Papers by William van Melle
Implementation of an iteration macro
ACM SIGPLAN Lisp Pointers, 1990
This article describes the implementation of a set of iteration macros. These macros are found in... more This article describes the implementation of a set of iteration macros. These macros are found in the Portable Common Loops (PCL) implementation of the Common Lisp Object System, though they are not dependent on PCL in any way. The macros were designed to be more functional than the small set of iteration macros found in Common Lisp (e.g., do), while
Successful collaboration depends on effective communication. Ongoing group awareness facilitates ... more Successful collaboration depends on effective communication. Ongoing group awareness facilitates communication by enabling workers to be more informed about their collaborators, about their activities, and about the interpersonal dependencies among people working together. In this paper we present MyUnity, a new system that aids workers in building group awareness. The system uses multiple sources, both automatic and user-provided, to report colleagues' location, availability, current tasks, and preferred communication channels. Information is aggregated, fused and presented as a simple presence state for each worker. Workers can each independently control what information is collected by the system, allowing them to participate in the system without compromising their privacy. Results from a four-week field study show MyUnity increased group awareness and fostered an increased sense of community in the workplace. Results provide insights into the utility of awareness systems in the workplace.
Walls at Work-Physical and Electronic Walls in the Workplace
Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '98, 1998
Our goal is to provide tools to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard, called Tivo... more Our goal is to provide tools to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard, called Tivoli. This paper describes how we have integrated structured "domain objects" into the whiteboard environment. Domain objects represent the subject matter of meetings and can be exchanged between Tivoli and group databases. Domain objects can be tailored to produce meeting tools that are finely tuned to meeting practices. We describe the facility for tailoring and managing domain objects and the user interface techniques for blending these into the whiteboard environment. We show examples of both specific and generic meeting tools crafted from domain objects, and we describe a long-term case study in which these tools support an ongoing work process.
Proceedings of the 11th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST '98, 1998
Our goal is to provide tools to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard, called Tivo... more Our goal is to provide tools to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard, called Tivoli. This paper describes how we have integrated structured domain objects, which represent the subject matter of meetings, into the freeform whiteboard environment. Domain objects can be tailored to produce meeting tools that are finely tuned to meeting practices. We describe the language for defining domain objects and show examples of meeting tools that have been built with the language. We show that the system can interpret the spatial relationships of domain objects on the whiteboard to encode the meanings of the spatial arrangements, and we describe the computational mechanisms. We discuss some of the design principles for tailoring gestures for domain objects. Finally, we enumerate the techniques we have used to integrate the structured objects into the freeform whiteboard environment.
Proceedings of the 10th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST '97, 1997
This paper presents a scheme for extending an informal, penbased whiteboard system (the Tivoli ap... more This paper presents a scheme for extending an informal, penbased whiteboard system (the Tivoli application on the Xerox LiveBoard) to provide interaction techniques that enable groups of users in informal meetings to easily organize and rearrange material and to manage the space on the board. The techniques are based on the direct manipulation of boundaries and the implicit recognition of regions. The techniques include operations for shrinking and rearranging, structured borders that tessellate the board, freeform enclosures that can be split, fused, and linked, and collapsible annotations. Experience with using these techniques, the results of a user test, some design trade-offs and lessons, and future directions are discussed.
Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST '99, 1999
A Collaborage is a collaborative collage of physically represented information on a surface that ... more A Collaborage is a collaborative collage of physically represented information on a surface that is connected with electronic information, such as a physical In/Out board connected to a people-locator database. The physical surface (board) contains items that are tracked by camera and computer vision technology. Events on the board trigger electronic services. This paper motivates this concept, presents three different applications, describes the system architecture and component technologies, and discusses several design issues.
