Supporting the Collaborative Appropriation of an Open Software Ecosystem

Since the beginning of CSCW there was an intense interest for research on workplace design using tailorable applications and sharing customizations. However, in the meantime the forms of production, distribution, configuration and appropriation of software have changed fundamentally. In order to reflect these developments, we enlarge the topic of discussion beyond customizing single applications, but focusing on how people design their workplaces making use of software ecosystems. We contribute to understand the new phenomenon from within the users?? local context. By empirically studying the Eclipse software ecosystem and its appropriation, we show the improved flexibility users achieve at designing their workplaces. Further the uncovered practices demonstrate, why design strategies like mass-customization are a bad guiding principle as they just focus on the individual user. In contrast we outline an alternative design methodology based on existing CSCW approaches, but also envision where the workplace design in the age of software ecosystems has to go beyond.     

Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCW

In this article we focus attention on ethnography’s place in CSCW by reflecting on how ethnography in the context of CSCW has contributed to our understanding of the sociality and materiality of work and by exploring how the notion of the ‘field site’ as a construct in ethnography provides new ways of conceptualizing ‘work’ that extends beyond the workplace. We argue that the well known challenges of drawing design implications from ethnographic research have led to useful strategies for tightly coupling ethnography and design. We also offer some thoughts on recent controversies over what constitutes useful and proper ethnographic research in the context of CSCW. Finally, we argue that as the temporal and spatial horizons of inquiry have expanded, along with new domains of collaborative activity, ethnography continues to provide invaluable perspectives.     

Nomadicity and the Care of Place—on the Aesthetic and Affective Organization of Space in Freelance Creative Work

While information and communication technology enables freelancers to work “anytime anywhere”, it has become apparent that not all places seem to be equally suitable for their work. Drawing from CSCW literature on the practical accomplishment of mobile work and theoretical literature on creativity, insights from ethnographic studies in New York, Berlin and Wiesbaden are discussed. The paper follows workers in their everyday attempts to seek out and enact work environments, which enable them to be creative and productive. In these processes, mobility features both as a problem and a resource. The search for the right place makes these workers restless, but sometimes restlessness and nomadicity can inspire creativity. Similarly, new mobile, social and collaborative technologies allow a new balancing of solitude and sociality. I call this emerging nexus of practices which entails aesthetic, affective, social and socio-political dimensions the care of place. A conjoint theoretical and empirical analysis aims to draw attention to everyday lived practices of nomadicity and the care of place in a wider discursive and socio-political context to inform CSCW design.     

A Review of 25 Years of CSCW Research in Healthcare: Contributions, Challenges and Future Agendas

CSCW as a field has been concerned since its early days with healthcare, studying how healthcare work is collaboratively and practically achieved and designing systems to support that work. Reviewing literature from the CSCW Journal and related conferences where CSCW work is published, we reflect on the contributions that have emerged from this work. The analysis illustrates a rich range of concepts and findings towards understanding the work of healthcare but the work on the larger policy level is lacking. We argue that this presents a number of challenges for CSCW research moving forward: in having a greater impact on larger-scale health IT projects; broadening the scope of settings and perspectives that are studied; and reflecting on the relevance of the traditional methods in this field - namely workplace studies - to meet these challenges.     

CSCW系统中感知与隐私的平衡研究进展

简要回顾了计算机支持协同工作(Computer Supported Collaborative Work,CSCW)环境下感知、隐私的理论研究情况,总结了感知和隐私的平衡对用户体验产生的重要影响,并对CSCW系统中影响感知与隐私达到平衡的人的行为、物理环境、社会机制三种因素进行了分析,从信息控制、感知反馈、模糊过滤和逐步渐进四个方面归纳了实现平衡的技术手段,进而对CSCW系统中感知与隐私平衡研究的前景做出了展望。     

Object-oriented activity support: A model for integrated CSCW systems

This paper proposes a model for integrated CSCW systems, the model of Object-Oriented Activity Support OOActSM. In contrast to existing systems for the support of collaborative work, the model aims at the integrated support of all aspects of CSCW in a single frame system. The major properties of our model are the use of activity as the basic concept and the use of object-oriented mechanisms for providing solutions of typical CSCW problems. I demonstrate how all major aspects of current CSCW systems can be supported and integrated with each other in our model.     

