Seamless Media

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ClearBoard is designed to integrate interpersonal space and shared workspace seamlessly. A

design goal of ClearBoard is to allow a pair of users to shift easily between interpersonal spaceand shared workspace using familiar everyday cues such as the partner's gestures, head

movements, eye contact, and gaze direction.

ClearBoard Metaphor

The key metaphor of ClearBoard

design is "talking through and

drawing on a big transparent

glass board." This picture shows

"ClearBoard-0" which is the

simple mockup of this ClearBoard

concept for co-located pairs of

users. ClearBoard-0 consists of a

glass board positioned between

the partners on which they draw or

post objects. ClearBoard requires

less eye and head movement to

switch focus between the drawing

surface and the partner's face

than is needed in either the

whiteboard or the desktopenvironment. However, a real

glass board has the problem that

written text appears reversed to

one's partner; we were able to

solve this problem by mirror-

reversing video images inClearBoard-1 and 2 as described

below.

ClearBoard-1

This picture shows ClearBoard-1;

our first prototype to supportremote collaboration. Two users

are discussing a route by drawinga map directly on the screen

surface. Both users can share a

common map orientation. The

partner can read all the text andgraphics in their correctorientation.

We found ClearBoard provides


http://web.media.mit.edu/~ishii/CB.html 1/4


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the capability we call "gaze

awareness": the ability to monitor

the direction of a partner's gaze

and thus his or her focus of

attention. A ClearBoard user can

tell which screen objects thepartner is gazing at during a

conversation more easily andprecisely than is possible in an

ordinary meeting environment with

a whiteboard.

ClearBoard-2

In using this ClearBoard-1 prototype, we found several problems. The

projected video image of a drawing is not sufficiently clear. Lack of recording

capabilities is an obstacle to re-using the work results. To overcome these

problems in ClearBoard-1, we decided to design a new computer-based

prototype, "ClearBoard-2". Instead of using color paint markers, ClearBoard-

2 provides users with "TeamPaint", a multi-user computer-based paint editor

and digitizer pen.

We see the evolution from ClearBoard-1 to ClearBoard-2 as being veryimportant. Computer and video-communication technologies have, until now,

evolved independently. Although they have been loosely coupled using

arbitrary multi-window interfaces in many desktop multimedia conferencingsystems, they have never been integrated seamlessly from the users'

cognitive point of view. ClearBoard-2 succeeds in naturally integrating the

technology of computer-based groupware with that of video conferencing. We

expect that the seamless integration of computer and video communicationtechnologies will be an integral part of the next generation of collaboration

media.

Vision: Seamless Media Design




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[ images from vision video "Seamless Media Design," SIGGRAPH Video

Review, CSCW '94 Technical Video Program, Issue 106, Item 10, ACM,

New York, 1994. ]

We are now very much interested in how the next generation of collaboration media

may augment the process of collaborative creation by people such as artists,

musicians, designers and children. NTT's vision video, "Seamless Media Design"

illustrates our expectation of future collaboration media based on the ClearBoard

concept. Following picture shows snapshots of a session from the vision video.

For more information about this project, please refer the following papers and videos.

Papers on ClearBoard-1 and 2

Ishii, H., Kobayashi, M. and Arita, K., "Iterative Design of Seamless Collaboration Media,"

Communications of the ACM (CACM), Special Issue on Internet Technology, ACM, Vol. 37,

No. 8, August 1994, pp. 83-97.

Ishii, H., Kobayashi, M. and Grudin, J., "Integration of Interpersonal Space and Shared

Workspace: ClearBoard Design and Experiments," ACM Transactions on Information

Systems (TOIS), ACM, Vol. 11, No. 4, October 1993, pp. 349-375.

Kobayashi, M. and Ishii, H., "ClearBoard: A Novel Shared Drawing Medium that Supports Gaze

Awareness in Remote Collaboration," IEICE Transactions on Communications, Institute of

Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICE), Vol. E76-B, No. 6,

June 1993, pp. 609-617.

Ishii, H., Kobayashi, M., and Grudin, J., "Integration of Inter-Personal Space and Shared

Workspace: ClearBoard Design and Experiments," Proceedings of Conference on Computer-

Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '92), ACM, Toronto, 1-4 November 1992, pp. 33-42.




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Ishii, H. and Kobayashi, M., "ClearBoard: A Seamless Media for Shared Drawing and

Conversation with Eye-Contact," Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing

Systems (CHI '92), ACM SIGCHI, Monterey, 3-7 May 1992, pp. 525-532.

Videos on ClearBoard-1 and 2

NTT, "Seamless Media Design," SIGGRAPH Video Review, CSCW '94 Technical Video

Program, Issue 106, Item 10, ACM, New York, 1994.

Ishii, H., Arita, K., and Kobayashi, M., "Toward Seamless Collaboration Media: From

TeamWorkStation to ClearBoard," SIGGRAPH Video Review, CSCW '92 Technical Video

Program, Issue 87, Item 6, ACM, New York, 1992.

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