We developed ahypermediaenvironment forglobal collaborationby knowledgeworkers, whichconsists of InterPODand TeamSmart.InterPOD creates ameeting “room”environment forparticipants to accessand sharemultimediainformation fromvarious sources. TheTeamSmarthypermedia toolsupportscollaboration ondocumentproduction byglobally dispersedteams.

Global collaboration on knowledgework, such as product development,is vital in many industries as com-petition extends across regional bor-

ders. Collaborating in such an environment meansworking between cross-functional, cross-culturalteams separated by time-zone differences and geo-graphical distance. The Internet infrastructure hasmade global collaboration possible for large num-bers of people worldwide, and collaboration toolssupport many project activities. However, the suc-cessful execution of projects still largely dependson personal efforts, such as leadership by “super”designers, late-night (or early-morning) meetings,and expensive time-consuming international trav-el. To address these problems, we developed anintegrated environment to systematically supportcollaborative knowledge work. The environmentconsists of InterPOD and TeamSmart.1 InterPODsupports conferences by providing fuller controlover the various media used during a conference.The TeamSmart tool supports document creationby a globally dispersed team through hypermedia.

Collaborative knowledge work is inherentlydifficult. The stakeholders in a project (designers,clients, users, and so on) are typically distributed.Plus, any given project is usually one of severalthat involve each stakeholder. Global projectsthus represent a collaborative process using andcreating large amounts of information that mustbe managed and shared effectively. Our researchhas focused on

❚ Extending the Web into a true hypermediumto collaboratively create and manage knowl-edge rather than to merely disseminate infor-mation in a one-way manner.

❚ Developing specific applications to supportand manage collaborative activities such asface-to-face meetings and distributed docu-ment creation.

❚ Implementing an environment to providemultimodal support—including synchro-nous/asynchronous and colocated/dispersedsupport—to overcome time-zone differencesand geographical distance.

ProblemsTime-zone differences and distance create

major stumbling blocks in collaborative knowl-edge work by a globally distributed team. In prac-tice, any significant global project involvesface-to-face meetings to exchange information,ideas, and understandings concerning the currentproject status. Between meetings, team memberswork on their responsibilities mostly in an asyn-chronous manner. This process of synchronouswork (meetings) and asynchronous work is usual-ly repeated until the end of the project. However,face-to-face meetings for global projects are expen-sive and time consuming because of distance.Also, scheduling remote conferences (such as tele-phone conferencing) proves difficult because oftime-zone differences.

Meetings themselves are difficult enough toconduct even when participants are in the sameroom. Kaiya and Saeki2 videotaped and analyzedmeetings held to discuss the requirements analy-sis of software systems. They found that a largeportion of the discussion failed to reflect thespecification documents and that time was spentinefficiently. They reported that 36.3 percent ofall decisions made during meetings were left outof the written minutes, 21.7 percent of the totalmeeting time was spent on discussions that wentaround in circles, and 25 percent of the meetingtime was spent on discussions that led to nodecisions.

In addition, global collaboration projects areoften cross-cultural, cross-organizational endeavorsthat involve the participation of various stakehold-ers with different backgrounds, goals, and levels ofcommitment.3 These stakeholders use a variety ofrepresentations and documents as part of a distrib-uted, iterative process where the stakeholders,

36 1070-986X/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE

A HypermediaEnvironment forGlobalCollaboration

Kenji Takahashi and Eiji YanaNTT

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

understandings, and representations evolve.Time and distance barriers are obstacles to

reaching common understandings among stake-holders in the following activities:

❚ Communication. What should be discussed?What are the real problems?

❚ Agreement. What’s agreed upon and what’sundecided? What’s the current project status?

❚ Traceability. Which artifacts (that is, objects ofcollaboration such as product design) havebeen or should be changed? Why and howwere they changed or should be changed?

Here we consider two approaches to solving theseproblems:

1. Improve the efficiency and quality of remoteor face-to-face conferencing.

2. Maximize conferencing output and efficientlyuse asynchronous collaborative work.

We implemented InterPOD for the firstapproach and TeamSmart for the second one. Wecombined these two systems to overcome timeand distance barriers, thus providing a global col-laboration environment.