CHI '00 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '00, 2000
Tivoli is an application program to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard. Tivoli'... more Tivoli is an application program to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard. Tivoli's user interface is based on a whiteboard metaphor. It supports freeform expression by providing pen-based drawing, wiping, and gestural editing. Tivoli recognizes the spatial structure of material on the board. It provides support for implicit structures, such as opening and closing spaces when lists are edited. It provides techniques for organizing materials on the board by grouping them into regions. Tivoli inte-
The ins and outs of collaborative walls
CHI '99 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '99, 1999
A collaborage is a collaborative collage of physically represented information on a surface that ... more A collaborage is a collaborative collage of physically represented information on a surface that is connected with electronic information, such as a physical in/out board connected to a people-locator database. The physical surface (board) contains items that are tracked by camera and machine vision technology. Events on the board trigger electronic services. This paper motivates this concept, sketches the system,
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '95, 1995
This paper presents a scheme for extending an informal, pen-based whiteboard system (Tivoli on th... more This paper presents a scheme for extending an informal, pen-based whiteboard system (Tivoli on the Xerox Live-Board) to provide a structured editing capability without violating its free expression and ease of use. The scheme supports list, text, table, and outline structures over handwritten scribbles and typed text. The scheme is based on the system temporarily perceiving the "implicit structure" that humans see in the material, which is called a WYPIWYG (What You Perceive Is What You Get) capability. The design techniques, principles, trade-offs, and limitations of the scheme are discussed. A notion of "freeform interaction" is proposed to position the system with respect to current user interface techniques.
2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2011
As sensors become ever more prevalent, more and more information will be collected about each of ... more As sensors become ever more prevalent, more and more information will be collected about each of us. A longterm research question is how best to support beneficial uses while preserving individual privacy. Presence systems are an emerging class of applications that support collaboration. These systems leverage pervasive sensors to estimate end-user location, activities, and available communication channels. Because such presence data are sensitive, to achieve wide-spread adoption, sharing models must reflect the privacy and sharing preferences of the users. To reflect users' collaborative relationships and sharing desires, we introduce CollaPSE security, in which an individual has full access to her own data, a third party processes the data without learning anything about the data values, and users higher up in the hierarchy learn only statistical information about the employees under them. We describe simple schemes that efficiently realize CollaPSE security for time series data. We implemented these protocols using readily available cryptographic functions, and integrated the protocols with FXPAL's myUnity presence system.
Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Multimedia - MULTIMEDIA '95, 1995
This paper presents a confederation of tools, called Coral, that combine to support the real-time... more This paper presents a confederation of tools, called Coral, that combine to support the real-time capture of and subsequent access to informal collaborative activities. The tools provide the means to initiate digital multimedia recordings, a variety of methods to index those recordings, and ways to retrieve the indexed material in other settings. The current system emerged from a convergence of the WhereWereWe multimedia work, the Tivoli LiveBoard application, and the Inter-Language Unification distributed-object programming infrastructure. We are working with a specific user community and application domain, which has helped us shape a particular, demonstrably useful, configuration of tools and to get extensive real-world experience with them. This domain involves frequent discussion and decision-making meetings and later access of the captured records of those meetings to produce accurate documentation. Several aspects of Coral--the application tools, the architecture of the confederation, and the multimedia infrastructure--are described.
Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI 09, 2009
One of the core challenges now facing smart rooms is supporting realistic, everyday activities. W... more One of the core challenges now facing smart rooms is supporting realistic, everyday activities. While much research has been done to push forward the frontiers of novel interaction techniques, we argue that technology geared toward widespread adoption requires a design approach that emphasizes straightforward configuration and control, as well as flexibility. We examined the work practices of users of a large, multi-purpose conference room, and designed DICE, a system to help them use the room's capabilities. We describe the design process, and report findings about the system's usability and about people's use of a multi-purpose conference room.
Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '96, 1996
We describe a case study in which experimental collaboration technologies were used for over two ... more We describe a case study in which experimental collaboration technologies were used for over two years in the real, ongoing work process of intellectual property management (IPM) at Xerox PARC. The technologies include LiveBoardbased meeting support tools, laptop notetaking tools, digital audio recording, and workstation tools to later access and replay the meeting activities. In cooperation with the IPM manager, both the work process and the tools were continuously evolved to improve the process. We supported and observed over 60 meetings, leading to a rich set of empirical observations of the meeting activities. We note some practical lessons for this research approach.
Successful collaboration depends on effective communication. Ongoing group awareness facilitates ... more Successful collaboration depends on effective communication. Ongoing group awareness facilitates communication by enabling workers to be more informed about their collaborators, about their activities, and about the interpersonal dependencies among people working together. In this paper we present MyUnity, a new system that aids workers in building group awareness. The system uses multiple sources, both automatic and user-provided, to report colleagues' location, availability, current tasks, and preferred communication channels. Information is aggregated, fused and presented as a simple presence state for each worker. Workers can each independently control what information is collected by the system, allowing them to participate in the system without compromising their privacy. Results from a four-week field study show MyUnity increased group awareness and fostered an increased sense of community in the workplace. Results provide insights into the utility of awareness systems in...
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Papers by William van Melle