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.
“It has long been recognized that certain kinds of vital information -- usually informal and unstructured, often having to do with why certain actions are taken -- are usually lost in large projects. One explanation may be that this kind of information, while important, is too unstructured to be readily captured and retrieved. We report on a field study in which a simple structuring method (IBIS, for Issue-Based Information System) was used over an extended period of time to record and allow retrieval of a significant quantity of precisely this kind of information, using very simple technology. We draw some implications for hypertext and groupware, and for the prospect of supporting the design process with technology.”
“This paper introduces TeamWorkStation (TWS), a new desktop real-time shared workspace characterized by reduced cognitive seams. TWS integrates two existing kinds of individual workspaces, computers and desktops, to create a virtual shared workspace. The key ideas are the overlay of individual workspace images in a virtual shared workspace and the creation of a shared drawing surface. Because each co-worker can continue to use his/her favorite application programs or manual tools in the virtual shared workspace, the cognitive discontinuity (seam) between the individual and shared workspaces is greatly reduced, and users can shuttle smoothly between these two workspaces. This paper discusses where the seams exist in the current CSCW environment to clarify the issue of shared workspace design. The new technique of fusing individual workspaces is introduced. The application of TWS to the remote teaching of calligraphy is presented to show its potential. The prototype system is described and compared with other comparable approaches.”
“Inter-organization computer networks (IONs) provide significant opportunities for improving coordination between firms engaged in mutually dependent activities. This research paper focuses on how IONs affect information processing requirements, and production and transaction costs when they interconnect firms with internally integrated computer systems and when they are used only as substitutes for conventional media. We conclude that significant improvements in inter-organization coordination result when IONs support exchanges between internally integrated firms. However, while IONs reduce production costs, they can simultaneously increase transaction costs including those associated with penetration into another firm's computing resources, and segmentation in the marketplace.”
“Development of any large system or artifact requires the coordination of many developers. Development activities can occur concurrently. The goal of coordination is to enhance, not restrict, developer productivity, while ensuring that concurrent development activities do not clash with one another. This paper presents a formal model of concurrent development, in which development consists of a collection of modification activities that change files, and merges that combine the changes. We define a notion of consistency called coordination consistency that ensures that changes are not inadvertently destroyed and that the changes of each modification activity are correctly propagated to subsequent modification activities. We briefly present a set of protocols for concurrent development using a hierarchy of stores that ensure coordination consistency.”
“ICICLE ("Intelligent Code Inspection Environment in a C Language Environment") is a multifarious software system intended to augment the process of formal code inspection. It offers assistance in a number of activities, including knowledge-based analysis and annotations of source code, and computer supported cooperative discussion and finalization of inspectors' comments during inspection meetings. This paper reports the implementation of ICICLE and groupware issues encountered during testing; it is directed towards an audience interested in the implementation of groupware as well as those concerned with usability of software systems for computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW).”
“This paper reports on a project to develop a "work in preparation" editor, or PREP editor, to study co-authoring and commenting relationships. As part of the project, we have identified three issues in designing computer support for co-authoring and commenting: (1) support for social interaction among co-authors and commenters; (2) support for cognitive aspects of co-authoring and external commenting; and (3) support for practicality in both types of interaction. For each of these issues, the paper describes the approach the PREP editor takes to address them.”
“In contrast to the common view of spreadsheets as "single-user" programs, we have found that spreadsheets offer surprisingly strong support for cooperative development of a wide variety of applications. Ethnographic interviews with spreadsheet users showed that nearly all of the spreadsheets used in the work environments studied were the result of collaborative work by people with different levels of programming and domain expertise. Cooperation among spreadsheet users was spontaneous and casual; users activated existing informal social networks to initiate collaboration.”
