The ACM CSCW conference is a leading forum for presenting and discussing research and development achievements concerning the use of computer technologies to support collaborative activities, as well as the impact of digital collaboration technologies on users, groups, organizations and society.
“In this paper, we describe the influence of physical proximity on the development of collaborative relationships between scientific researchers and on the execution of their work. Our evidence is drawn from our own studies of scientific collaborators, as well as from observations of research and development activities collected by other investigators. These descriptions provide the foundation for a discussion of the actual and potential role of communications technology in professional work, especially for collaborations carried out at a distance.”
“During the last decade, literature about work has increasingly focused on the importance of collective communication, tacit knowledge, and group activities. The idea of designing computer support for group-based work activities, which we loosely call 'cooperative work', is a useful and challenging one, for it represents a break from design approaches that focused on centralized and bureaucratic systems of communication and control. To get a clearer idea of the meaning of cooperative work, this article will look at historical patterns of work organization and management strategies. It will contrast user-centered concepts of cooperative work, with the idea of seeing cooperative work in the context of democracy in the workplace. The focus on workplace democracy has been a main theme in the Scandinavian systems tradition. The article uses the Scandinavian tradition, with its roots in a Labor Process Approach as a way to analyze the meaning of cooperation for workplace democracy and its implication for the design of computer support.”
“Object Lens allows unsophisticated computer users to create their own cooperative work applications using a set of simple, but powerful, building blocks. By defining and modifying templates for various semistructured objects, users represent many different kinds of information. By creating semiautonomous agents, users specify rules for automatically processing this information in different situations. The combination of these primitives provides a single consistent interface that integrates facilities for object-oriented databases, hypertext, electronic messaging, and rule-based intelligent agents. To illustrate the power of this combined approach, we describe several simple examples of applications (such as task tracking, intelligent message routing, and database retrieval) that we have developed in this framework.”
“This paper is concerned with the development of a language/action perspective in the Cosmos project. We emphasise the importance of seeing cooperative work in terms of participants' communicative actions. In contrast to some explorations of speech act theory, we argue that communicative actions should be seen as essentially embedded in dialogical contexts. In particular, we attempt to show the relevance of concepts derived from the analysis of actually occurring conversations, for computer mediated communication in general and cooperative work in particular. We distinguish between local and global structuring of communication and argue that many group working situations combine both sorts. These observations have influenced our work in the Cosmos project on the design of a structure definition language (SDL) by means of which users can configure their computer mediated communication environment. We describe SDL and show how its interpretation is influenced by our conversation analytic approach. We illustrate our arguments with an example of cooperative document preparation.”
“Teleconferencing systems and services are the main set of technologies developed thus far to support group work. Within this set of technologies, videoconferencing is often thought of as a new, futuristic communication mode that lies between the telephone call and the face-to-face meeting. In fact, videoconferencing has been commercially available for over two decades, and, despite consistently brilliant market forecasts, to date it has failed to succeed except in limited niche markets. This paper reviews existing teleconferencing literature and provides an analysis of the reasons behind the failure of videoconferencing.”
“This paper describes an application specific hypertext system designed to facilitate the capture of early design deliberations. It implements a specific method, called Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS), which has been developed for use on large, complex design problems. The hypertext system described here, gIBIS (for graphical IBIS), makes use of color and a high speed relational database server to facilitate building and browsing typed IBIS networks. Further, gIBIS is designed to support the collaborative construction of these networks by any number of cooperating team members spread across a local area network. Early experiments suggest that the IBIS method is still incomplete, but there is a good match between the tool and method even in this experimental version.”
“Based on earlier work in Scandinavia, systems development is seen as both reflecting and shaping organizations. An ongoing action-research project at a large municipal hospital in Norway is taken as an example. This is a cooperative project in which nursing supervisors and researchers participate in shaping a learning process and designing a computer system. Some inherent contradictions, conflicts and challenges are indicated. Strengthening cooperation among themselves was the main reason for the nurses to embark on the project. It may be assumed that neither good intentions, nor the most advanced technology for cooperative work will necessarily result in a product which enhances cooperation and mutual support.”
