The paper presents a task distribution system \u2013 WeBuild. As\nphysical building tasks often requires coordination among multiple workers, one\nof the problems often occurred is that a large chunk of time is wasted on\ncoordination process such as distributing main task into subtasks, assigning\nsubtasks to individuals, etc. WeBuild takes the advantage of known benefits of\ntask management systems and interactive instructions to collocated construction\nand assembly coordination, mimicking the scenarios with the existence of an\nexperienced manager. WeBuild is based on an algorithm that considers each\nindividual worker\u2019s skill set, availability of the tools and dependencies among\nsubtasks to automatically assign subtask to the right worker. Such improvement\nis supposed to always be supported throughout the entire process. Initially, to\nunderstand the design characteristics, the authors carried out an observational\nstudy to ask group workers to assemble a Meccano Tower Bridge set and an IKEA\ncabinet. Their findings shed light on design goals of WeBuild. The validate\nWeBuild, the authors carried out an initial study to compare WeBuild and\ntraditional paper manuals. The suggestive findings are generally promising, but\nwith limitations due to scalability and generalizability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being involved in group projects, though not quite the same\nas group assembly tasks, I totally understand the motivation of this paper. The\nnature of group work seems to be chaotic for me. When given a task that\nrequires group work, it is inevitable that this task needs to be divided into\nmultiple subtasks. Then who should be the one in charge? At any start up time,\neveryone had their own ideas and own thoughts. It would be problematic to\ndecide a leader and divide the task in a way the at least appeals to most\nworkers. That\u2019s just the start. As a result, normally a chaos arises initially\nwhen someone might be competing to get some subtasks while some subtasks are\nleft unattended. After subtask assignment chaos is settled, another problem\nreveals itself to the group. What if (which is very likely) a subtask is\nassigned to a worker who does not have appropriate skill for it? Finally, after\nall these have been resolved, how to merge all subtasks back together. From\nthis point of view, I totally understand the authors concern and is looking\nforward to something like WeBuild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, the paper has its drawbacks as well. As\nthe authors acknowledged, the study is at best an initial attempt. This is\nlimited by the scale of the assembly task and generalizability of its result.\nAnother interesting thing is about the system\u2019s reliance on manual input, such\nas task specification and skill et of individual users. It is not the case that\neveryone knows themselves clearly and might introduce error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the last things is the graphs. I don\u2019t think having an\nabsolute time plot right next to an average percentage histogram is a good idea\nbecause the relation and interpretation of these two visualizations are totally\ndifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make the work more generalizable, on exactly what scale\ncould be proper?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summary: The paper presents a task distribution system \u2013 WeBuild. As physical building tasks often requires coordination among multiple workers, one of the problems often occurred is that a large chunk of time is wasted on coordination process such as distributing main task into subtasks, assigning subtasks to individuals, etc. WeBuild takes the advantage of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/ccc2019s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}