“The act of customizing software is generally viewed as a solitary activity that allows users to express individual preferences. In this study, users at two different research sites, working with two different kinds of customizable software, were found to actively share their customization files with each other. This sharing allowed the members of each organization to establish and perpetuate informally-defined norms of behavior. A small percentage of people within the organization were responsible for most of the sharing. One group of these were highly-skilled software engineers, who were usually the first to try new software. They used customization as a way to experiment with and learn about the software and made their files available to others through various broadcast mechanisms. This group did not try to determine whether their customizations were useful to other users. The second group were less skilled technically but much more interested in interpreting the needs of their colleagues and creating customization files tailored to those needs. They acted as translators between the highly technical group and the rest of the organization. The spontaneous sharing of customization files within an organization has implications for both organizations and for software designers. Managers should 1) recognize and support the role of translators, 2) recognize that not all sharing is beneficial, and 3) provide opportunities for the exchange of customization files and innovations among members of the organization. Software designers should 1) provide tools that allow users to evaluate the effectiveness of their customizations through reflective software, 2) provide well-tested examples of customization files with the first release of the software, 3) explicitly support sharing of customizations, and 4) p”
“This panel will examine the opportunities and the challenges for commercialization of group software in the 90's. A number of new group software products -- usually labelled "groupware" -- have shipped since we last met at CSCW 88. We can now look back on the successes and failures of these products and assess the industry's current understanding of the "groupware" product category. We'll also look at the prospects of groupware moving out of the limelight as group support is integrated into conventional products over the coming years.”
“This panel will discuss cooperative work and communication in science. Although scientific work varies across disciplines, it shares some characteristics: communication is its principle product; ongoing interaction and cooperation is necessary (and in some disciplines such as high energy experimental physics, group research dominates); computing technology is pervasive or becoming pervasive. Hence as compared with some domains such as assembly-line manufacturing or high schools, CSCW technology seems particularly appropriate. The CSCW community has not paid much attention to the scientific enterprise and to scientific communities as cooperative work domains. Whereas there seem to be many opportunities for CSCW applications in science ranging from shared data bases to "committeeware," there are also reasons why CSCW may not develop as envisioned. Both technical and cultural aspects of science pose barriers to more "cooperative work." For instance, norms against informal publication of results and proprietary attitudes about discoveries complicate assumptions that more information sharing is better for science and scientists. The purposes of this panel are to highlight the major opportunities and problems of CSCW for science, and to discuss how social system and technical system designs might address these opportunities and problems.”
“We briefly mention some requirements for prototyping tools in user interface and system design. Then, we introduce Animating Interfaces as one collaborative, iterative approach to the rapid conceptual prototyping and simulation of interfaces and associated functionalities. We give a description of the Animating Interfaces process, followed by an illustrated example of the technique. In the example, we use the technique to conceptually design interface conventions and system functionalities for part of a product intended to support collaborative multi-media information use and management. We finish by commenting on the role of the Animating Interfaces technique in the following: uncovering user task knowledge and designer system knowledge; incorporating work and work-context information into the design process; simulating interfaces and system functionalities; and provoking reflection, evaluation and innovation.”
“It is relevant for the users of a computerized information system to perceive the organizational context of collaborative work and corresponding information processes. It is possible to reflect these in a context support system. In order to demonstrate this, a theoretical framework for the realization of such support systems is presented. A context support system can be built around four types of module: 1) images of information media, 2) descriptions of jobs composed of task lattices, 3) illustrations of physical work units, and 4) visualizations of databases. The general module structures as well as some examples are presented. Both the framework and the examples are built around the idea of hypermedia as a potential environment of implementation.”
“This describes a distributed multiparty desktop conferencing system (MERMAID) and presents its preliminary brief evaluation, obtained as a result of daily use. MERMAID, which is designed based on group collaboration system architecture, provides an environment for widely distributed participants, seated at their desks, to hold real-time conferences by interchanging information through video, voice, and multimedia documents. This system is implemented by using narrow-band ISDN, high-speed data network, and UNIX-based EWSs with electronic writing pads, image scanners, video cameras, microphone-installed loudspeakers, etc. The system provides participants with the means for sharing information in such multimedia forms as video images, voice, text, graphics, still images, and handdrawn figures.”
“Scheduling group meetings requires access to participants' calendars, typically located in scattered pockets or desks. Placing participants' calendars on-line and using a rule-based scheduler to find a time slot would alleviate the problem to some extent, but it often is difficult to trust the results, because correct scheduling rules are elusive, varying with the participants and the agenda of a particular meeting. What's needed is a comprehensive scheduling system that summarizes the available information for quick, flexible, and reliable scheduling. We have developed a prototype of a priority-based, graphical scheduling system called Visual Scheduler (VS). A controlled experiment comparing automatic scheduling with VS to manual scheduling demonstrated the former to be faster and less error prone. A field study conducted over six weeks at the UNC-CH Computer Science Department showed VS to be a generally useful system and provided valuable feedback on ways to enhance the functionality of the system to increase its value as a groupwork tool. In particular, users found priority-based time-slots and access to scheduling decision reasoning advantageous. VS has been in use by more than 75 faculty, staff, and graduate students since Fall 1987.”