A Patchwork Planet Integration and Cooperation in Hospitals

The `seamless' integration of a collectionof information systems has been recognised asvital in promoting and realising thecollaborative aspects of work. This emphasis onthe collaborative role of integrationsupplements other studies in CSCW focusing onmore singular tools for collaboration.Empirically, we analyse the design and use ofan electronic patient record system (EPR) inlarge hospitals in Norway. We discuss theconditions for and types of integration of EPRwith the host of related information systems inhospitals. We formulate design principles forthe integration of collaborative informationsystems based on a pragmatic study of theproductive role of redundant, fragmented andambiguous information.     

Hypermedia Use in Group Work: Changing the Product, Process, and Strategy

Hypermedia structures have beenintegrated with CSCW functionality to develop theDOLPHIN system, an electronic meeting roomenvironment. In this paper, a study is reportedinvestigating how the DOLPHIN environment affectsgroup work. Different aspects of group problem solvingwere examined to understand the effects of workingwith hypermedia: the group's product, cognitivefactors, and the group process. The results showedthat groups can easily work with hypermediastructures, and that these structures influence groupsto produce a different product, to use a differentstrategy, and to use a different collaborative style,namely of dividing up their labor. The experimentalresults are explained in a model which suggests theinvolvement of both procedural and semantic componentsin hypermedia use. We discuss wider implications ofhypermedia for CSCW and group work.     

CSCW系统中协同感知的研究

协同感知理论的研究与应用是计算机支持的协同工作的重要研究内容之一.在研究分析了传统的协同感知所依赖的CSCW体系结构的基础上,提出了一种基于P2P的三层结构的协同感知框架,该架构很适合于CSCW中项目可以划分为若干个相对独立的模块的情形.最后对该框架的具体感知模块进行了分析,并讨论了下一步研究将要解决的问题.     

Beyond Expertise Seeking: A Field Study of the Informal Knowledge Practices of Healthcare IT Teams

CSCW has long been concerned with formal and informal knowledge practices in organizations, examining both the social and technical aspects of how knowledge is sought, shared, and used. In this study, we are interested in examining the set of activities that occur when co-located knowledge workers manage and resolve issues by seeking, sharing, and applying their informal knowledge. Informal knowledge seeking involves more than identifying the expert who has the knowledge or accessing the knowledge through physical artifacts. It also involves working with that expert to identify and apply the appropriate knowledge to the particular situation. However, our understandings of how people collaboratively work together to find, share and apply this knowledge are less well understood. To investigate this phenomenon, we conducted a field study of how professionals in three IT teams of a regional hospital managed and resolved IT issues. These knowledge workers used various collaborative practices such as creation of ad-hoc teams and the use of email to identify, share, and use informal knowledge to resolve IT issues. In addition, particular team practices such as how issues are assigned affected these knowledge activities. Our findings highlight how informal knowledge activities are affected by a variety of implicit and sometimes subtle features of the organization and that organizational knowledge management systems should support informal knowledge seeking activities and collaboration amongst the knowledge sharers.     

From Artefacts to Infrastructures

In their initial articulation of the direction of the CSCW field, scholars advanced an open-ended agenda. This continuing commitment to open-ness to different contexts and approaches is not, however, reflected in the contents of the major CSCW outlets. The field appears to privilege particular forms of cooperative work. We find many examples of what could be described as ‘localist studies’, restricted to particular settings and timeframes. This focus on the ‘here and now’ is particularly problematic when one considers the kinds of large-scale, integrated and interconnected workplace information technologies—or what we are calling Information Infrastructures—increasingly found within and across organisations today. CSCW appears unable (or unwilling) to grapple with these technologies—which were at the outset envisaged as falling within the scope of the field. Our paper hopes to facilitate greater CSCW attention to Information Infrastructures through offering a re-conceptualisation of the role and nature of ‘design’. Design within an Information Infrastructures perspective needs to accommodate non-local constraints. We discuss two such forms of constraint: standardisation (how local fitting entails unfitting at other sites) and embeddedness (the entanglement of one technology with other apparently unrelated ones). We illustrate these themes through introducing case material drawn on from a number of previous studies.     

