« back to Publications

Tam, J. (2002)
Change Awareness in 2D Graphical Workspaces. Master’s thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, February.
Type: Masters thesis. Note: Tam was under my supervision.

Download as: Pdf

Abstract.
Change Awareness is the ability to track the changes of others in a collaborative project. In this thesis, I develop a framework for understanding how change awareness can be applied to 2D graphical applications. This framework articulates basic informational elements needed by a person to track changes in these systems. Additionally, I discuss the fundamental concepts for displaying these informational elements. These include the crucial display dimensions (placement, presentation and persistence), methods for reducing the time and effort to acquire and understand the information, mechanisms for displaying the elements, and filtering changes to avoid overload. Finally, I demonstrate the value of both the framework and the display concepts by showing how they can be used to critique a change awareness tool implemented as a part of my investigations. The critique not only pinpointed the weaknesses of the tool but how it could be redesigned to better support change awareness.