BeamLite: Diminishing Ecological Fractures of Remote Collaboration through Mixed Reality Environments

Developing systems to support remote collaboration usually involves creating new environments in which non-co-located participants produce actions that are, at least in part, accessible to one another. However, this typically fractures the relationship between those actions and the sense of a shared environment, engendering difficulties that can render even the simplest of activities problematic. This becomes more pronounced as the activities become more complex and involve physical artifacts. Although mixed reality seems to offer promising ways of overcoming these troubles, there is still a risk of replicating the fractured ecology problem. We report on an empirical study and the development of a mixed reality prototype called BeamLite that seeks to bypass such issues by providing participants with the illusion of them sharing a single familiar place. Although our evaluation revealed possibilities for evading some troubles associated with artifact-focused remote collaboration, it exposed the need for virtual toolboxes that dynamically support specific work practices and the importance of virtual artifacts embedded within the physical environment to further diminish the sense of ecological fracture.