Researchers developed electronic whiteboardsystems such as Collab4 and Tivoli5 based on thefirst approach. These systems use specialized large-screen devices to implement advanced user inter-faces such as direct-object manipulation by penand gesture. Such specialized devices, however,make these systems expensive, difficult to usewith other systems, and hard to maintain. In addi-tion, these systems don’t meet user demands forusing office space efficiently and flexibly becausethey’re large and not portable. Group-decisionsupport systems (GDSSs)6 focus on a specific activ-ity—the decision-making process—in meetingsbased on process models (such as voting). A GDSScomplements other enabling technologies, suchas multimedia conferencing tools, to provide totalsolutions for meetings over distance.

To provide an advanced meeting-support envi-ronment suitable for a wider range of workplaces,we designed InterPOD as an affordable, interop-erable, modular, and portable system. InterPODuses a commercial off-the-shelf analog video-sig-nal-switching system because it’s fast, easy to setup, and less expensive. InterPOD supports collab-

oration in knowledge work rather than a seminar-style meeting in which one person makes a pre-sentation to the other meeting participants.

The video-switching system enables the rapidexchange of multimedia information. To controlthe video switching, InterPOD uses Java and Webtechnologies. The portability and modularity ofthe InterPOD system lets users move the systemsaround and combine them with other systems ina variety of configurations. InterPOD provides asmaller set of functions than the systems justmentioned, but is more collaborative, cost effec-tive, and easier to deploy.

Based on the second approach, researchersdeveloped design-tracking tools such as gIBIS,7

Sybil,8 and Tuiqiao,9 to record the design-decision-making process in a textual format. NoTime,10

Filochat,11 and Audio Notebook12 locally recordand replay face-to-face meetings in audio andvideo format. Streams13 is a server that can recordbroadcast seminars (or one-to-many communica-tion) in audio and video and replay these toremote clients on demand.

In addition, many document management toolssuch as OpenText (http://www.opentext.com) andDocumentum (http://www.documentum.com) arecommercially available. These systems only supportthe management part of the collaboration betweenglobally dispersed knowledge workers that concernsa single set of documents. Such collaborationinvolves various work styles—including synchro-nous/asynchronous and collocated/dispersed—andrequires complete traceability of working docu-ments during the transition between the differentwork styles. TeamSmart provides integrated supportfor global collaboration on document creationusing networked hypermedia. TeamSmart seam-lessly supports both synchronous and asynchro-nous collaboration by integrating real-timecommunication services (such as videoconferencerecording/replaying) and non-real-time documentprocessing (for example, editing and versioning).Internet protocol (IP) multicast handles real-timecommunication services, while enhanced Webtechnologies take care of non-real-time documentprocessing.

We constructed a prototype of a collaborationenvironment that bridges Tokyo, Japan, and PaloAlto, California, by installing InterPOD andTeamSmart at each site. We connected the twosites via a closed IP network over an asynchronoustransfer mode (ATM) network using a 1.5-Mbitsper second (Mbps) constant bit-rate (CBR) service.This environment supported the development of

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products such as collaboration tools and net-working systems. We provided the following col-laboration services for these trials:

❚ An integrated group interface

❚ The ability to share screen images from com-puters and various media equipment

❚ Web-based remote control of various mediaequipment

❚ Multipoint videoconferencing

❚ Videoconference recording, indexing, andplayback

❚ Application program sharing

InterPODThe InterPOD system supports meetings relat-

ed to collaborative knowledge work by providingparticipants with seamless access to various mediaand information. InterPOD serves as the coremeeting “room” environment, which uses multi-media presentation and communication tech-nologies to augment and facilitate social protocolsamong participants.

InterPOD’s design builds on three concepts:

❚ Seamless information access. Any informationor person in charge of a particular matter canbe accessed during a meeting via a local-areanetwork (LAN) or the Internet without leav-ing InterPOD. Such information access letsparticipants make decisions with sufficientinformation.

❚ Integrated interface for groups. The group inter-face isn’t a mere collection of individual userinterfaces, but is integrated to facilitate natural,social protocols among participants.

❚ Flexible media handling. The input and outputequipment for various media (video cameras,videoconferencing systems, electronic black-boards, and so on) can be easily controlledwith little or no need to touch physical con-nectors or plugs. This lets participants use anytype of media that are most appropriate fortheir purposes.

