“
What is this field of Human-Computer Interaction? People are quite different from computers. This is hardly a novel observation, but whenever people use computers, there is necessarily a zone of mutual accommodation and this defines our area of interest. People are so adaptable that they are capable of shouldering the entire burden of accommodation to an artifact, but skillful designers make large parts of this burden vanish by adapting the artifact to its users. To understand successful design requires an understanding of the technology, the person, and their mutual interaction [...]
”
-- Stephen Draper and Donald Norman. In "User Centered System Design" (1986) p. 1
Authoritative overview of End-User Development (EUD) including 4 HD video interviews filmed in Rome, Italy. EUD is really all about democratization of computing.
ECSCW has been instrumental in defining the agenda of CSCW research since the beginning, and it still is. It has been the key forum for identifying and exploring issues such as the situated nature of action and interaction and its implications; the role of ethnography in CSCW and in computing in general; the role and nature of 'awareness' in cooperative work; the role of paper-based and other material artifacts in cooperative work; highly flexible collaboration infrastructures and tailorable systems.
The following articles are from "ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work":
Articles
p. 1-16
Fitzpatrick, Geraldine, Tolone, William J. and Kaplan, Simon M. (1995): Work, Locales and Distributed Social Worlds. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 1-16.
“Efforts to build systems to support the complex social reality of cooperative work need both a grounding in the social i.e., a rich abstract basis for understanding work, and a bridging link between the social and the technical to provide new insights into how to approach designing systems based on this understanding. We propose Anselm Strauss' (1993) Theory of Action as a candidate from which to evolve a framework to ground an understanding of work. Insights from Strauss' work on the importance of structural conditions for social world (cooperative ensemble) interactions can help us to view support systems in a new role as setting/locale for cooperative work interaction, thus providing a bridge between the social and the technical. We briefly overview a locales-based environment called WORLDS we are building concurrent with our theoretical exploration.”
Kirby, Andrew and Rodden, Tom (1995): Contact: Support for Distributed Cooperative Writing. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 101-116.
“This paper presents a novel system to support the activities of distributed cooperative writing. The system builds upon the results from previous studies of cooperative work, and on a set of short focused studies of cooperative authoring to outline a framework and system to meet the requirements of cooperating authors. The system provides facilities to represent the decomposition of the writing task and assignment of responsibilities. In addition, a series of monitoring facilities is provided which allows authors to coordinate their activities in the construction of documents.”
Sauter, Christian, Morger, Othmar, Muhlherr, Thomas, Hutchison, Andrew and Teufel, Stephanie (1995): CSCW for Strategic Management in Swiss Enterprises: An Empirical Study. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 117-132.
“This paper presents the results of an empirical study into the current usage of groupware in strategic management and the potential of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for the top management in large-scale Swiss business enterprises. For this purpose we conducted a survey amongst 168 organisations.”
Bentley, Richard and Dourish, Paul (1995): Medium versus Mechanism: Supporting Collaboration Through Customisation. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 133-148.
“The study of cooperative work as a socially-situated activity has led to a focus on providing 'mechanisms' that more closely resonate with existing work practice. In this paper we challenge this approach and suggest the flexibly organised nature of work is better supported when systems provide a 'medium' which can be tailored to suit each participant's needs and organised around the detail of their work. This orientation towards 'medium' rather than 'mechanism' has consequences for cooperative system design, highlighting a need to allow participants to adapt details of policy currently embedded in the heart of the systems we build. We describe an approach which allows users to perform such 'deep customisation' through direct manipulation of user interface representations.”
Manohar, Nelson R. and Prakash, Atul (1995): The Session Capture and Replay Paradigm for Asynchronous Collaboration. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 149-164.
