Findings from observational studies of collaborative work
International Journal of Man-Machine Studies - Computer-supported cooperative work and groupware. Part 1
VideoWhiteboard: video shadows to support remote collaboration
CHI '91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Mutual knowledge and communicative effectiveness
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User embodiment in collaborative virtual environments
CHI '95 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Talk and embodiment in collaborative virtual environments
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Improving interpretation of remote gestures with telepointer traces
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Semantic Telepointers for Groupware
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Turn it this way: grounding collaborative action with remote gestures
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Body and mind: a study of avatar personalization in three virtual worlds
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Where are you pointing?: the accuracy of deictic pointing in CVEs
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Hands on hitchcock: embodied reference to a moving scene
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Controlling an avatar's pointing gestures in desktop collaborative virtual environments
Proceedings of the 17th ACM international conference on Supporting group work
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Pointing gestures -- particularly deictic references -- are ubiquitous in face-to-face communication. However, deictic pointing can be much more difficult in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) than in everyday life -- early studies found that the 'fragmentation' caused by the environment greatly complicated object-based communication. In the fifteen years since these studies appeared, the technologies used in CVEs have improved substantially, and several techniques for improving pointing have been proposed or implemented. What these advances mean for the problems of fragmentation and deictic gesture, however, is not clear. To find out, we conducted a new observational study of deictic pointing in a CVE with several techniques that may reduce fragmentation: extra-wide and third-person views, precise control over an avatar's pointing arm, and visual enhancements such as object highlighting and laser pointing. Our study shows that although pointing has come a long way, problems of fragmentation still occur, and that visual and view enhancements can cause new problems for collaboration, even as they solve others. In addition, the visibility of a gesture's preparatory actions remained important to study participants, even when pointing was augmented. These results provide a richer understanding of the subtlety in avatar-based deictic communication, and of the ways that this critical communication mechanism can be better supported in CVEs.