The main functions of InterPOD are Web-basedworkspace management and integrated multime-

dia device control. Through Web browsers,InterPOD lets meeting participants create publicand private workspaces, and exchange the work-spaces in a controlled manner based on their roles(for example, chairperson). The workspaces can beremotely controlled and transmitted over distance.The device-control functions provide hardwareand software interfaces to various devices includ-ing videoconferencing systems. InterPOD systemunits can be combined with each other to provideadditional capacity as needed.

InterPOD configurationThe InterPOD system consists of a main unit

and seven personal information boxes (PIBs). Themain unit includes a personal computer that actsas a control server and a video-switching system.The PIBs let individual participants connect theinput and output of their personal computers andmonitors to the InterPOD main unit. The meetingenvironment—centered around the InterPOD sys-tem—can consist of individual monitors for theparticipants, shared displays, media equipmentsuch as a videoconferencing system, and the par-ticipants’ computers. Participants usually bringtheir own portable computers. The control servermanages all the components centrally via a Web-based user interface.

WorkspacesInterPOD has two types of workspaces—

personal and common. Each user has a personalworkspace, and all users share common work-spaces. Personal workspaces let users retrieve infor-mation and take notes. Common workspacespermit users to share information and work on thecurrent topic. Having two types of workspaces isanalogous to a conventional daily meeting—whileparticipants have their own notebooks and docu-ments, all share the current topic on a whiteboard.

InterPOD lets users project their personal work-spaces onto the common workspaces. It also letsthem copy the information from the commonworkspace into their personal workspaces. In thisway, users can exchange information and ideas.However, InterPOD protects the privacy of the per-sonal workspace: only a chairperson can project apersonal workspace, and participants can’t see thepersonal workspaces of others unless their ownersor the chairperson publishes the workspaces.

InterPOD doesn’t implement a specific floor-control mechanism. Anyone can take over thecommon spaces at any time. As a result, conflictsthat occur must be solved through human negoti-

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ation. The current implementation ofInterPOD has two common work-spaces. For example, one commonworkspace might display informationon the current topic, and the othermight enhance the meeting atmos-phere by showing a video image of aremote site participating throughvideoconferencing. Alternatively,participants can use the two spaces tocompare relevant information.

InterPOD provides three types ofuser interfaces depending on theroles of users: user, chairperson, andadministrator. The interface for userslets them do only two things—pro-ject the contents of their personalworkspaces onto the common work-spaces and display a common work-space in their personal workspace.The chairperson can send informa-tion from any personal workspace tothe common workspaces and viceversa. The administrator has full con-trol over the display of personal andcommon workspaces for mainte-nance not usually performed duringmeetings, for example, configuringInterPOD systems.

InterPOD-based meetings can beconducted in several ways. Forexample, a chairperson can take aleadership role and centrally operateInterPOD. The chairperson in thiscase projects the personal workspaceof a participant onto the commonworkspace as needed on behalf of allthe participants. Alternatively, par-ticipants can proceed by themselveswithout a chairperson and projecttheir personal workspaces onto thecommon workspaces cooperatively.

We implemented the user inter-face programs of InterPOD as a Javaapplet (Figure 1). Wireless remoteoperation by a personal digital assis-tant (PDA) is also an option.

Use scenarioSuppose that Kenji and Eiji in Japan, and Jeff in

the US hold a meeting using InterPOD. Kenji is thechairman, and Eiji and Jeff are participants. If Eijidisplays tables of data from his workspace—thescreen of his laptop computer—in a common work-

space, or shared display, Kenji will have the screenof Eiji’s computer displayed on his personal moni-tor (Figure 2). In addition, Kenji, the chairperson,can send the output of the videoconferencing sys-tem to the second shared monitor to see Jeff. On

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Figure 1. Three InterPOD user interfaces. (a) Chairpersons select the information to project

onto a common workspace. (b) Participants choose a target common workspace from which

to project their workspaces and display the source information on their monitors. (c)

Administrators decide which combinations to configure between the information sources and

target workspaces. The highlighted cells show one such combination.

(a) (b)

(c)

Shared monitors

Japan

Eiji

Get

Get

Publish

Publish

Kenji(chairperson)

InterPOD

Videoconference

USA

Jeff

Figure 2. Screen sharing in InterPOD. The system lets Eiji display his tables of data in a

common workspace so that Kenji and Jeff can see them on their monitors.

behalf of Eiji, Kenji can also display either Jeff’simage or the tables of data from Eiji’s monitor.

