing their attention on the augmentation of
physical collaborative workspaces such as meeting
rooms. Examples of research initiatives in this area
include Interactive Workspaces (Johanson et al., 2002), i-
Land (Streitz et al., 1999), Intelligent Room (Coen et al.,
1999), and Active Spaces (Cerqueira et al., 2001). Much
of the research has focused on the infrastructure and
human interfaces required for these types of
environments. Related research is being undertaken into
the processes and facilities to support extreme (or intense)
collaboration within work environments, often referred to
as project or war rooms (Covi et al., 1998). Mark (Mark,
2002) describes extreme collaboration as “Working
within an electronic and social environment that
maximizes communication and information flow.” Her
study of a 16-person team that designs space missions for
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab showed that the amount of
time required to create a space mission design was
reduced from 3-6 months to about 9 hours by switching to
a technologically rich “war room” environment. In
Australia, the LiveSpaces Project (Vernik et al., 2003), is
undertaking research into how these types of workspaces
can be used individually and in combinations to facilitate
intense group activities such as time-critical decision
making, analysis, and planning. This research programme
is led by DSTO, with contributions from other research
organisations including the University of South Australia,
and previously with the CRC for Enterprise Distributed
Systems Technology (DSTC).
Mixed Presence Groupware (Tang et al., 2004) has
been a recent new research focus for the CSCW
community, in which both single display groupware and
shared display groupware share a visual workspace in a
synchronous manner. This approach allows support of
multiple distributed teams, whose members each control
their own input devices to edit and annotate content in a
shared application. Early implementations of MPG, such
as MPGSketch (Tang et al., 2004) have uncovered some
of the challenges in remote collaboration between teams,
for example disparities between the relative perceived 2.3 The “x” Factor in Human Interactivity
presence of remote and co-located users. Recent work in
Australia, conducted by NICTA and UniSA (Hutterer et As discussed in this paper, an emerging trend in ICT is
al., 2006) suggests that by supporting legacy applications, ubiquity where the interface between human and
MPG can be realised as a powerful and generic tool for machines is becoming blurred. For example, through new
simultaneous collaboration. MPG implicitly links the ubiquitous and human-computer interaction approaches
‘task space’ (i.e. the shared artefact, e.g. a document) such as the use of speech and gesture, people can begin to
with the ‘person space’ (i.e. the video presence) as perceive that they are interacting with the information
defined by Buxton (1992). It is believed that the itself rather than through a machine interface. We refer to
integration of the task space the form of mixed presence this as human-information interaction. Another dimension
groupware, the person space in the form high quality of human interactivity relates to human-human
telepresence, ubiquitous computing environments for interaction, the focus of research areas such as CSCW.
session coordination, and new awareness tools that bridge Other important trends relate to the application of
the task and person spaces, represents a novel and interaction design methods. For example, the success of
compelling research area for simultaneous distributed many human interaction approaches lies in the feelings
remote collaboration between teams. that people have based on human experience. New
research in the areas of participatory design focus on the
Advanced Telepresence has been seen as an important notion of eX – those elements of human experience
enabler of distributed collaboration. Olson and Olson ( which factor into the acceptance and use of technologies
2000) suggested in an elaborate study of distance and work environments. For example, the success of the
communication that ”There are several broad reasons HP/Dreamworks Halo environment discussed in Section
why distance will persist as an important element of 2.2 lies in the effective design of the interfaces and the
human experience. […] Our findings in these settings fall environment. The “x” factor, or human interactivity, of
into two categories: behaviour that will change for the the HxI Initiative is focused on augmenting humans’
better when technology achieves certain qualities we interfaces with each other and their environment, as
think are possible in the next 20 years, and behaviour discussed in section 1. This is achieved through the
that will never change.” In Australia, the CSIRO’s augmentation of underlying human cognitive and social
Telepresence team has been developing and attributes.
experimenting with the Virtual Tearoom: a high-quality
telecollaboration platform which enables high-quality 3 HxI Reference Model
audio and video communication with integrated services
over a distance. The team is addressing a number of The proposed HxI Reference Model, as depicted in
research challenges, including communications protocols Figure 1, provides the context and a common point of
and quality of service issues. In networked group understanding for the HxI research thrusts, science
communication, data needs to be replicated for each challenges and research activities undertaken jointly
participant in a multipoint connection. The Virtual between organisations and disciplines.
