About Me
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Disruptive Patterns v 4.0: Chris Grant And Michael Wenzstarted Playing together fall 2005 as an Improvisational Live Technoact. They have previously rocked Large Crowds all over the Midwest DJingat raves and underground club events. Now together they form this TechnoSupergroup. Keep yer eyes on this page for more shows and new music.Disruptive Patterns is a 100% Unique techno improvised jam unlikeanything seen before. Here is a slight description of the way im doingableton and my crazy hardware setup.
Disruptive Patterns Hardwaresetup:Michael Wenz uses two turntables a dj mixer, ableton live on alaptop coming out the normal 1/8" jack going to rca mono to stereosplitters going into line in 1 and 2 of my dj mixer so i can preveiw thesamples and have non midi control of my mix to slamm the bass in and notworry about latency. The uc-33 top row of knobs is used as a pan andgoes to either 1 or 2 hard left/right. Michael also has a Korg esxSampler hooked up to a channel of the dj mixer and to the effectssend/return on the dj mixer. The Midi Output of the Korg ESX goes to athru box sending midi timecode to Their Laptops.
Chris Grant PlaysLive With a M-Audio Triggerfinger and Evoloution uc-33. Our two outputsgo to a basic Line Mixer with an additional Synced EFX send Return tothe EF303. All that with traditional dj scratchnig and the best slamingtechno loops you will ever hear Check it out! DISRUPTIVE PATTERS ATrouble Shared is a Troubled Halved: Disruptive and Self-Help Patternsof Usage for Co-Located Interface. The use of co-located interfaces canbe more problematic than work-ing on standard single-user softwarebecause people have to deal simultane-ously with the dynamics of groupbehaviour and with the hassles of the (wrong)design. In this positionpaper, we report the some preliminary result of a quali-tative studyconducted on 10 small groups using a tabletop device in anaturalsetting. We discuss the several patterns of disruptive behaviourinduced by theinterface as well as the some patterns of collaborativeappropriation of the sys-tems functionalities.1 IntroductionIn thispaper we present a preliminary qualitative study conducted onface-to-facemeetings in which a co-located interface was used to supportgroup activities. Thisdevice is conceived as a first step toward alarger integrated environment in the con-text of the European projectCHIL - Computer in the Human Interaction Loop - whichaims to createubiquitous computing environments in which multimodal technologiesareexploited to support human-human interaction and synchronous cooperationin anunobtrusive way.We focus here on the first outcomes of a largerethnographic investigation aimed atunderstanding not only the usabilityof the system but in particular how the peopleappropriate the technology(Dourish, 2003) and integrating it in their working prac-tises.TheSystemThe CHIL tabletop device is a top-projected interface that turns astandard woodentable into an active surface. The user interface wasdesigned around the concept ofvirtual sheets of paper that can be openedand used by the participants (the process ofUser-Centred Design of thissystem is explained in Falcon et al. 2005).