“The paper you hold in your hands tells the story of the last evaluation meeting in the Florence project. The Florence project dealt with use of computers in nurses' daily work, and in the project a small and rather simple computer system was developed. The computer system was intended to support cooperative aspects of the nurses' work. During the evaluation meeting it turned out that the nurses find the system useful, even though they cannot fully explain why. Thus we may say that we survived The Ultimate Test of the computer system.”
“This paper is about the kind of tools and techniques that are accessible to resource weak groups for use in design and evaluation of computer support. "Resource weak" means in this connection, that the economic power and the ability to control the "local environment" of the group is limited. The human resources of such groups are often (potentially) strong, but restrained by the organization of work and society; and although the tools are cheap the activities are demanding in terms of human resources. This kind of work should be seen as a supplement to participation in design processes controlled by others. When end users participate in projects set up by management, these "lay" designers often lack familiarity with the tools and techniques, they lack the power and resources to influence the choice of questions to be considered, and they are not the ones deciding how to utilize the results of a design project when actually changing the workplace. To give the context of the work on which the paper is based, I first describe the Scandinavian tradition of trade union based end user participation in systems development. Then I discuss some of the issues involved in improving the conditions for independent end user design activities. I go on by presenting a set of "cheap tools" and techniques, including the use of mock-up's. This set covers the issues of establishing the possibility of alternatives, of creating visions of new and different uses of technology, and of designing computer support. A central question in relation to the tools and techniques, is their accessibility to end users, and I discuss this based on the notions of family resemblance and "hands-on" experience.”
“Quilt is a computer-based tool for collaborative document production. It provides annotation, messaging, computer conferencing, and notification facilities to support communication and information sharing among the collaborators on a document. Views of a document tailored to individual collaborators or to other of the document's users are provided by Quilt based on the user's position in a permission hierarchy that reflects an extensible set of social roles and communication types. This paper illustrates how Quilt could be used by collaborators to produce a document.”
“The author of a complex hypertext document is often faced with the problem of conveying the document's meaning to future readers through a shared computer environment. Two tools implemented in the NoteCards hypertext environment, guided tours and tabletops, allow authors to employ annotation, graphic layout and ordered presentation when communicating to readers. This paper describes these tools and gives examples of their use. Issues of remote deictic reference arising from an application in legal argumentation are discussed as well as early work on the use of these tools to support sharing of hypertext strategies among NoteCards users.”
“Small group design sessions were empirically studied to understand better collaborative workspace activity. A conventional view of workspace activity may be characterized as concerned only with storing information and conveying ideas through text and graphics. Empirical evidence shows that this view is deficient in not accounting for how the workspace is used: a) in a group setting, rather than by an individual, and b) as part of a process of constructing artifacts, rather than just a medium for the resulting artifacts themselves. An understanding of workspace activity needs to include the role of gestural activity, and the use of the workspace to develop ideas and mediate interaction. A framework that helps illustrate an expanded view of workspace activity is proposed and supported with empirical data.”
“In this paper we present a new approach to the use of computer-mediated communications technology to support distributed cooperative work. In contrast to most of the existing approaches to CSCW, we focus explicitly on tools to enable unplanned, informal social interaction. We describe a "social interface" which provides direct, low-cost access to other people through the use of multi-media communications channels. The design of the system centers around three basic concepts derived from the research literature and our own observations of the workplace: social browsing, a virtual workplace, and interaction protocols. We use these design properties to describe a new system concept, and examine the implications for CSCW of having automated social interaction available through the desktop workstation.”
“Two-person design sessions were studied in three different settings: face-to-face, geographically separated with an audio/video link, and a telephone-only connection. In all settings, the designers' uses of a drawing surface were noted. Many similar drawing surface activities occurred in all design settings even though the settings did not each allow for the same sharing and interaction with the drawing surfaces. Observations suggest that the process of creating drawings may be as important to the design process as the drawings themselves. These preliminary results raise issues for further study, particularly with respect to computer support for collaborative drawing surface use.”