“In this paper, we describe a paradigm and its associated collaboration artifact to allow flexible support for asynchronous collaboration. Under this paradigm, a user session with an application's user interface is encapsulated into a data artifact, referred to as a session object. Users collaborate by annotating, by modifying, and by a back-and-forth exchange of these session objects. Each session object is composed of several data streams that encapsulate audio annotations and user interactions with the application. The replay of a session object is accomplished by dispatching these data streams to the application for re-execution. Re-execution of these streams is kept synchronized to maintain faithfulness to the original recording. The basic mechanisms allow a participant who misses a session with an application to catch up on the activities that occurred during the session. This paper presents the paradigm, its applications, its design, and our preliminary experience with its use.”
Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford, Steve (1995): Virtual Reality Tele-Conferencing: Implementation and Experience. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 165-180.
“This paper describes the implementation of and early experiences with a virtual reality tele-conferencing system called MASSIVE. This system includes a full realisation of the spatial model of interaction and its concepts of aura, awareness, focus, nimbus and adapters as was presented at ECSCW'93. This model supports users in interacting over ad-hoc combinations of audio, graphical and textual media through both 3-D and 2-D interfaces. Observations arising from the use of MASSIVE to support laboratory meetings are discussed; these include the need to support richer peripheral awareness, the need to improve the sensitivity of navigation, problems with lack of engagement between users, the need to support varying degrees of presence and problems arising from different perceptions of space between 2-D and 3-D users. Possible solutions to these problems are proposed.”
Klockner, K., Mambrey, Peter, Sohlenkamp, Markus, Prinz, Wolfgang, Fuchs, Ludwin, Kolvenbach, Sabine, Pankoke-Babatz, Uta and Syri, Anja (1995): POLITeam: Bridging the Gap between Bonn and Berlin for and with the Users. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 17-32.
“Supporting the cooperation of people in large organizations which are distributed geographically is one of the great challenges for the CSCW research. With POLIKOM, the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Technology launched a framework in which telecooperation applications will be developed to support the distributed government in Bonn and Berlin. POLITeam is one project embedded in that framework. Its aim is to support asynchronous cooperation in administrative or industrial settings by an integrative groupware system that applies the metaphors of electronic circulation folders and shared workspaces. The development process is based on the approach of using an existing groupware system that is evaluated and redesigned in close cooperation with selected pilot partners. This paper describes the initial design, our development approach and the first experiences of the POLITeam project.”
Kuzuoka, Hideaki, Ishimoda, Gen, Nishimura, Yushi, Suzuki, Ryutaro and Kondo, Kimio (1995): Can the GestureCam be a Surrogate?. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 181-196.
“The GestureCam is a remote-controlled actuator onto which a small camera and laser pointer are mounted. The term "GestureCam System" includes other user interfaces which control the GestureCam, such as the master actuator and the touch-sensitive CRT. We expect the system to act as the surrogate of a remote person. In order to clarify advantages and problems of the GestureCam system, we conducted some experiments. As a result of those experiments, we found that the GestureCam has the ability to support gaze awareness and remote finger pointing. We also found, however, that the system has some problems which need to be refined.”
Mark, Gloria, Haake, Jorg M. and Streitz, Norbert A. (1995): The Use of Hypermedia in Group Problem Solving: An Evaluation of the DOLPHIN Electronic Meeting Room Environment. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 197-213.
“In this paper, we report on an empirical evaluation of selected aspects of DOLPHIN, a meeting room environment of computers networked with an electronic whiteboard. Our results show that in a face-to-face meeting, the use of DOLPHIN's hypermedia functionality changed the nature of the product and the way groups worked, compared to using only electronic whiteboard functionality. Groups organized their ideas into network, rather than pure hierarchical, structures. These were more deeply elaborated, contained more ideas, and had more relationships between the ideas. The problem solutions were also judged to be more original. Groups were more likely to use a top-down planning strategy, and to exhibit a different temporal work pattern. The results suggest that work groups can benefit from using hypermedia in problem solving.”
Dourish, Paul (1995): The Parting of the Ways: Divergence, Data Management and Collaborative Work. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 215-230.