“Rendezvous is an architecture for creating synchronous multi-user applications. It consists of two parts: a run-time architecture for managing the multi-user session and a start-up architecture for managing the network connectivity. The run-time architecture is based on a User Interface Management System called MEL, which is a language extension to Common Lisp providing support for graphics operations, object-oriented programming, and constraints. Constraints are used to manage three dimensions of sharing: sharing of underlying information, sharing of views, and sharing of access. The start-up architecture decouples invoking and joining an application so that not all users need be known when the application is started. At present, the run-time architecture is completed and running test applications. As a first test of the complete Rendezvous architecture, we will implement a multi-user card game by the end of the summer.”
“The purpose of our project is to provide toolkits for building applications that support collaboration between people in distributed environments. In this paper, we describe one such toolkit, called DistEdit, that can be used to build interactive group editors for distributed environments. This toolkit has the ability to support different editors simultaneously and provides a high degree of fault-tolerance against machine crashes. To evaluate the toolkit, we modified two editors to make use of the toolkit. The resulting editors allow users to take turns at making changes while other users observe the changes as they occur. We give an evaluation of the toolkit based on the development and use of these editors.”
“Groups completed a prioritization task in a "low structure" computerized meeting room. All group members had equal access to a public screen used to complete the task. How groups distributed control of the technology, the determinants of which group members took control, and the consequences of control were studied. Groups adopted either a dedicated scribe strategy, where one group member controls the public screen throughout the session, or a non-dedicated scribe strategy, where more than one member takes control of the screen during the session. Proficiency with the computer interface and social influence within a group are factors that predict whether a given member will take control of the technology. Dedicated scribe groups scored better on the task but reported a smaller increase in satisfaction after working in the room than non-dedicated scribe groups.”
“We analyzed group collaborative behavior by detecting patterns of interactive sequences in meetings using time series analysis. This is in contrast to previous work in which frequency counts of interactions were analyzed. Researchers have reported a decrease of these interaction frequencies associated with the use of computer-supported collaborative technology [Appl86, McGu87, Sieg86, Wats88]. We found that if group process feedback is given to people participating in a computer-supported collaborative technology meeting, the number of socio-emotional interactive sequences increases significantly above the expected level determined by log-linear analysis. In contrast, when using collaborative computer technology alone (no feedback), there is a substantial reduction in the number of socio-emotional interactive sequences below the expected level. These findings have implications for the efficient use of computer technology in terms of maximizing its collaborative potential.”
“We describe SIBYL, a system that supports group decision making by representing and managing the qualitative aspects of decision making processes: such as the alternatives, the goals to be satisfied, and the arguments evaluating the alternatives with respect to these goals. We use an example session with SIBYL to illustrate the language, called DRL, that SIBYL uses for representing these qualitative aspects, and the set of services that SIBYL provides using this language. We also compare SIBYL to other systems with similar objectives and discuss the additional benefits that SIBYL provides. In particular, we compare SIBYL to gIBIS, a well-known "tool for exploratory policy discussion", and claim that SIBYL is mainly a knowledge-based system which uses a semi-formal representation, whereas gIBIS is mainly a hypertext system with semantic types. We conclude with a design heuristic, drawn from our experience with SIBYL, for systems whose goal includes eliciting knowledge from people.”
“This paper describes the conceptual model of Strudel, a toolkit of generic components for conversation and action management. To empower work groups to more effectively conduct their computer-based communication, coordination, and information sharing activities, Strudel packages within a simple model of task and action the semi-structured message, active message and conversation management paradigms. To facilitate acceptance and use within varying work cultures, we define this model in terms of a set of extensible components, which are implemented as a prototype software toolkit that is efficient, portable, customizable, and extensible. Issues considered briefly in this paper include threading in conversations that are converging or multi-party, and interoperability between active message systems.”
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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_1990_acm_conference_on_computer-supported_cooperative_work.html
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Mar 21st, 2010