“Designing interactive interfaces for individual usage is a significantly hard task that is being surmounted by evolving theory and hours of trial and error. The task of designing interactive interfaces for cooperative work is even more difficult. Not only is it necessary to deal with the individual's cognitive processes and model of the computer aided task, but also to build software to support human - human communication with all the underlying socialization and group dynamics that this communication implies. In the development of the Capture Lab environment, guesswork was coupled with a study of human behavior in meetings both electronic and conventional, an extrapolation of existing research and a series of mini-experiments to test out various ideas about the design. These approaches are described in the body of the paper along with the design considerations at issue and the meeting behaviors we have since observed as a result of our design choices.”
“Software to support teaching and learning activities was added to a computer-mediated communication system to create a "Virtual Classroom." Goals included improving access to and the effectiveness of college-level courses, particularly by facilitating collaborative learning. Process and outcomes were compared for sections of several courses taught in the traditional classroom, totally online, or in mixed mode. On the average, students report that the Virtual Classroom provides a better learning experience.”
“A local area network system was developed to support collaborative science activities in sixth grade classrooms. Analyses of the students' understandings of the system showed they used the social organization of the classroom activities as a frame of reference. Their misconceptions are accounted for by the ways that the system did not properly reflect the activities in which the students were engaged.”
“The Andrew Message System, a distributed system for multi-media electronic communication, has a number of special features that support cooperative work. After a brief discussion of the system itself, these features are described and discussed in more detail. Examples of how organizations actually use these features are then presented and discussed, with particular attention paid to the "Advisor" system for electronic consulting.”
“This paper describes a series of interviews that focus on the ways that professional office workers use electronic mail to manage their daily work. A number of implications for the design of flexible mail systems are discussed. Two principal claims are made. First, electronic mail is more than just a communication system. In addition to supporting information management, it provides a mechanism for supporting a variety of time management and task management activities. Some people are prioritizers, concentrating on the problem of managing incoming messages. Others are archivers, concentrating on how to archive information for subsequent use. Similarly, some people use mail to delegate tasks, while others perform tasks delegated to them by others electronically. The second claim is that use of electronic mail is strikingly diverse, although not infinitely so. Individuals vary in their preferences, both in their general willingness to manage their work electronically and in their specific preferences along the dimensions described above. This diversity implies that one's own experiences with electronic mail are unlikely to provide sufficient understanding of other's uses of mail. Mail designers should thus seek flexible primitives that capture the important dimensions and provide flexibility for a wide range of users.”
“The foundations for research and action in the area of group work are examined. Four alternative "world views" are presented. One of these, contextualism, is discussed in depth. Its methodological consequences for research and implications for reform of group meetings are explored.”
“Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design - the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program - the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.”
“Many systems, applications, and features that support cooperative work share two characteristics: A significant investment has been made in their development, and their successes have consistently fallen far short of expectations. Examination of several application areas reveals a common dynamic: 1) A factor contributing to the application's failure is the disparity between those who will benefit from an application and those who must do additional work to support it. 2) A factor contributing to the decision-making failure that leads to ill-fated development efforts is the unique lack of management intuition for CSCW applications. 3) A factor contributing to the failure to learn from experience is the extreme difficulty of evaluating these applications. These three problem areas escape adequate notice due to two natural but ultimately misleading analogies: the analogy between multi-user application programs and multi-user computer systems, and the analogy between multi-user applications and single-user applications. These analogies influence the way we think about cooperative work applications and designers and decision-makers fail to recognize their limits. Several CSCW application areas are examined in some detail.”
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Software design is the act of determining the user's experience with a piece of software. It has nothing to do with how the code works inside, or how big or small the code is. The designer's task is to specify completely and unambiguously the user's whole experience.
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-- David Liddle, From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996
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URL: http://www.interaction-design.org/references/conferences/proceedings_of_the_1988_acm_conference_on_computer-supported_cooperative_work.html
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Mar 21st, 2010