Tearoom's signalling component allows synchronised
audio and video (i.e., lip-synchronicity) whilst its
underlying multicast transmission allows for multipoint
connectivity without the need for a multipoint control
unit. A recent development by HP and Dreamworks
called Halo (Sandow, 2006) provides some interesting
insights into the challenges of providing telepresence
capabilities that augment human interaction abilities.
Halo studios are purpose-built videoconferencing rooms,
designed with a careful choice of the room dimensions
and layout, reverberation, lighting, and audio. The display
of remote participants in a meeting is life-size, the
furniture in all locations is identical and arranged around
the videoconferencing screen in a way that the remote
locations form an integral part of the physical room. The
Age (The Age, 2005) commented on the Halo project that
…“HP's Halo Collaboration Studio offers a nearly
immersive environment where people can see each other,
talk and collaborate remotely as if they were in the same
room”. This suggests that some collaboration systems are
at the verge of changing human collaborative activities as
predicted. However, Halo demonstrates the fact that
technology alone is not the answer - there are important Figure 1: HxI Reference Model
science and technology challenges that to be addressed in
supporting the human experience.
3.1 Key Dimensions
As shown in Figure 1, the Reference Model has three key
dimensions:
Capability. Capability defines the means by which users
are supported within particular work contexts. This
includes new tools, combinations of technologies, work
practices, content, and environmental factors such as
lighting and furnishings.
Work Context. The Work Context describes the setting
for teamwork activities. It can be defined in terms of,
goals, roles, and artefacts employed by people engaged in
a particular work activity.
Teamwork Mechanics. These are the underlying
cognitive and social aspects that need to be supported for
effective teamwork, and include aspects such as
communicating, understanding, reasoning, synthesizing,
deciding, recording, recalling, and learning. Of particular
importance for HxI are the mechanics that support human
creativity such as visualization, invention, synthesis,
imagination, insight, and problem-solving. Mechanics
related to human experience are also important aspects to
be explored. The notion of teamwork mechanics is an
extension of the concepts first defined by Pinnelle et al
(2003) and subsequently defined in terms of Mechanics
of Ubiquitous Collaboration in the Orchestrated
Evaluation Approach of the AUSPLANS project
(Evdokiou et al., 2004).
The HxI Reference Model has been designed to support a
range of scientific perspectives. For example, in the
CSCW area, there is often a technology focus to the work
being undertaken. However, individual technologies
themselves do not generally provide advantage to people
engaged in particular work activities. Often it is a
combination of technologies and work practices, together
with appropriate access to required information (or
content) that enhances a team’s abilities to effectively
achieve desired goals.
In the HxI Reference Model, the term capability is used
to define the technology(s) together with other aspects
that unite to provide users with the basis for effective use
of the technology. Capabilities need to be considered in
terms of their work context when addressing their utility
and effectiveness. The work context is a model of the
activities/tasks, roles and people that define the work to
be done. Ultimately, the use of capabilities within a work
context needs to support the underling basis for team
working. Teamwork mechanics help focus attention on
the impact of introducing new capabilities, provide
support for identifying what new capabilities might be
required, support evaluation activities by identifying
measurable attributes, and provide a basis for considering
enhancement activities such as process improvement.
3.2 Enablers
The reference model defines four key enabling
mechanisms, shown as planes in Figure 2: Innovation,
Experimentation, Modelling, and Enhancement.
Innovation defines the innovation required to adapt and
enhance capability optimally for the work context.
Innovation can result in higher effectiveness of team
activities through the rapid adaptation of technologies,
work environments, work practices, information sources
and the like. Studies undertaken by DSTO (Evdokiou et
al., 2004) on intense teamwork involving military
planning teams as part of the Command TeamNets and
AUSPLANS projects have identified that rapid
innovation by capability developers and end users is an
important element of team effectiveness, particularly
when the planning teams are supported by advanced ICT
such as ubiquitous computing environments,
collaboration tools, and telepresence capabilities.
