Visual Information as a Conversational Resource in Collaborative Physical Tasks

In this article we consider the ways in which visual information is used as a conversational resource in the accomplishment of collaborative physical tasks. We focus on the role of visual information in maintaining task awareness and in achieving mutual understanding in conversation. We first describe the theoretical framework we use to analyze the role of visual information in physical collaboration. Then, we present two experiments that vary the amount and quality of the visual information available to participants during a collaborative bicycle repair task. We examine the effects of this visual information on performance and on conversational strategies. We conclude with a general discussion of how situational awareness and conversational grounding are achieved in collaborative tasks and with some design considerations for systems to support remote collaborative repair. HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2003, Volume 18, pp. 13–49 Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Robert Kraut is a social psychologist with an interest in communications and the social impact of computing; he is the Herbert A. Simon professor in the Human–Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Susan Fussell is a social and cognitive psychologist with interests in face-to-face and computer-mediated communication; she is a senior system scientist in the Human–Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Jane Siegel is a psychologist with interests in interpersonal communication and wearable computers; she is a senior system scientist in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.