Joint remembering in collaborative design: a multimodal approach in the case of a video design studio

Bietti, L.M., Baker, M. J., & Detienne, F. (in press). Joint remembering in collaborative design: A multimodal approach in the case of a video design studio. CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. DOI:10.1080/15710882.2015.1103752

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore the role of joint remembering in collaborative design. Joint remembering sequences are identified on the basis of questions that act as triggers to specific interactive sequences. The sequences are situated in the ongoing collaborative design process, and empirical evidence is provided that illustrates how the interweaving of verbal, bodily, social and material resources supports joint remembering. Three examples of joint remembering sequences in co-design are analysed from a corpus of interactions (45+ hours of audio and video recording), collected during an observational study of a team of four 3D designers working on a TV commercial. This study suggests that questions acting as reminders foster the formation of multimodal remembering sequences (MRSs) that connect multiple timescales over the duration of co-design projects. In the corpus under study, MRSs enable designers to plan future actions and make decisions on the fly.

Special issue: Coordination, Collaboration and Cooperation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Table of Contents

Coordination,Collaboration and Cooperation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Federica Amici and Lucas M. Bietti

vii – xii

I do not understand but I care: The prosocial dog

Juliane Bräuer

341 – 360

Cooperation in primates: A critical, methodological review

Anna Albiach-Serrano

361 – 382

The evolution and development of human cooperation

Federica Amici

383 – 418

Interacting to remember at multiple timescales: Coordination, collaboration, cooperation and culture in joint remembering

Lucas M. Bietti and John Sutton

419 – 450

Collaboration in collaborative learning

Michael J. Baker

451 – 473

Coordination in language: Temporality and time-ranging

Stephen J. Cowley and Sune Vork Steffensen

474 – 494

Agreeing is not enough: The constructive role of miscommunication

Johanne Stege Bjørndahl, Riccardo Fusaroli, Svend Østergaard and Kristian Tylén

495 – 525

Nonverbal interaction patterns in the Delhi Metro: Interrogative looks and play-faces in the management of interpersonal distance

Martin Aranguren

526 – 552

Insights into coordination, collaboration, and cooperation from the behavioral and cognitive sciences: A commentary

Alan Cienki

553 – 560

You can get free access to the introduction of the special issue here 

Our edited book has come out: Contextualizing Human Memory (Routledge, 2015)

Description taken from the website of Routledge. 

This edited collection provides an inter- and intra-disciplinary discussion of the critical role context plays in how and when individuals and groups remember the past. International contributors integrate key research from a range of disciplines, including social and cognitive psychology, discursive psychology, philosophy/philosophical psychology and cognitive linguistics, to increase awareness of the central role that cultural, social and technological contexts play in determining individual and collective recollections at multiple, yet interconnected, levels of human experience.

Divided into three parts, cognitive and psychological perspectives, social and cultural perspectives, and cognitive linguistics and philosophical perspectives, Stone and Bietti present a breadth of research on memory in context. Topics covered include:

• the construction of self-identity in memory
• flashbulb memories
• scaffolding memory
• the cultural psychology of remembering
• social aspects of memory
• the mnemonic consequences of silence
• emotion and memory
• eyewitness identification
• multimodal communication and collective remembering.

Contextualizing Human Memory allows researchers to understand the variety of work undertaken in related fields, and to appreciate the importance of context in understanding when, how and what is remembered at any given recollection. The book will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of cognitive and social psychology, as well as those in related disciplines interested in learning more about the advancing field of memory studies. 

You can get free access to the book introduction here.

Multiple timescales of joint remembering in the crafting of a memory-scaffolding tool during collaborative design

New conference paper just published:

Bietti, L.M. & Sutton, J. (2015). Multiple timescales of joint remembering in the crafting of a memory-scaffolding tool during collaborative design. In G. Airenti, B. Bara & G. Sandini (eds.), Proceedings of the EuroAsianPacific Joint Conferenceon Cognitive Science, pp. 60-65.

