Oct 25, 2000
Shared Information and Virtual Surfaces
Stephen C. Hayne and C.A.P. Smith, Colorado State University
Abstract.
The objective of the research is to understand how both hierarchical and peer groups collaborate and make decisions during exercises characterized by risky outcomes under normal and urgent conditions. A decision game is currently being created that is an example of a collaborative pattern recognition and shared situation assessment task. Our task will require people to gather (virtually) around a shared information surface and discuss information to reduce equivocality. The team will produce shared situational assessment and plan course(s) of action. The team then indicates their intent and if approved, acts. We intend to apply structures such as memory aids, spatial cues, and decision support to enhance the team collaboration process. We will study the cognitive properties of the distributed socio-technical system of humans and computers and report on generalized methods for representing and transforming information to enhance collaboration.
Stephen Hayne and C.A.P. Smith
Stephen Hayne is an Associate Professor in the College of Business at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona (1990). Dr. Hayne's research interests lie mainly with group support systems, distributed systems, software engineering, and knowledge-based technologies. His papers have been published in major conferences and numerous journals such as, Database, Journal of Information and Management, Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Work, Journal of Systems and Software, IBM Systems Journal, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Management Communication Quarterly. His research is rooted in the desire to use innovative technologies to help teams and groups solve real business problems. To this end he has implemented tools to assist groups in communication and decision-making, i.e. shared drawing, group brainstorming, concurrent issue surfacing/consolidation, consensus building and group choice. He is also applying this technology to support
decision making during time pressure situations. He has received National
Science Foundation and Navy funding ($360,000) to examine the effect that
increased information and support for group communication and influence
processes has on group decision behavior in strategic decision environments.
Dr. Hayne also frequently lectures on many aspects of Electronic Commerce in the Executive Education and Overseas Programs for the American Graduate School of International Management. He has consulted to numerous start-ups and established companies. He is the General Chair of the Special Interest Group on Supporting Group Work (SIGGROUP) and serves on the Executive Committee for the Association of Computing Machinery. He has been the General Chair for the International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP'97 and '99) and serves as an associate editor for two MIS journals.
C. A. P. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems in the College of Business at Colorado State University. Dr. Smith earned his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona, and also has a degree in engineering from M.I.T. His research interests involve the study of decision making under time pressure. For the past three years Dr. Smith managed research programs at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, also know as SPAWAR or SSC. SPAWAR Sytems Center is the US Navy's lead laboratory for Command and Control research and development. he conducted a program of research in which he investigated decision-making under conditions characterized by time-pressure, high stakes, and uncertainty. In addition to that research, he also managed multi-million dollar software development efforts for state-of-the-art decision support systems. The design of decision support systems for stressful environments requires a thorough grounding in a variety of disciplines. To succeed, Dr. Smith draws upon his formal training in Information Systems and Decision Theory, as well as my expertise in Human Factors and Cognitive Science. This inter-disciplinary approach leads to remarkable results such as the Tactical Decision-Making Under Stress (TADMUS) system. TADMUS is a decision support system that is optimized for the cognitive style of expert decision-makers. The TADMUS HCI also mitigates the effects of stress in a variety of ways. The success of the TADMUS project is in large part due to a development approach that combines the use of elaborate software simulations, research subjects that are domain experts, and rigorous methodology. Return to L3D Calendar Page