1. Nelson Baloian DCC- U. de Chile
An Application Framework for Developing Collaborative Handheld Decision-Making Tools
Nelson Baloian
DCC- U. de Chile

2. Collaborative Handheld Decision-Making (CHDM)
use of handheld digital assistants to support collaborative and decision-making activities in varied application areas
managing clinical patient information in hospital environments (Lapinsky 2006; Yu, Houston et al. 2007),
supporting learning activities in the classroom (Baloian, Zurita, Antunes et al. 2007)
controlling production processes while in the field (Bange, Deutscher et al. 2004).
Supporting Knowledge Management (Baloian, Zurita 2009)
Supporting E-Planning with georeferencing (Baloian, Zurita 2010)
Supporting design activities (Zurita, Baloian, Baytelman 2006)
Supporting collaborative learning (Henning, Konow, Baloian, Zurita 2007)

3. Main contributions of CHDM (Lapinsky 2006)
Improving knowledge management,
Up-to-date information access and distribution
Task coordination,
Messaging,
Community building
Collaboration
Independently of time and space.

4. Penetration of Mobile technology
Miller et al (2004) found out that 26.2% physicians in USA were already using handheld digital assistants to work
66.8% were expecting to rely more on technology in the future.
The decreasing costs, improved dependability and increasing user-interface friendliness will certainly contribute to boost the acceptance of CHDM tools.

5. Requirements: (Gray and Mandiwalla, 2000)
Multiple group tasks.
Group dynamics.
Visual tools for decision-making.
Simple human-computer interfaces.
Various interaction modes with technology.

6. Meeting Scenarios
Deliberate meeting: related to group problem solving and decision-making, structured, moderated.
Consultation: associated to an ill-defined or unexpected reality, advance planning is compromised, identification of the best strategy to achieve the intended goals
Aligning: constructing a shared situation awareness
Ideation: collaborative generation of ideas and plans, brainstorming technique.
Ritualization: socialization, norms, rules: low data exchange.
Exploration: characterized by the need to explore and develop novel solutions to demanding problems. requires collecting, relating and structuring information in various collaborative ways
Learning meeting: collaborative problem solving, discussions: all
Knowledge creation: assumption persons posses a big amount of tacit “hidden” knowledge which has to be converted into “new knowledge", in order to promote its delivery, sharing and innovation.

7. Decision making elements
Scenario
Process functionality
Macro functionality
Micro functionality
Deliberation
Managing process steps.
Managing synchronous and asynchronous modes.
Sharing task-related outcomes.
Sketching and writing.
Editing.
Listing.
Relating and structuring.
Consultation
Managing working groups.
Moving between working groups and process steps.
Aligning
Managing centralized and decentralized modes.
Ritualization
Managing private and public information.
Ideation
Exploration
Learning
Managing divergent and convergent modes.
Knowledge
creation

8. Application Framework

9. Communication Layer

10. Data Model

11. Assigning Participants to Groups

12. Managing process steps

13. Convergent Mode:
Only one process step is active allowing, in this example, the collaborative drawing of a living room

14. Several process steps are active, allowing concurrent viewing.
Divergent mode.
Several process steps are active, allowing concurrent viewing.

15. Sharing Data
At the left, the participant exports a piece of text to the offer area. At the right, the receiving participant imports the text to the private workspace.

16. Moving between working groups and process steps

17. Sketches

18. Sketches & Gestures

19. Applications Deveoped
NOMAD: (2005) the first developed application, supports collaboration in the field, where participants have to generate ideas, discuss them, refine them, and select a subset of ideas to be further refined in the office.
MCSKETCHER: (2008) support a group of designers generating ideas while working on-the-field. It allows users to sketch design ideas over a photograph of the subject being discussed taken on site
SENSEMAKING: (2007) This application addresses the classroom scenario where a teacher assigns the task of analyzing a large collection of papers to a large group of students. These papers are related in some way, but it is part of the assigned task to find the relationships through exploration and collaboration.
MCSUPPORTER: (2008) MCI-Supporter has been developed to address the pedagogical practices and interactions
MOBILE COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CREATION (MCKC): (2009) This application supports Knowledge Creation (KC)
MCSHELL: (2010) The MCSHELL tool supports the analysis of complex socio-technical working environments using the SHELL model
PATTERN LEARNING (2010): A system for supporting learning activities using patterns
Under Development
Prototype for Geo-Referenced Collaborative Psychotherapy with Mobile Devices
Integrating Spatial Data and Decision Models in a E-Planning Tool

20. Conclusions
Different decision-making tasks and processes may be developed based on the proposed toolkit;
The toolkit offers flexible support to HDM based on a relatively small number of user-interface elements;
The toolkit is adequate to develop decision-making applications for mobile contexts;
The burden associated to group management is quite low. Although the toolkit supports the facilitator role, it does not depend on that role and indeed allows any user to assume that role with no specific training;
The application development has been surprisingly effortless. For instance, the SHELL application was developed in one week.