The coordination of work activities: Cooperation and conflict in a hospital context

An understanding of the ways in which work coordination is achieved in practice is essential to the development of effective CSCW technologies. However, previous studies are limited in their focus on small, self-contained work groups. In this analysis of work coordination in a hospital context, a broader perspective was adopted, allowing examination of activities across time, group and location. The use of a relevant structured methodology and a focus on deviations from formal procedures enabled the consideration of a range of contextual factors in interaction: Important aspects of work coordination to emerge included: status influences on the effectiveness of working practices; the social and political uses of information; conflicts between work goals and between motivations for coordinating activities; the role of informal practices; and the use of formal procedures to regulate inter-group relations. The implications of these issues for CSCW design in the hospital context are illustrated.     

Work Practices Surrounding PACS: The Politics of Space in Hospitals

This paper uses a case study of collaborative work practices within the radiology department of a hospital, for examining the usefulness of spatial approaches to collaboration. It takes a socio-political perspective on understanding the shaping effects of spatial arrangements on work practices, and seeks to identify some of the key CSCW issues that can be addressed in spatial terms. We analyse the spatial settings or layers (physical, digital and auditory) within which work takes place, and the qualities of connections between them, examining in how far they support (professional) boundaries or help maintain a sense of context. Guiding themes are the relationships between space and the visibility of work, and how to accommodate social world needs through spatial arrangements.     

The Concept of ��Work�� in CSCW

The scope of CSCW, its focus on work, has been a topic of sporadic debate for many years ?? indeed, from the very beginning in the late 1980s. But in recent years the issue has become one of general concern. Most of this debate has been taking place in closed fora such as program committees, editorial boards, and email discussion groups, but over the last few years the debate has been brought out in the open in a few publications, in particular in a programmatic article from 2005 by three esteemed CSCW researchers: Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, and Steve Benford. They argue that CSCW should ??move its focus away from work??. Other researchers argue along the same lines. Taking this open challenge as a welcome cue, the present article addresses CSCW??s scope: the rationale for its focus on ordinary work. After an initial discussion of the arguments put forward by Crabtree et al. and by others, the article focuses on an analysis of the concept of ??work??, drawing on the methods and insights of ??ordinary language philosophy??, and, flowing from this, a critique of the notion of ??work?? in conversation analysis. After a critical appraisal of prevailing myths about the realities of work in the contemporary world, the article ends in an attempt to position CSCW in the context of technological development more broadly. The underlying premise of the article is that it is time to reconsider CSCW: to rethink what it is and why it might be important.     

Infrastructure Time: Long-term Matters in Collaborative Development

This paper addresses the collaborative development of information infrastructure for supporting data-rich scientific collaboration. Studying infrastructure development empirically not only in terms of spatial issues but also, and equally importantly, temporal ones, we illustrate how the long-term matters. Our case is about the collaborative development of a metadata standard for an ecological research domain. It is a complex example where standards are recognized as one element of infrastructure and standard-making efforts include integration of semantic work and software tools development. With a focus on the temporal scales of short-term and long-term, we analyze the practices and views of the main parties involved in the development of the standard. Our contributions are three-fold: 1) extension of the notion of infrastructure to more explicitly include the temporal dimension; 2) identification of two distinct temporal orientations in information infrastructure development work, namely ‘project time’ and ‘infrastructure time’, and 3) association of related development orientations, particularly ‘continuing design’ as a development orientation that recognizes ‘infrastructure time’. We conclude by highlighting the need to enrich understandings of temporality in CSCW, particularly towards longer time scales and more diversified temporal hybrids in collaborative infrastructure development. This work draws attention to the manifold ramifications that ‘infrastructure time’, as an example of more extended temporal scales, suggests for CSCW and e-Research infrastructures.     