“Systems coordinating distributed collaborative work must manage user data distributed over a network. The strong consistency algorithms which designers have typically borrowed from the distributed systems community are often unsuited to the particular needs of CSCW. Here, I outline an alternative approach based on divergence and synchronisation between parallel streams of activity. From a CSCW perspective, this strategy offers three primary advantages. First, it is scalable, allowing smooth transitions from highly interactive collaboration to more extended, "asynchronous" styles of work. Second, it supports "multi-synchronous" work, in which parties work independently in parallel. Third, it directly supports observed patterns of opportunistic activities in collaborative working.”
Choudhary, Rajiv and Dewan, Prasun (1995): A General Multi-User Undo/Redo Model. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 231-246.
“A general multi-user undo/redo model must satisfy several requirements. It must be compatible with an existing single-user undo/redo model, give individual users autonomy in executing undo/redo commands, support undo/redo of remote commands and the remote effects of local commands, be independent of the coupling, multicast, and concurrency control model, and allow undo/redo of arbitrary commands. We have developed a multi-user undo/redo model for meeting these requirements. The model constructs the command history of a particular user by including all local commands and those remote commands whose results were made visible to that user. It allows a user to undo/redo corresponding commands in the command histories of all users of a program. Moreover, it allows a user to undo/redo both symmetric user-interface commands and asymmetric collaboration commands. We have implemented the model in a collaboration system called Suite. In this paper, we motivate, describe, and illustrate these requirements and our model.”
Fuchs, Ludwin, Pankoke-Babatz, Uta and Prinz, Wolfgang (1995): Supporting Cooperative Awareness with Local Event Mechanisms: The GroupDesk System. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 247-262.
“An event distribution model for a computer based cooperative working environment is presented. The proposed model aims to provide information about the on-going and past activities of collaborating users, based on the semantics and contextual relationships of the shared artifacts and contributes to increase the awareness of the ongoing state of affairs without overloading the user with additional information. GroupDesk, a prototype implementation of this model is introduced. The system provides a simple environment for the coordination of cooperative document production. Support for shared awareness is achieved by visualizing the event information using the desktop metaphor.”
Grudin, Jonathan and Palen, Leysia (1995): Why Groupware Succeeds: Discretion or Mandate?. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 263-278.
“Single-user applications are designed with a 'discretionary use' model. In contrast, for large systems, upper management support is considered crucial to adoption. Which applies to groupware? The relatively low cost of groupware reduces high-level visibility, but some argue that social dynamics will force mandated use -- the large system approach. Interview studies of recently adopted on-line meeting schedulers in two large organizations found successful, near-universal use achieved without managerial mandate. Versatile functionality and ease of use associated with discretionary products appeared to be factors leading to adoption. Other factors included organization-wide infrastructure and substantial peer pressure that developed over time.”
Ichikawa, Yusuke, Okada, Ken-ichi, Jeong, Giseok, Tanaka, Shunsuke and Matsushita, Yutaka (1995): MAJIC Videoconferencing System: Experiments, Evaluation and Improvement. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 279-292.
“We need to know the real intentions of participants that are not expressed by verbal languages. This means that not only verbal information but also non-verbal information (i.e., gestures, facial expression, eyes of participant, etc.) is a very important factor. We proposed and implemented MAJIC, a multi-party videoconferencing system that enables eye contact among people in remote places, with life-sized images of participants. In order to evaluate users' perceptions of MAJIC, we have experimented with the size, background and boundary of the video images. These experiments verify the sense of presence in MAJIC environments where life-size video images without boundaries are supported. We developed a new MAJIC prototype based on these experiments.”
Kristoffersen, Steinar and Rodden, Tom (1995): Multimedia Support of Collaboration in a Teleservice Team. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 293-308.
“The purpose of this paper is to outline an architectural model for how multimedia can establish and support cooperative work. The proposed architecture emerged from empirical work in a large UK bank. Previous efforts have, as we see them, been largely experimental, and have focused on supporting informal work. Few examples concern the support of actual work tasks in companies outside a research context. The outlined model offers a conception of work as distributed across time, space, tasks, people, and artefacts. It aims to integrate informal and formal aspects of work by supporting the initiation and management of interaction as well as the cooperative work process itself.”
