Object-Focused Interaction in e-Social Science

Distributed scientific work is receiving widespread attention from computer science developers within the e-Science programme. With notable exceptions less attention has been paid to how, in practice, collaboration support across the grid might play out in everyday scientific and analytic work. Drawing on a specific thread of research in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work we note how models of scientific work ignore the communication of work with digital artefacts such as presentations of data. We describe our initial attempts to support one particular form of distributed analytic practice – the freeform visual annotation of video materials – as part of the VidGrid project. In undertaking such support, our initial trials of visual annotation indicate that a reconsideration of the distributed science paradigm must take into account the concept of Object-Focused Interaction; that is, the relationship between body, interaction and data objects of mutual interest.