TeamSmartA hypermedia tool, TeamSmart supports the

multimodal collaborative work of creating docu-ments by team members in different locations(Figure 3). It’s based on the Inquiry Cycle model,14

and implemented using metalevel links, which wediscuss in detail in the sidebar “The Inquiry Cycle.”

Documents, such as design specifications, rep-resent the final deliverables in many collaborativeknowledge-work projects. Team members work ondocuments in various ways. For example, teammembers may work asynchronously and concur-rently on a part that’s their responsibility and makecomments. All members still have to meet, though,to synchronize each member’s progress and con-duct a peer review of the entire documents. Somemembers may not be able to attend meetings, andsome may leave or join in the middle of a project.

Although many collaboration and documen-tation tools exist, it’s difficult to maintain com-plete consistency and traceability of contributionsto the documents by team members. Currenttools mostly support distinct project activities—such as e-mail for exchanging comments, docu-ment-management tools for change control, theWeb for publishing documents, and videoconfer-encing tools for peer reviews. For example, mem-bers point out problems in documents by usinge-mail, solve them through videoconferences, and

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Figure 3. Main features of TeamSmart: An HTML document that’s the object of

colloboration (top left), list of discussions (top middle), video recording of

discussions from one remote site (top right), close-up of participant at the other

remote site during the videoconference (bottom right), and details of the

discussions (bottom middle).

The Inquiry Cycle

The Inquiry Cycle, devised by Potts, Takahashi,and Anton1 is a model for collaborative documentcreation. It involves the repetition of three activities:expression, discussion, and commitment (Figure A).

❚ Expression deals with preparing and presentingideas to be documented.

❚ Discussion involves discussing the documentsand includes sharing comments and individualannotations on the documents.

❚ Commitment includes planning changes to thedocuments based on results from the discus-sions—such as change requests and agreementsabout terminology—and executing the plans.

The Inquiry Cycle has two main advantagesover similar models:

1. artifact-centered integration of expression, dis-cussion, and commitment, and

2. simple, flexible, and generic structures.

Having the artifact (document) at the center ofdiscussion and commitment contributes to improv-ing it while maintaining traceability because par-ticipants focus their efforts on the document. Thisapproach also helps users resolve disagreements.

Likewise, the model’s simplicity and flexibilitypermits instantiations of the model with varyingdegrees of formality or the use of different con-

Figure A. The stages of the Inquiry Cycle—

expression, discussion, and commitment.

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ventions based on the users’ needs. TeamSmartuses “questions and answers” as a model for thediscussion phase to capture the rapid exchange ofideas and information among project members.However, analytical models (such as the Issue-BasedInformation System, or IBIS,2 and questions,options, and criteria, or QOC3) can be used fordetailed problem analysis. In our instantiation, com-mitment comes from a rough consensus or thedecision of the document editor. Commitment canalso be based on a voting system or in more formalenvironments on a multiple level “sign-off” whereboth a vendor and a customer would need to signan agreement concerning changes.

Metalevel linksWe use metalevel links to represent and keep

track of relationships among the pieces of informa-tion generated through the Inquiry Cycle.

Metalevel links implement “true” hypermediacapabilities, which enable the dynamic creation andcross-referencing of knowledge on the Web.Metalevel links relate Web resources to one another ina formal manner, outside of the Web pages’ contents.4

We implemented the metalevel linking mechanism asan extension to the hypertext protocol (HTTP v.1.1).For example, Figure B compares how HTML and met-alevel links represent relationships between a questionand its answer. HTML links can’t formally relate Webresources, because the relationships among anchors,destinations, and the entire Web resource can’t beclearly defined. Although Extensible MarkupLanguage (XML) formally represents and contains therelationships within contents, manipulating the rela-tionships remotely still proves difficult with XML alone.

Metalevel links are useful for supporting collab-orative knowledge work in several ways. For exam-ple, users can

❚ Derive the knowledge structure represented inhypermedia faster because it’s not necessary totransmit and parse the entire contents of Webresources.

❚ Manipulate links from remote hosts withoutchanging the contents of Web resources.

❚ Detect changes to links made via formal proto-cols in real time.

