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IST Researchers Experimenting with New Software to Study Emergency-Management Planning
07/18/2007
by Margaret Hopkins
IST researchers have teamed up with Noldus Information Technology to develop new software tools for analyzing people’s behaviors in computer-supported collaboration environments such as emergency-management planning. by Margaret Hopkins
The tools, which will help detect patterns in how people share information and make decisions, will provide researchers with a means to measure the effects of novel interaction techniques created to facilitate collaboration, said Gregorio Convertino, IST doctoral student and one of several researchers in the Penn State Center for Human-Computer Interaction who will use the software.
“Noldus will contribute advanced tools with which we can capture and study simultaneous human-computer interaction among multiple participants,” Convertino said. “Those tools also will include new analytic methods to unravel the complex communication processes involved in group decision-making tasks.”
The researchers are looking at how members of an emergency-management planning team coordinate work, share information and collaborate on complex problems under time pressure. Noldus software will not just collect data on those interactions through videos, key stroke, screen captures and mouse clicks but also will provide analysis tools, so that patterns of work activity and communication can be identified.
“The ultimate goal of this work is to develop software for collaborative work that are efficient, effective and easy to use,” Convertino said.
The IST-based Center for Human-Computer Interaction is directed by Jack Carroll, the Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, and is devoted to interdisciplinary research, instruction and outreach. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Noldus is a developer of software tools for HCI research and usability testing.