Plowman, Lydia, Rogers, Yvonne and Ramage, Magnus (1995): What Are Workplace Studies For?. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 309-324.
“We have considered the role of workplace studies from the CSCW literature which are intended to inform system design and implementation. We present a critique of these studies, categorised according to which phase of the design process they most inform, and discuss the tensions between providing explanatory accounts and usable design recommendations, the pressures on fieldworkers to provide both, the purposes different approaches serve, and the transition from fieldwork to system design.”
Randall, David, Rouncefield, Mark and Hughes, John F. (1995): Chalk and Cheese: BPR and Ethnomethodologically Informed Ethnography in CSCW. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 325-340.
“Recently a number of methodological approaches have been presented as proffering radical solutions to organisational change. This paper discusses one such approach, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and contrasts it with Ethnography, a method that has gained some prominence in CSCW. The paper suggests, using a number of empirical examples, that despite some superficial similarities, the two approaches differ markedly in their analytical purchase. In particular, ethnography's emphasis on understanding 'systems' within the situated context of the work setting rather than as an abstract model of process, has consequences for the successful identification and implementation of system re-design.”
Clement, Andrew and Wagner, Ina (1995): Fragmented Exchange: Disarticulation and the Need for Regionalized Communication Spaces. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 33-49.
“This paper relates the discussion of articulation work (and of disarticulation) to issues of the creation and control of collective communication spaces. Four different types of settings are examined -- occupationally segregated terrains, emergency situations, scarce-resource settings and performance-intensive settings. What is articulated in such settings is seen as depending on the properties of the communication spaces actors build, their zoning and contextuality; while instances of disarticulation within this space can be interpreted as a consequence of both regionalisation and/or a deterioration or even breakdown of envisioning and interrelating. CSCW design needs to take account of the regionalised character of "real world" communications by offering tools for creating a corresponding multiplicity of communication spaces.”
Bowers, John, Button, Graham and Sharrock, Wes (1995): Workflow from Within and Without: Technology and Cooperative Work on the Print Industry Shopfloor. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 51-66.
“This paper reports fieldwork from an organization in the print industry, examining a workflow system introduced to the shopfloor. We detail the indigenous methods by which members order their work, contrast this with the order provided by the system, and describe how members have attempted to accommodate the two. Although it disrupted shopfloor work, the system's use was a contractural requirement on the organization to make its services accountable. This suggests workflow systems can often be seen as technologies for organizational ordering and accountability. We conclude that CSCW requirements should acknowledge such exigencies and the organizational status of workflow technologies.”
Sherry, John (1995): Cooperation and Power. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 67-82.
“New technologies are not only transforming workplace practices in familiar settings. They are also finding their way into the types of "exotic" locales which have traditionally been of interest to anthropologists. This paper presents an ethnographic analysis of technologically mediated communication in one such atypical setting, among a grassroots group of activists from the Navajo Indian Reservation in the southwestern United States. As this case illustrates, mere access to technology does not solve all of the problems such groups face in terms of empowerment, access to resources for action, and coordination. The discursive practices embodied in technological design may perpetuate the relations of dominance and subordination which characterize interactions between "marginalized" groups and "mainstream" organizations, and force groups into forms of organization which they find inappropriate.”
Heath, Christian, Luff, Paul and Sellen, Abigail (1995): Reconsidering the Virtual Workplace: Flexible Support for Collaborative Activity. In: Marmolin, Hans, Sundblad, Yngve and Schmidt, Kjeld (eds.) ECSCW 95 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 11-15 September, 1995, Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 83-99.