Beyond handover: supporting awareness for continuous coverage

Hospitals are required to operate as a continuous system because patient care cannot be temporarily suspended and handover is seen as a key method for enabling this. This paper reports a study of handover in a medical admissions unit. We draw on the notion of awareness as conceptualised within the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work literature to explore the role played by a variety of cognitive artifacts in supporting continuous coverage. While such awareness is typically characterised as being ‘effortless’, our study reveals that maintaining awareness in a context such as the medical admissions unit is effortful due to invisible work. We suggest that the notion of awareness is beneficial for exploring the practices of continuous coverage because it moves attention away from the moment of handover, instead encouraging consideration of the variety of practices through which clinicians display their work to, and monitor the work of, colleagues on different shifts. We argue that efforts to support continuous coverage should focus on improving awareness by increasing the visibility of information.     

Hermeneutics,information and representation

By drawing from semiology, epistemology and philosophical hermeneutics, we discuss the way that computer systems, particularly systems used in collaborative work, represent information, situation and activity. In other words, we focus on approaches to representation in design for computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW). We point out similarities between discourse in hermeneutics and in the anthropology and sociology that predominates in CSCW, and propose that a hermeneutic perspective offers a unifying view on the social science and computer science within CSCW. We discuss formalisation, adaptation and objectivity in our theories, methodologies and implementations, and offer collaborative filtering and its extension, the path model, as examples of practical approaches to representation, which show, support and adapt with activity in a hermeneutic style.     

Shared space: An augmented reality approach for computer supported collaborative work

Virtual Reality (VR) appears a natural medium for three-dimensional computer supported collaborative work (CSCW). However the current trend in CSCW is to adapt the computer interface to work with the user's traditional tools, rather than separating the user from the real world as does immersive VR. One solution is through Augmented Reality, the overlaying of virtual objects on the real world. In this paper we describe the Shared Space concept—the application of Augmented Reality for three-dimensional CSCW. This combines the advantages of Virtual Reality with current CSCW approaches. We describe a collaborative experiment based on this concept and present preliminary results which show that this approach may be better for some applications.     

CSCW环境下的协同学习系统

基于CSCW工作环境,提出协同学习系统的概念,形成虚拟的协作学习群体,强调学习成员之问的实时交互性和学习的协同性,探讨CSCW应用在Web环境下的群体协同机制,并据此给出一种面向协同学习的应用模型.     

Comparing the effects of representational tools in collaborative and individual inquiry learning

Constructing a representation in which students express their domain understanding can help them improve their knowledge. Many different representational formats can be used to express one’s domain understanding (e.g., concept maps, textual summaries, mathematical equations). The format can direct students’ attention to specific aspects of the subject matter. For example, creating a concept map can emphasize domain concepts and forming equations can stress arithmetical aspects. The focus of the current study was to examine the role of tools for constructing domain representations in collaborative inquiry learning. The study was driven by three questions. First, what are the effects of collaborative inquiry learning with representational tools on learning outcomes? Second, does format have differential effects on domain understanding? And third, does format have differential effects on students’ inclination to construct a representation? A pre-test post-test design was applied with 61 dyads in a (face-to-face) collaborative learning setting and 95 students in an individual setting. The participants worked on a learning task in a simulation-based learning environment equipped with a representational tool. The format of the tool was either conceptual or arithmetical or textual. Our results show that collaborative learners outperform individuals, in particular with regard to intuitive knowledge and situational knowledge. In the case of individuals a positive relation was observed between constructing a representation and learning outcomes, in particular situational knowledge. In general, the effects of format could not be linked directly to learning outcomes, but marked differences were found regarding students’ inclination to use or not use specific formats.