Supporting Collaboration Ubiquitously: An Augmented Learning Environment for Architecture Students

While CSCW research has mostly been focusing on desktop applications there is a growing interest on ubiquitous and tangible computing. We present ethnographic fieldwork and prototypes to address how tangible computing can support collaboration and learning. The student projects at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna is a relevant case to study, for the variety and distributed character of the cooperative arrangements, and for the richness of interactions with heterogeneous physical artefacts. After describing current practices, we propose qualities of the environment that support collaboration and learning: creative density, multiple travels in materials and representations, re-programming (seeing things differently), and configurability. We then describe several prototypes that address in various ways these qualities. Finally we discuss how tangible and ubiquitous computing supports collaboration in our case by providing intermediary spaces, and dynamic objectifications.