Innovation, in serving to improve capabilities, in turn
relies on experimentation on scientific models for fresh
insights
Figure 2: HxI Reference Model – Key Enablers
Experimentation is identified as a key enabler because
of the important role that it plays in the development and
evaluation of capabilities within particular work contexts.
The term experimentation is used to cover a range of
activities including evaluation, laboratory experiments,
and ethnography. Experimentation is undertaken in
relation to Teamwork Mechanics. Of importance is the
relationship between innovation and experimentation
within the context of teamwork (Thomke, 2003).
Experimentation poses some significant challenges for
the types of work contexts and capabilities that are the
focus of HxI project research, e.g. intense collaboration
for creative teamwork involving combinations of
collocated and distributed teams. Some of the challenges
relate to the ability to undertake observations across
teams involved in distributed collaboration. Moreover,
there are challenges in the development and evaluation of
new theories of collaborative creative teamwork, new
ICT-enabled experimentation approaches based on
advanced sensing techniques and new models and storage
approaches for ethnographic data.
Modelling reflects the importance of developing solid
theoretical foundations through the consolidation of
knowledge and understanding, often derived through
experimentation, into sets of underlying models. A range
of models are required to support HxI, including models
of teamwork activities, capability models that show the
relationship between sets of technologies, work practices,
and information resources, ethnographic models that
support the fusion of observational data collected by ICT
sensors and human analysts, and models of teamwork
mechanics. Of central importance for the HxI Initiative
are models that support reasoning and models which can
be enacted using ICT approaches such as intelligent
services. Some of the challenges to be considered for HxI
Modelling are: What approaches best support the
modelling of teamwork mechanics and activities? How
can modelling support the development and validation of
theories of distributed creative teamwork? How can
capability models be developed and used to capture the
relationships between technologies, work practices, and
information? How can innovation processes be modelled
to help understand and enable team-based innovation of
capabilities in relation to particular work contexts? What
modelling approaches support the storage, fusion,
analysis and use of ethnographic data collected by ICT
sensors and human analysts?
Enhancement is seen as an enabler of team performance
and improvement. It uses of the results of
experimentation to augment capabilities in relation to
specific work contexts and in terms of particular
teamwork mechanics. Of particular importance for the
types of teamwork contexts being considered for the HxI
Initiative is the rapid feedback of evaluation results.
Evaluation results in dynamic creative teamwork
situations may only prove useful within the context of the
actual activity, while traditional evaluation results
produced after months of video analysis may be of
limited use to meeting participants. One of the challenges
to be addressed by the HxI community is how the
knowledge gained from evaluation activities might be
captured in executable models that can be used by new
types of intelligent services for enhancing teamwork
activities. These might include services to support
mediation or social protocols for distributed teams, or
orchestration services.
3.3 Defining Science and Technology
Challenges for HxI Projects
The HxI Reference model provides the context for
identifying and communicating science and technology
challenges in HxI projects. Fundamentally, these
challenges of the HxI Initiative focus on how ICT-based
capabilities can extend human combined cognitive and
social abilities in relation to underlying teamwork
mechanics. Many of the challenges are central to the
capability dimension while the key enablers are
experimentation, modelling, and enhancement. However,
some of the major challenges lie at the intersection of
these. For example, when defining research thrusts for a
project consideration need to be given to the following
types of questions: How does innovation play a part in the
development and evolution of capabilities? How can a
capability be articulated and modelled? How does
experimentation support the definition and development
of capability? What is the relationship between
innovation and experimentation in the definition new
capabilities? And, how can the results of experimentation
be used to rapidly enhance capability to improve the
effectiveness of a team?
A series of multidisciplinary HxI workshops is being
undertaken to help define and refine scientific challenges
for the HxI Initiative. A recent workshop on “The future
of evaluation in HxI” identified a range of scientific
challenges that need to be addressed in relation to
evaluation approaches (Schremmer et al, 2006). The
workshop also proposed a range of models to support
future HxI evaluation, including a formative model of
evaluation, a Capability Pipeline model, Concurrent
Ethnography, a Knowledge-centred evaluation model, a
Teamwork Mechanics Focused Engagement model, and
an Evaluation Hierarchy model, each yet to be reported.