“Despite the substantial corpus of research concerned with the design and development of media space, the virtual workplace has failed to achieve its early promise. In this paper, we suggest that a number of problems which have arisen with the design and deployment of media space, derive from their impoverished concept of collaborative work. Drawing from our own studies of video connectivity, coupled with analyses of work and interaction in real-world settings, we consider ways in which we might reconfigure media space in order to provide more satisfactory support for collaboration in organisational environments.”
We have decided to give away world-class educational materials
because we believe that universal access to high quality education is key to the building
of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.
To calculate just have much we have saved you, our wonderful readers, we compare our free encyclopedia to two
books we love:
As you are reading our encyclopedia on your iPad/tablet (and saving a few trees), we estimate that the price would be $90 if sold as an eBook.
With that number, we can calculate how much money we have saved our readers, based on calculating the number of readers.
How we calculate readership
Because of our online and tablet/iPad approach to publishing, we are able to precisely measure reading behaviour across hundreds of parameters in realtime: Anything from reading
speed, drop-off points in the text, reader demographics, and much more.
Based on our server logs and the Google Analytics API,
we calculate the number of readers as described in the calculation method below.
A reader is not the same as a simple pageview and a reader is not the same as a
website visitor (as described in our calculation method below).
We calculate readership for two types of readers:
Readers that have read our whole encyclopedia, much the same way you read a printed book
Readers that have reader an individual chapter
Calcalution method: How we define a reader
First we use the Google Analytics API to get a report of the number of unique human visitors to a chapter/page. Google runs its business on ads and thus completely relies on the ability to distinguish between a human visitor and an automated request. If not, you could earn millions on automating clicks on Google Ads.
We then compare that number to our Apache webserver logs, which report the much higher number of actual visits to a chapter/page (both human and automated). We calculate the difference in percent, which we call an "exaggeration factor", which we use in step 6 below.
With a large part of the visitors excluded, we further exclude any visitor who:
has not remained on the page for at least 3 minutes (this factor is calculated by recording visit durations of 1000 randomly selected visitors) or has not printed the page (i.e. has not visited the printerfriendly version of the chapter/page)
has not scrolled the page (this factor is calculated by recording scroll movements on 1000 randomly selected visitors)
We then further exclude "double readers", i.e. readers who read a portion of a chapter and then returns in,
say, a week or a month to read the rest.
Although this person's reading activity spans multiple server sessions, the person is only counted as a single reader.
We categorize a "double reader" as a visitor who:
visits a page, or multiple pages, across multiple server sessions
qualifies to be defined as a reader, cf step 1-3 above, in all server sessions
uses the same originating IP address
We then subtract 5% from the final number to counter-balance a last remaining factor, namely the situation where one reader reads a chapter on his/her tablet
using a WiFi connection (and counted as one reader) but then picks up his other tablet using a 3G dongle
(with another IP address) and re-reads some of the chapter. That will equal two readers, not one. We have no way
of calculating how many times this situation arises, but to be on the safe side we subtract 5%
from the final number.
We then take half of the "exaggeration factor" from step 2 and substract from the final number. We do this for no rational reason. We do it only as a further measure to be certain that our number of readers is not inflated.
To qualify as a reader who has read our whole encyclopedia - much the same way you read a printed book - that person must have qualified as a reader (cf. 1-6 above) of at least 80% of the encyclopedia chapters.
As a result, we have eliminated everything from automated requests to the more casual visitors. That leaves us with what we can safely call readers.
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“
What is this field of Human-Computer Interaction? People are quite different from computers. This is hardly a novel observation, but whenever people use computers, there is necessarily a zone of mutual accommodation and this defines our area of interest. People are so adaptable that they are capable of shouldering the entire burden of accommodation to an artifact, but skillful designers make large parts of this burden vanish by adapting the artifact to its users. To understand successful design requires an understanding of the technology, the person, and their mutual interaction [...]
”
-- Stephen Draper and Donald Norman. In "User Centered System Design" (1986) p. 1
Authoritative overview of End-User Development (EUD) including 4 HD video interviews filmed in Rome, Italy. EUD is really all about democratization of computing.