❚ Represent bidirectional relationships using a pairof metalevel links opposite each other.

❚ Do intelligent searching based on relationships.For instance, if resources are linked with “parent-child” links, users can retrieve the “grandchil-dren” of a resource by traversing resources “twolinks” away.

Finally, metalevel links provide different views ofknowledge structures to individual users by filteringlinks based on link types.

References1. C. Potts, K. Takahashi, and A.I. Anton, “Inquiry-

Based Requirements Analysis,” IEEE Software, Vol.

11, No. 2, March 1994, pp. 21-32.

2. W. Kunz and H. Rittel, Issues as Elements of

Information Systems, Working Paper 131, Inst.

Urban and Regional Development, Univ. of

California at Berkeley, 1970.

3. A. MacLean et al., “Questions, Options, and

Criteria: Elements of Design Space Analysis,”

Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 6, No. 3 and 4,

1991, pp. 201-250.

4. K. Takahashi, “Metalevel links: More Power to Your

Links,” Comm. ACM, Vol. 41, No. 7, July 1998,

pp. 103-105.

Question

Question

Here is the answer.

(…the body of thequestion…)

(…the body of thequestion…)

Link:<answer_URL>;rel = "is answered by "

Answer

(…the body of theanswer…)

Link:<answer_URL>;rel = "answer to "

Answer

This is an answer to thequestion.

Metalevellinks

Body

Figure B. Comparison of how HTML and metalevel links represent relationships

between a question and its answer. Two Web resources refer to each other

through HTML links (top), while two Web resources relate to each other

through metalevel links (bottom).

revise the documents. No one may participate inall the activities, which take place at different loca-tions and times. Misunderstandings and mistakescan easily slip in during the transition betweenactivities done by different team members whohave different work styles and use different tools.With this approach, no systematic support existsto manage the activities and relevant informationthat led to the refinement of the documents.

To address these problems, TeamSmart cap-tures, manages, and provides all the informationreferred to and generated (including each versionof documents, annotations, and video-recordeddiscussions) during a project as hypermediawoven with metalevel links. TeamSmart seam-lessly supports asynchronous and synchronouscollaboration by, for example, enabling multime-dia conferences and recording them in a way thatlinks the records to relevant portions of docu-ments and comments. The hypermedia formatgives globally distributed collaborators easy accessto the details of document changes and results.Team members unable to attend a meetingbecause of time or distance barriers can refer tothe complete record of a meeting throughTeamSmart. The main functions of TeamSmart are

❚ Collaborative editing of documents

❚ Version control and configuration manage-ment

❚ Recording, indexing, and replay of videocon-ferences

❚ Client sharing

❚ Visualization of the document creation process

Here’s an example of a typical, simplified ses-sion using TeamSmart. A team in Tokyo, Japan,and one in Palo Alto, California, collaborate ondesign documents for a software tool. The Tokyoteam is responsible for the client part of the tooland the Palo Alto team for the server part. First, themembers of each team work asynchronously andprepare the first drafts of their work usingTeamSmart on their desktop computers. Memberscan also use other word-processor programs towrite and input the drafts to TeamSmart inHypertext Markup Language (HTML) format. Oncethe drafts are available in TeamSmart, the membersreview and attach comments to them (still asyn-

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Multimedia record/play client:TeamVCR client

Collaborativedocument creation

client:TQ

Document informationvisualization tool:

TeamViewer

Audio conference tool

Multimedia recording server:TeamVCR server

Indexingagent

Enhanced HTTP serverTeamServer

HTTPserver

Notificationagent

Videoconference tool

HTTP HTTP

IP multicast session(for control)

IP multicast session(for media)

Figure 4. TeamSmart

architecture.

chronously). At some point, each team meets in itsInterPOD room to have a team-to-team videocon-ference. Using the synchronous functions ofTeamSmart (such as client sharing) in the InterPODenvironment, both teams synchronously reviewthe same documents, respond to the commentspreviously made, agree on the changes to make,and find new problems in the documents. Themeeting is video-recorded and TeamSmart auto-matically generates indices on the topics discussed.After the meeting, members revise the documentsand solve the open problems, referring to the mul-timedia records of the meeting by usingTeamSmart at their desktops. This cycle repeatsuntil members complete the documents.

TeamSmart architecture TeamSmart consists of several clients and servers.