Contextualizing embodied remembering: Autobiographical narratives and multimodal communication

New book chapter soon to be published:

Bietti, L. M. (2015).  Contextualizing embodied remembering: Autobiographical narratives and multimodal communication. In C. Stone & L. M. Bietti (Eds.), Contextualizing Human Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach to How Individuals and Groups Remember their Pasts (pp. 127-153).  Hove, UK: Routledge. 

New conference paper: Joint remembering in co-design: An ethnographic study of functions and multimodal processes

Bietti, L. M., Baker, M.J. & Detienne, F. (2015). Joint remembering in co-design: An ethnographic study of functions and multmodal processes. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE 2015). New York: ACM.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence that illustrates how the interweaving of verbal, bodily, social and material resources supports joint remembering of relevant aspects of co-design projects during group interactions. Our data comes from an ethnographic study we conducted in a video design studio in Barcelona. The analysis focuses on the role of questions triggering the formation of multimodal remembering sequences (MRSs). This study suggests that questions acting as reminders foster the formation of MRSs. MRSs are supported by an on-the-fly integration and coordination of multiple contextually relevant resources. Our preliminary findings are relevant for the development of new design-rationale systems in HCI that consider such complex dynamics.

New publication:Embodied and distributed contexts of collaborative remembering

Bietti, L.M. (2014). Embodied and distributed contexts of collaborative remembering. In C. Müller, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, A. Cienki, D. McNeill, & S. Teßendorf (eds.), Handbook Body – Language – Communication. Volume 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 2008-2016.


Abstract: This chapter provides an embodied and distributed perspective into the ways in which contexts influence collaborative remembering in small groups in everyday environments. This new approach aims to provide the general grounds for a new ecologically valid theory on the study of context in collaborative remembering which accounts for the mutual interdependencies between minds, bodies and environments guiding joint remembering processes in real-world activities.

Discursive Remembering: Individual and Collective Remembering as a Discursive, Cognitive and Historical Process

If you want to order your copy (or ask your university library to do it) please visit De Gruyter or Amazon 

New publication: Multimodal alignment during collaborative remembering

Cienki, A., Bietti, L & Kok, K. (2014). Multimodal alignment during collaborative remembering. Memory Studies, 7 (3), 354-369. 

Abstract: This article investigates the roles that interactive alignment of manual gesture, postural sway, and eye-gaze play in small groups engaged in collaborative remembering. Qualitative analyses of a video corpus demonstrate that the coordination of these behaviors may contribute to joint remembering in various ways, depending upon the cognitive and communicative affordances of these behaviors. The observation that these behaviors are different in their nature and their contributory potential to shared remembering is corroborated by the results of a quantitative analysis, which suggests that co-speech gesture, postural sway, and eye-gaze have different interactional dynamics. This supports the conclusion that in order to understand the role of multimodal alignment in the discourse of shared remembering, co-verbal behavior should not be treated as a homogeneous category. Finally, we discuss the potential of combined qualitative–quantitative approaches to inform the interplay of verbal and bodily coordination during interactive memory construction.

New publication: Contextualizing human memory

Bietti, L.M., Stone, C. B. & Hirst, W. (2014). Contextualizing human memory. Memory Studies, 7 (3), 267-271. [Introduction to Special issue: Remembering in Context]

The article begins: “While research methodologies across the social sciences may differ, those social scientists inter- ested in remembering in the “real world” agree that such remembrances occur in particular contexts and that these contexts have profound influences on how the past is remembered. Moreover, if human cognitive activity is the result of contextualized interactions with culturally and historically organized material and social environments (Huchins, 2010), then an explicit description of these contexts is essential toward understanding when and how individuals and groups remember the past at any particular moment (see, for example, the work by the psycholo- gist, Endel Tulving on the encoding specificity principle, Tulving and Thomson, 1973; see also Surprenant and Neath, 2009).This Special Issue integrates cutting-edge research from memory scholars across disparate dis- ciplines who, in general, have remained largely ignorant of each others’ research. Thus, a central goal of this Special Issue is to explicitly examine how…”