Mikael Wiberg, Informatics, Umeå University: In Between Mobile Meetings: Exploring Mobile Support for Sustained Interaction

This seminar is intended to explore Mikael Wibergs doctoral thesis manuscript; this exploration will be structured as a thesis defence, where five opponents have been assigned to provide their comments and questions about the thesis work.

Thesis abstract:

'Mobile meetings' have recently been acknowledged as an important topic within the area of mobile CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work). However, research and development projects have focused on supporting specific characters of theses meetings (e.g. the identifiable multi-threadedness of topics in opportunistic interaction) rather then contextualize them into a broader work context.

This thesis has explored how mobile CSCW happens in real work settings among mobile service technicians at Telia Nära. One thing noticed during the observational studies of their work was the importance of meetings for collaboration, coordination and knowledge sharing. As such, mobile meetings serve as an important part of organizations knowledge processes. However, another observation made was the lack of technical support for maintaining their interaction with colleagues when shifting between meetings and the rest of their work that involves a lot of traveling to different sites.

The thesis is a collection of seven papers that address these two observations from an Informatics perspective. Informatics can be described as a theory and design oriented study of information technology use. The scope of this thesis is therefore twofold, first to understand and develop a model of mobility and of how mobile meetings are integrated in a broader work context and second, to design and evaluate technology support based on this understanding of mobility. When looking at mobile CSCW and particularly 'mobile meetings' in a broader perspective, paradoxically the "in between" meeting activities becomes critical and interesting to acknowledge. The overall research question is: How can we provide mobile groups with seamless ongoing interaction support that integrates mobile meetings into the broader work context of mobility, and what are the effects of such an integration?

The thesis contains empirical studies of mobile work, models of mobility and mobile meeting, and design and evaluations of prototype systems. The observational studies of mobile CSCW served as a point of departure for the modeling of mobility. The models developed has then been used together with the empirical findings to inform the design of a system to support seamless shifting between, and remote participation in

physical/virtual mobile meetings. This work is followed by two evaluations made of the prototype system with the aim of contributing to the broader work context on how informal mobile meetings could be more seamlessly integrated in explicit knowledge processes within organizations constituted of highly networking individuals. A final

contribution offered by the last paper is a full implementation of RoamWare, an integrated architecture for seamless ongoing interaction in between mobile meetings.

Keywords: Mobile CSCW, mobile meetings, in between meeting support, knowledge processes, ethnography and activity theory informed systems design, mobile technology

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John Cumberbatch