Users mainly interact with TQ (from the Chineseword tuiqiao, which means elaboration), the mainclient of the TeamSmart system, to review, anno-tate, and edit documents. TQ communicates withTeamServer, an enhanced Web server that centrallymanages the documents and related information.Figure 4 shows the TeamSmart architecture.

TQTQ lets users edit HTML documents on the

basis of the Inquiry Cycle. By using IP multicasttechnology, multiple TQ users can simultaneous-ly view and perform operations on the same imageof a document. For example, if user A selects a cer-tain paragraph of the document in TQ, that para-graph is also selected in the TQ display of user B.Figure 3 shows the screen shot of TQ.

TeamServerAs TeamSmart’s core server, TeamServer man-

ages all the data for TeamSmart. The server usesenhanced HTTP to manipulate metalevel links andmanages different versions of Web resources.TeamServer and TQ communicate throughenhanced HTTP. TeamServer creates and manageseach item of information, including paragraphs ofdocuments, questions, and answers as individualWeb resources. The information items have theirown URLs, connected by metalevel links. In thisway, users can access and manipulate each infor-mation item via HTTP from anywhere in the world.

In Figure 5, for example, version 1 of a docu-ment consists of four paragraphs—P1, P2, P3, andP4. P1 is linked to question Q1, which links to twoalternative answers, A1 and A2. A1 links to com-mitment C1, which leads to P1’, a new version of

P1. These links represent the following relationshipsamong paragraphs, questions, and answers: Q1challenges P1. A1 and A2 provide answers to Q1,and users select A1. Based on A1, users decide onand execute C1, which results in P1’. Once mem-bers are satisfied with this status of the document,they agree to revise the entire document. The sys-tem then configures version 2, which includes P1’.

TeamViewerThe TeamViewer tool visualizes the document

creation process. It provides users with a bird’s eyeview of the process by graphically displaying in onewindow how a series of versions of a document hasevolved. In the display, paragraphs that have beenchanged or discussed appear in different colors.Figure 6 shows how TeamViewer visualizes theprocess. On the left side, each column represents aversion of a document. A column consists of rec-tangles, each of which stands for a paragraph or

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P1

P2

P3

P4

P1′Q1 A1

A2

C1

Figure 5. Version and configuration management by TeamSmart.

Figure 6. Visualizing the document creation process by

TeamViewer.

diagram. The red rectangles are paragraphs andongoing diagrams that users have revised. The grayrectangles represent the discussions about the para-graphs. The paragraph that users selected appearsin blue. Detailed information on the selected para-graph appears on the right.

TeamVCRTeamVCR provides a multimedia note-taking

service. During a videoconference conductedusing TQ, TeamVCR records the conference andautomatically indexes its content. After the con-ference, TeamVCR plays back the recording at theuser’s request. The videoconferences are conduct-ed using IP multicast tools such as vic (videocon-ference tool) and RAT (Robust Audio Tool).15

Action-based indexing and recording.TeamVCR automatically creates an index of therecording based on the times at which users select-ed or created paragraphs or discussion items dur-ing the conference. The system then generateslinks to the object of that selection or creation.Users can employ the index to replay only therecorded parts that pertain to paragraphs or dis-cussion items of interest. To index the multime-dia streams, TeamVCR creates index objects that

point to specific portions of continuously record-ed streams without cutting or inserting indicesinto the records themselves.

TeamVCR generates the indices as follows. Itcontinuously records the multimedia streams forentire sessions. When any of the participants cre-ates or selects an information item with TQ, anindex agent program automatically creates a Webobject as an index of the multimedia streams. Theindex agent monitors the participants’ actionsbased on information multicast by TQ about whatcommands the participants issue. TeamServerthen links the index object to the informationitem that’s created or selected.

Architecture. TeamVCR is itself a complex sys-tem that consists of TeamVCR clients, a TeamVCRserver, and an index agent (Figure 7). TheTeamVCR server consists of a session managementserver and VCR servers. A detailed discussion ofthe system appears elsewhere.16 Here we brieflysummarize the system architecture. The TeamVCRclients handle interactions with users and com-municate with the session management server viathe session initiation protocol (SIP)17 and real-timestreaming protocol (RTSP).18 The session manage-ment server initiates, monitors, and controls the

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TQVideoconference

toolTeam VCR client

Index

Para-graph

Q

A

Indexagent

TeamServer

Create

Monitormulticastclick stream

Recordmultimediastreams

Initiate, control,and finish sessions.Request record andreplay.

