1. BugScope Discussion Atul Prakash Department of EECS University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122 Email: aprakash@eecs.umich.edu

2. Discussion Clearly a successful educational outreach project (primary project goal) Questions (putting on my CSCW hat): –How does the work relate to other shared-instrument projects? –Are significant CSCW issues being solved? –What have we learned from a CSCW perspective? (My goal: to be provocative)

3. Other Shared Instrument Access Projects TeleInVivo (ultrasound unit) National Lab for Rural Telemedicine (teleradiology) Microscopic Digital Anatomy (electron microscope). Telescience for Adv. Tomography (electron microscope) Bugscope (electron microscope) Chickscope (magnetic resonance machine) DYNACORE in Astronomy (instrument not clear) Env. Molecular science (magnetic resonance machine) Keck Observatory (telescopes) UARC and SPARC (radar, telescopes, etc.)

4. Questions Are there fundamental similarities and differences across these projects? What have we learned from a CSCW perspective? –Are there CSCW issues to be addressed? –What is the likely CSCW value of such efforts?

5. Classification Attempt Bottlenecks being solved: –Amortize cost of the instrument (Chickscope, Bugscope) –limited experts (TeleInVivo, Teleradiology) – one-of-a-kind instrument (astronomy collabs, Telescience) Why bottleneck exists –Three things have to be brought together: object, instrument, users –Either instrument or object cannot relocate –Users at different location than the resource that cannot relocate Claim: Primary goal is access to a rare resource (either expert or instrument). Instrument Object User

6. Where is Collaboration? Primarily to mediate access between instrument and user so far Basic collaboration tools suffice: chat, VNC, phone, email. What is different: –Quality of domain-specific tools? –Packaging, marketing, and level of support for users? Something to think about: –Useful systems for the domain and educational outreach value, but is it interesting for pushing CSCW research? Instrument Object User Student Helper, operator

7. What have we learned? Found few CSCW-specific lessons. Success elements (my conjecture) –What to automate? Technology vs. human support and workflow design –Financial analysis is important (cost per use) –Domain-specific work to make tools appealing –Adequate support for the users (Little to do with novel CSCW technology)

8. Pessimistic tone so far, but to end on an optimistic note… CSCW and system-design issues do become more interesting if –Systems are scaled up: Large number of users Coordination across instruments “Open” access is a primary goal User-to-user collaboration with back-and-forth communication “Software Instruments” are contributed (e.g., models) Resource constraints –IP or security/privacy issues are barrier to collaboration and need to be addressed to achieve scalability –Instruments are difficult to control remotely (lack of sufficient context regarding instrument position, status, etc.) Current systems need to be developed, used, and studied to get to the above holy grail of collaboratories Tracking evolution of some ongoing projects would be very interesting to understand design rationale, changes in goals over time, and impact on CSCW technology use.