Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The technographer's net connection

Author:garret p vreeland
Posted:3/4/1999; 2:14:04 PM
Topic:ADSL
Msg #:3583 (In response to 3525)
Prev/Next:3582 / 3584

We tried this kind of thing back in the late 80's for a couple of clients by trying to tie in satellite television feeds with digital whiteboard over conventional phone lines. The bandwidth aspect made itself *painfully* clear ... updates to the whiteboard would be delayed, and the satellite feed was notoriously unreliable and expensive back then.

We dreamed of a day when we could have groups of people in different locations, sharing ideas in a multitude of ways. The parallel is not exact to what you guys are trying to do, but I offer these ideas we had way back then, just in case it might be of assistance:

1. Everyone shares a view of a large LCD panel (4x6 FEET ... a long wait for that technology), which is able to be written upon with a stylus.

2. Everyone in the meeting room has access via their seat to a combination keypad/LCD drawing station, with the capability to add points to the main screen in (1) above via typing or drawing via stylus.

3. Video/sound linkups are managed to minimize long-distance delay. Camera placement was always a pain. Either you had two cameras on fixed mounts, one for the group, one for the "selected" speaker at a podium, or you had a cameraman or two live in the room to walk around. Having a Sony M3 videocamera on your computer wasn't exactly an option in those days.

4. Moderator control of the main screen vs. group control of the main screen. We had problems with some meetings, focus group types of things, where one person is on a soapbox and won't let go. Moderator control usually kept things more stable, even though it was not (in my opinion) the optimal answer. Someone else must have an idea for this.

5. A "History" function is very important ... to be able to go back and revisit points that might have been erased, or considered unworthy.

We found the typing paradigm was difficult for people. The audience was not sufficiently technology-savvy to be able to handle typing their ideas in real time (slow, eyesight problems, embarrassment). The whiteboard concept where people draw and write their ideas was better, and tended to get people excited and truly brainstorming ... plus it seemed to have the effect of increasing the breadth and creativity of the output. But that's my impression ... not a documented fact.

I agree though that the heirarchical outline nature of Frontier makes it a wonderful tool to focus a meeting. We learned to brief the clients on using an outline form of delineation. The client would walk away with a much higher quality result, and the audience would actually retain some of the knowlege because of the heirarchy. For some reason, the heirarchy enhanced retention. I'm sure there must be big-buck research going on in psychology circles somewhere about this kind of thing.

For Frontier over a broadband or other connection, the bandwidth would have to be wide enough to accomodate a quick enough refresh to allow that little blue arrow in the interface to delineate where things are being moved around to. If there's anything I'd do, it would be to enlarge that arrow (just for a meeting environment) to make it more obvious. Visual feedback on what's being changed is VITAL.

A crazy idea that I'll throw out there ... when I was still in Princeton, NJ, walking across the campus, I wandered into one of the new Chemistry department buildings. They had this wonderful layout where the end of each hallway had a semicircular room, ringed with couches ... the flat internal side had a simple blackboard. Physics students were in there brainstorming away in their spare time, covering the blackboard with equations.

This brought something to mind ... they had a wonderful cryptic iconography for what they were talking about. Through their extremely spare drawings on the board, they communicated very complex concepts and generated far-ranging discussions. I thought at the time that it was a shame that in our technological environment, we don't have a similar paradigm.

We all understand flowchart symbols, if-then-else statements and the like, as well as the standard GUI icons ... these concepts could be extended to help reduce our bandwidth requirements ... I don't mean create a language, but leverage what we already understand and apply it toward a specific goal ...

Gotta get back to work ...

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