Each virtual sheetcan be shrank or moved to save space and can be rotated to bemadeaccessible to all participants. Participants can use a pen to draw orwrite (the penposition is tracked with a commercial tool based oninfrared and ultrasound, due tohardware limitation only one pen isavailable for the group which therefore has toshare it). A keyboard isalso provided to write longer texts. Import and export func-tionalitiesare offered in order to allow the participants working on alreadypreparedsketches as well as starting from white sheets.Since one of themain goals was to support the group organization, two sheets ofpaperswith special functions are also provided: the agenda and the to do list.Theformer contains the issue to be discussed. Issues can be added,removed or sorted.Each issue can be active or inactive. The systemdisplays a time counter on the activeissue; the counter is paused whenthe issue is made inactive.Fig. 2. Users interacting with the tabletopdeviceThe Outcome note list allows keeping track of the decisions takenduring themeeting. Each entry is automatically associated with theagenda issue currently active(if any) and, through drag-n-drop, to oneor more documents.3 The Qualitative Study Ten small groups composed ofthree up to six participants were invited to hold theirmeetings with thetabletop device. Before the start of the meetings, participantsre-ceived instructions about the device. All the groups consisted of ITCresearchers, noneof whom involved with the CHIL project. Twenty peoplein total were involved andtwo participated in more than one group. Allthe interactions were videorecorded withtwo cameras and tabletopmicrophones; the video analyzed using MultiVideoNote1.Severalsemi-structured interview were also performed with members of thegroups.1MultiVideoNote is an open source project for qualitativeanalysis on multiple video streams(http://tcc.itc.it/research/i3p/mvn)
Disruptive Patterns of Usage A disruptive pattern of usageoccurs when the interface hinders the flow of the interac-tion andcomprises (or risks to compromise) the efficacy of the meeting.Onetypical pattern is observed when the entire group is dragged out of thediscus-sion to focus on the interface. Usually this happens when thegroup faces an unex-pected behavior of the interface or when oneparticipant tries to use a functionality ofthe table attracting theattention of the others. For example in one of the observedmeetings, P.is trying to move a window while Z. is talking: after some failedattemptsby P., the rest of the group is involved in helping P. while Z.gave clearly annoyed.(ex. M. and N. try to use the interfacesimultaneously; P. tries to move a window when Z. is talking).A secondpattern of disruption happens when two or more persons negotiate theuseof the system (the tabletop device at present does not allowmulti-user interaction). Ina meeting, N. wants to update the meetingwhile M. is working on drawing a workplanon a document_ N. asks the penin order to update the agenda item and the group startsdiscussing theitem forgetting the finish the workplan.Another pattern that can berecognized is when one single person is pulled out ofthe discussionbecause s/he trying to understand some functionality of the system.Inmost of groups, one person plays the role of the expert in using thetechnology. Al-though, the expert is usually the one who leads the groupin adopting the technology,sometimes s/he isolate from the discussion.For example, N. plays with the agendatool for more than 2 minutes intrying to understand how it works, leading M., thegroup leader, torepeatedly call him at order.
3.3 Self-Help Patterns of UsageASelf-Help pattern of usage occurs when the group collectively learns touse thesystem either to solve a problem on the interface, to learn howto use functionality orto invent a new use.The most apparent pattern canbe called the jigsaw pattern. It consists of manydifferent participantsthat contribute to the learning process. That is, nobody in thegrouppossesses the knowledge but each single contribution increases thegroupawareness and stimulates others contributions. In a meeting, theleader tries to definethe agenda items. The leader did not remember thehow to manage the agenda and theentire group was progressively involvedin solving the issue. Eventually, they manageto have a list of itemsdone.Another pattern is when the interface task cannot be accomplishedby one personalone either because of cognitive overload or because ofsystems limitations. Forexample, using the Agenda requires a continuousswitch between activities - start anitem using the pen, to write theitem using the keyboard, to use again the pen in orderto change theitem, and so on. In several cases, this limitation leads theparticipants totoward an explicit division of labor where one personused the pen and a different onethe keyboard thus playing the Orienteerand Group-Observer roles described in(Bales, 1970).
The thirdpattern is the specialization of functions: when one participantsucceedsin doing a task (esp. after repeating attempts), s/he will berequired (or volunteer) toperform it again the task in the future. Forexample, in a meeting M. does not partici-pate too much in theinteraction with the system but he succeeded at the very begin-ning indragging a document in the notes (a very difficult task indeed). Whenlater onthe group needed to perform this task again, he volunteered. Inthe same meeting, theleader after being involved in dragging severaldocuments in the trash bin, he nick-named himself the trashman.4DiscussionThis qualitative study shows initial insights on how groupscan reduce the cognitiveeffort of using a co-located interface, andsometimes overcome bugs and design limi-tation, by a process ofcooperative discover. It shows also that a co-located interfacecansystematically hinder the flow of interaction in a group interaction butacting as adisruptive tool (not necessarily because of bad design butalso, like in the seconddisruptive pattern, because too rich infunctionalities).Although the work is still preliminary, we think thatthe collection of a number ofsuch patterns may help in designingco-located interfaces that best suit the groupneeds of support and inproviding guidelines for heuristic evaluation of such systems.
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