A key theme to emerge from the workshop was the notion
of ICT-enabled Experimentation. This was in response to
the challenge of undertaking experimentation activities,
such as evaluation and ethnographic studies, in dynamic
distributed teamwork contexts. This approach employs
ICT-based capabilities to support the sensing, fusion, and
storing and analysis of observational data. Challenges in
this area underpin research in the Braccetto project,
which will define, develop and evaluate new capabilities
whereby data derived through experimentation provides a
basis for new models. In turn, the new executable models
will be used to provide rapid feedback to enhance team
effectiveness.
There are also challenges in understanding the role of
design in the innovation and development of capabilities.
For example, the success of new capabilities such as the
Halo system lies in user experience. The design of future
interactive applications and environments poses some
interesting challenges, particularly where these
capabilities need to engender and support human
creativity. For example, we need to find answers to
questions such as: What are the underlying mechanisms
that need to be considered in the design of interaction
capabilities? How can these be accommodated through
participatory design? How can these be evaluated?
Reference Model Braccetto focus
parameter
Work Context intense distributed collabora-
tion for creative teams
Capability Area mixed presence groupware
Teamwork Mechanics awareness
Addressed
Table 1: Braccetto focus areas
4 Project Braccetto
The HxI Braccetto project is the first and foundational
project of the HxI Initiative, and draws upon the HxI
Reference Model to provide the framework for
identifying specific Braccetto science and technology
challenges. Table 1 summarises the Braccetto focus areas
in terms of the HxI Reference Model. Braccetto
undertakes research into how the effective application of
ICT in the area of Mixed Presence Groupware can assist
teams of co-workers to collaborate more effectively
across a distance. Specifically, the project is undertaking
research into the principles underlying effective, intense
distributed collaboration and is implementing the results
as new capabilities for supporting teams involved in
creative activities such as collaborative design, planning,
analysis, and decision making. These new approaches
will be evaluated against various underlying teamwork
mechanics, focusing specifically on enhancing the
effectiveness of distributed teams through enhanced
awareness.
The science and technology challenges and activities for
Braccetto are articulated in relation to the HxI Reference
Model. Table 2 provides a summary of the Braccetto
research challenges, and their inter-relationships. As
stated in Section 3.3, many of the major challenges lie at
the intersection of the reference model axes. The
notations used in the table are:
• “R” for Requires
• “S” for Supports, and
• “P” for Provides.
Challenge S&T Activity Inter-relationship Map
Area
Innov Cap Exp Mod
indication of the skills and support required and provided
by the various discipline areas involved in the project. A
more detailed view of the requirements is provided by a
vertical mapping. For example, for the experimentation
requirements the MPG Awareness Approaches and Tools
activity can be mapped to specific experimentation
activities within the activity area of Awareness
Experiments and the use of Domain Experimentation.
The following paragraphs provide an overview discussion
of the S&T areas and their relationships. However, this is
done to provide an overview of the Braccetto project and
give examples of the relationships to the reference model;
space limitations restrict a more complete discussion of
all activities and the reasoning behind the various
mappings.
The science and technology activities related to
Capability include the development of novel MPG
capabilities and the development of a national research
platform called Braccetto TeamNets. The new MPG
capabilities include: novel awareness approaches and
Enh

Capability • MPG R P R R R tools such as integrated arm shadows (Tang and

Awareness Minneman, 1991, Tang et al. 2004), more futuristic
Approaches embodiments of remote collaborators such as field-of-
and Tools
R P R R R view visualisations derived from real time tracking of
• Integrated
Telepresence user direction of attention; integrated telepresence
• Braccetto S P S S S approaches such as the use of spatial audio, low latency
TeamNets audio codecs and high definition video; and operating
• SEA S P S S S
system-level multiple independent input device support
Framework
• Awareness S R P S S
such as the concepts enumerated by Hutterer et al.
Experimen-
tation Experiments (2006).
• Living S R P S S
Laboratory Braccetto TeamNets provides a common research
• Domain Ex- infrastructure to support the innovation, experimentation,
perimentation S R P S S modelling and enhancement of future MPG capabilities.
