Deliverable 4.4 - INSEAD CALT

AtGentive IST-4-027529-STP - Attentive Agents for Collaborative LearnersFigure 1: The experimental setupThe computing environment for the experimentFor the experimental environment we used only unmodified software for the applications andwe customized through configuration the desktop environment. This was aimed at ensuringthat our experiment could be easily reproduced, and at making it possible for theexperimental environment to be used as a regular working environment on any computer.We rely exclusively on free software (mainly through the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution).Figure 1 shows our experimental setup. This is a conventional computer interface exceptthat, for the purpose of the experiment, we have eliminated items that are not directlyrelevant to the user’s activity. We use the compiz-fusion implementation of virtual desktops,which allows users to organize their work on several virtual desktops, and to easily swapbetween desktops. For the purpose of the experiment each task is associated to a virtualdesktop and acts as a workspace; a workspace being the collection of all the elementsnecessary for performing a task: documents, windows, applications, etc. This representationallows us to provide context restoration simply by allowing the user to access the desktopassociated to the task being restored. By navigating between the workspaces, the user canbrowse his tasks, run and suspend them, and get a better insight on the current work. Ourhypothesis is that this approach allows the user to “forget” about a task without fearing toloose something in the retrieving process.The experimental setup is composed of five main elements. They are noted in blue on1. Workspace management: The workspace management widget represents theexisting tasks on the computer. The navigation between the workspaces is doneby clicking on the target (keyboard shortcuts may also be available). The activeworkspace is highlighted.Del 4.4: AtGentive Final Evaluation Report page 42