VCRserver

Sessionmanagement

server

Point torelevantmultimediarecord

SIP,RTSP

Team VCR server

Figure 7. Architecture of

TeamVCR.

recording and playing sessions, while the VCRservers record and replay multimedia streams. Thesession management server creates and controlsthe VCR server, or a program thread, for each ses-sion. The session management server mediates allinteractions between users and the VCR servers.

Here’s an example of a basic use scenario.Suppose that the TQ clients, TeamServer, the con-ference tools, and an index agent are already run-ning. First, the user responsible for recording startsa TeamVCR client. Upon invocation, the clientsends a request to the session management serverwith a resource description (such as the locationsof the VCR server to be invoked, the index agent,and the communication channels) to initiate arecording session. The session management serv-er checks whether the recording resources areavailable, and, if so, creates a VCR server thread.The session management server keeps monitoringthe VCR server until the end of the session. Next,the session management server invites the indexagent invoked by TQ to the session. The user thenclicks the record button on the TeamVCR clientand the VCR server starts recording the multime-dia streams. The index agent keeps monitoring theclick streams (that is, the streams of data aboutwhen and who selects or creates which paragraph)multicast by TQ. If the agent detects a creation orselection event, it sends a request to TeamServer tocreate an index object that contains the eventinformation and links the index object to the rele-vant paragraph.

Currently, the resource description comes as atext file, which may be difficult to edit or modify.To improve usability, TeamSmart can cooperatewith systems that provide collaborative virtualworkspaces, such as CVW,19 to specify TeamSmartresource allocations by assigning a virtual work-space to a particular project.

Typically, a five-party, 2.5-hour videoconferenceconsumes about 600 to 700 Mbytes of disk space atabout 10 frames per second in H.261 and pulse-code modulation (PCM) formats.

Trial resultsWe used the global collaboration environment

prototype, which included earlier versions ofInterPOD and TeamSmart, for several projects inwhich meetings were held two or three timesweekly over a period of about two years. The pro-jects included global network operation and prod-uct development. We also used the environmentto develop InterPOD and TeamSmart. Weobserved that the environment worked effective-

ly as a “group memory” for distributed teams.Project teams consisted of network and soft-

ware engineers and business development man-agers who had different nationalities (such asJapanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, American, Korean,and Canadian) and spoke different native lan-guages. The number of team members rangedfrom 3 to 11. About every six months, team mem-bers from either side traveled to the other side’slocation and met in an InterPOD room to conductextensive peer reviews using TeamSmart.InterPOD and TeamSmart were also installed atand used by other companies, US governmentagencies, and universities.

Process gainsInterPOD helped meeting participants under-

stand exactly what they were discussing by dis-playing various technical diagrams and pictureson computer screens or an electronic whiteboard.The system also displayed rough sketches writtenon paper shown through a video camera. Thesevisual representations were easy to switch usingWeb browsers. This feature was particularly use-ful because these meetings focused on technicaldiscussions.

InterPOD also let participants finalize agreed-upon changes to documents and diagrams duringmeetings. In addition, the multimedia records ofmeetings from TeamSmart allowed participantsafter the meetings to identify and work on discus-sions that had not led to conclusions. For example,we made it a custom to start meetings by checkingeach open discussion item listed in TeamSmart.

Meanwhile, TeamSmart let participants easilyrecognize and focus on topics of discussion dur-ing the meetings because an information itemthat participants selected on their TQ clients was

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Through trial use of our

global collaboration

environment,

we found that it could

effectively support

collaboration.

automatically highlighted on others’ TQ clientseven if they were in different locations. Whenusing only videoconferencing tools withoutTeamSmart, we often had to tell participants atthe remote sites which pages we were discussing.TeamSmart made this unnecessary because thesynchronously shared TeamSmart clients high-lighted the part selected by users and displayedthe discussion context in one window.