Modelling • Teamwork R R R P S A family of systems components is being defined and
Awareness developed to enable the composition of a range of
theories and
Models collaboration systems. These include configurable
• Reference S S S P S interactive display units, interaction devices, cameras,
Models and and lighting. TeamNets allows the rapid set up of a range
Architecture of configurations including the use of multiple displays in
• Modeling of S S S R S
Ethnographic
various orientations and combinations both within
Stores collocated and across distributed facilities. A particular
• Executable R P R R S challenge involves developing the infrastructure and
Models for interaction interfaces to provide ubiquitous access and
Creative
Teamwork
support for: team information management, telepresence
• Models of In- S P R R S capabilities; coordination with and control across
process Braccetto systems, applications, and facilities; and ready
Innovation access to advanced applications in specific domains of
Enhance- • Intelligent S P R R P interest.
ment Teamwork
Services A new capability being developed as part of Braccetto
• Teamwork S P R R S
TeamNets is a Sensing, Evaluation and Automation
Improvement
Processes (SEA) Framework. This involves the providing support
for the acquisition and processing of signals from diverse
Table 2: Braccetto Research and Inter-relationships sensors (e.g. video, audio, interaction, biomedical,
The table is read left to right to identify relationships human) to both record and summarise desired aspects of
between challenge areas for particular science and live interactive sessions. SEA will support researchers by
technology (‘S&T’) activities. For example, the allowing them to select the parameters to be observed,
development of “MPG Awareness Approaches and and then provide summarisation, markup, and analysis
Tools” requires Innovation, provides a Capability, facilities. Finally, SEA will be the basis for intelligent
requires Experimentation support, requires Modeling and enhancement support facilities to assist teams.
requires Enhancement to support the development of the
capability through improvement. This provides an
Experimentation plays a major role in the Braccetto
project. A number of experiments will be undertaken to
develop and validate theories and models of awareness.
For example, planned experiments focus on assessing the
effect of distance on perception of remote participants,
and how gesture and multiple simultaneous touch input
can improve awareness between remote co-workers. New
ICT-enable Experimentation approaches based on the use
of the SEA framework will be developed. This will
support ongoing ‘Live the Vision’ experimentation, in
which the HxI projects will themselves provide the basis
for experimentation activities. Large scale, realistic
domain-based experimentation focusing on teams within
the National Security (including Defence) and e-Research
areas are planned in Braccetto.
Modelling is central to the HxI Initiative. In Braccetto, a
number of modelling activities have been defined to:
provide the basis for capturing, fusing, and analysing of
experimentation results; support the development of
foundational theories and knowledge for HxI; and support
the development of future capabilities such as intelligent
services for teamwork enhancement through the use of
executable models.
Enhancement activities in Braccetto will deal with
improvements that can be made to team awareness
through the use of intelligent services, such as social
protocol and orchestration services. Work will be
undertaken on new Teamwork Improvement Processes
based on the use of experimentation results, models and
theories developed through the project.
5 Conclusion
This paper has provided an overview of the HxI Initiative,
a new research program in ICT-augmented human
interactivity. In particular, an HxI Reference Model has
been proposed to as a framework for defining the HxI
scientific and technical challenges in a manner that
facilitates the multidisciplinary and cross-organisational
program of research. The model defines the context for
supporting teamwork activities through capabilities,
whilst maintaining a focus on the underlying cognitive
and social mechanics of teamwork. The term “capability”
has been introduced to focus attention on the means of
supporting teamwork through combinations of
technology, work practice, content, and environmental
factors. The model also defines innovation,
experimentation, modelling, and enhancement as key
enablers and foci for research activities. The model has
been used as the basis for defining, establishing and
supporting Project Braccetto, the first project of the
initiative. In future work, Braccetto will undertake
research into how the effective use of ICT capabilities
can assist teams of co-workers to collaborate more
effectively across a distance, and in so doing establish the
practical validity and implications of the HxI Reference
Model.
6 Acknowledgements
The work reported in this paper forms part of the HxI
Initiative, a national program of research led by CSIRO,
DSTO and NICTA. The authors would like to
acknowledge the contributions of HxI [braccetto] team
members including Alex Krumm-Heller, Peter Evdokiou,
Bruce Thomas, Masa Takatsuka, Paul Swatman and Peter
Eades.
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