Where Were We: making and using near-synchronous, pre-narrative video

“Where Were We” is a prototype system that exploits the capabilities of digital video to allow groups to include recordings of very recent events into real-time activities. The goals of the research are to see how playback-while-recording and random access capabilities might substantially alter the activity of group work, to discover what difficulties arise in using emerging digital multimedia hardware and software facilities for this kind of application, and to further explore how to base novel systems design on necessarily partial and fragmented observations of actual work activity.

In fact, the notes are used to locate recorded events so that they can be replayed: Joe arrives late, about 20 minutes in—Ron suggests that he look at one pivotal segment of Gail’s introductory video and the recorded discussion around two of his two marked segments: “clamshell” and “vertical clam?” Joe is up to speed quickly and soon joins the real-time interaction