The visual document evolution process fromTeamViewer enabled late-joining participants toquickly catch up by providing them with a projectoverview and easy access to the information aboutthe earlier part of the project. Also, project man-agers could quickly grasp the project’s progress byusing TeamViewer. The multimedia records acces-sible with TQ and the TeamVCR clients let themunderstand the current status of the project indetail. We made the project records for a one-yearperiod accessible by TeamSmart. For one case, wehad to access records taken six months previous-ly to solve current problems.

In the InterPOD environment, participants thathad different cultural backgrounds and spoke dif-ferent languages could better understand eachother by communicating via nonverbal languagerepresented in various media. For example, video-conferencing tools helped the participants toknow whether others understood and were satis-fied with discussions by their facial expressions.TeamSmart also helped non-native speakers tounderstand what participants said by allowingthem to replay the video records at their own pace.

Problems to solveThe trial results also revealed that a number of

problems remain. Because there’s a 17-hour timedifference between Japan and California (16 hoursin the summer), the system could only be used ina roughly two-hour period between 9:00 and11:00 a.m. Japan time (5:00 and 7:00 p.m. PacificStandard Time). Also, because multiple projectteams used the system, the use of computer andnetwork resources was concentrated during thosetimes. Therefore, resource management and usescheduling are clearly important issues.

Organizing synchronous collaboration sessionson a global scale was a time-consuming andtedious task. No standard procedure existed to calltogether the participants in different time zonesto begin a synchronous session. Also, participantshad to share and precisely set many kinds of para-meters (such as those for accessing work objects,setting up communication channels, and specify-

ing servers to use) to establish the session.Sufficient notification of changes in the confer-ence schedule was also difficult to achieve. Forthese reasons, problems such as wasted timebefore beginning a conference and important par-ticipants not being available occurred.

If some participants couldn’t fully use the ser-vices of the collaboration environment, they wereat a great disadvantage in expressing opinions andinfluencing decisions made during meetings. Thishappened when, for example, project memberswere on business trips. The unfair differencesmade it difficult to form a consensus and resultedin decreased motivation for participating in themeetings. We need a mechanism or method forrecognizing such differences in the environmentand compensating for them.

ConclusionThrough trial use of our global collaboration

environment, we found that it could effectivelysupport collaboration. We also identified require-ments for further improvements. The environ-ment still needs a thorough and quantitativeevaluation in terms of process gains and losses. Italso needs more sophisticated project coordina-tion features such as procedures for synchronoussessions and resource management. We must alsoaddress security and access control issues.

We developed the environment through globalcollaboration. We were almost overwhelmed by thebarriers of time, distance, and cultural differencesduring this project. Even with advanced high-speednetworking and sophisticated collaboration tools,global collaboration is difficult. However, we believethat holistic, systematic support with Internet andhypermedia technologies will enable full globalcompetition and collaboration that best uses talentsand resources worldwide. MM

AcknowledgmentsWe deeply thank Jeffrey D. Smith, founder and

CEO of TeamBridge, for his contribution to thedevelopment and deployment of InterPOD andTeamSmart while he was working at NTTMultimedia Communication Laboratories (MCL).Without his passion and insights into cross-cul-tural issues, the project would not be possible.Special thanks are due to Eugene Kim for his elab-orate work on implementing the InterPOD sys-tems. Finally, we thank all the development teammembers who contributed to this project.

This article was based on the work that we didwhile we were at NTT MCL.

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Kenji Takahashi is a senior

research engineer and supervisor of

the Information Sharing Platform

Laboratories at NTT in Tokyo,

Japan. His research interests

include collaborative knowledge

creation, location-based computing and application ser-

vice provision over Internet. He is also interested in the

business modeling of the new technologies. He received a

PhD and an MS in computer science from Tokyo Institute

of Technology. He also served as the co-chair of the

Collaboration Tool Working Group at CommerceNet.

Eiji Yana is a research engineer of

the Information Sharing Platform

Laboratories at NTT in Tokyo,

Japan. His research interests

include CSCW, especially focusing

on physical devices, social proto-

col, communication barriers and speech acts, effect of

combination of various media with multimodes, and

application service provision over the Internet. He is also

interested in the business modeling of the new tech-

nologies. He received an MS in computer engineering

from Waseda University, Toyko.

Contact the authors at Information Sharing

Laboratories, NTT, 3-9-11 Midoricho, Musashino, Toyko

180-8585, Japan, e-mail {takahashi.kenji, yana.eiji}@

lab.ntt.co.jp.

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