Reducing conflicts in groupware: metafunctions and their empirical evaluation

Certain functions in groupware affect more than one user who might have conflicting interests. To describe conflicts arising from the use of groupware functions, we distinguish the roles of the activator and the user affected. As technical means to lessen these conflicts, we develop two metafunctions: visibility of use and negotiability. We expect that these metafunctions reduce role-based conflicts and lead to higher acceptance of groupwaresystems among users. To examine these hypotheses we performed an empirical study in six different organizations. Using scenarios to present different design options to users, we confirmed most of our assumptions. Implications of these findings for the design of groupware are discussed.     

Reducing conflicts in groupware: Metafunctions and their empirical evaluation

Certain functions in groupware affect more than one user who might have conflicting interests. To describe conflicts arising from the use of groupware functions, we distinguish the roles of the activator and the user affected. As technical means to lessen these conflicts, we develop two metafunctions: visibility of use and negotiability. We expect that these metafunctions reduce role-based conflicts and lead to higher acceptance of groupwaresystems among users. To examine these hypotheses we performed an empirical study in six different organizations. Using scenarios to present different design options to users, we confirmed most of our assumptions. Implications of these findings for the design of groupware are discussed.     

Design breakdowns,scenarios and rapid application development

In this paper we consider the way in which two representational forms, scenarios and design breakdowns, which have emerged in the traditions of human-centred design are relevant within the recent commercial emphasis on rapid application development (RAD). RAD is a contingent approach to interactive software development that is characterised by large amounts of user involvement, incremental prototyping and product-based project management. Scenarios have become popular as an intermediate representation within the human–computer interaction and computer supported co-operative work communities. Design breakdowns have been suggested as a useful organising device and design technique within the co-operative prototyping literature. Both these representational forms are not currently utilised within the commercial RAD tradition. In order to detail the relevance of these concepts to commercial development, we describe the ‘natural history’ of one particular RAD project and show how scenarios, breakdowns and the resolution of such breakdowns contributed to the successful implementation of an information system within a small commercial organisation. We conclude with a discussion of lessons from our work and some intended future work in this area.     

Adapting groupware systems to changes in the collaborator’s context of use

Owing to the dynamic nature of collaborative environments, the software intended to support collaborative work should adapt itself to the different situations that may occur. This requirement is related to the concept of “context of use”, which has been considered as an important aspect in the design of interactive systems. Nevertheless, two main problems about this concept have been identified by current research in context-aware computing: (1) most of the studies have mainly focused on the context of a single user, so the context of multiple users involved in a common endeavor remains little explored, and (2) adaptability in context-aware systems generally takes into account a reduced number of contextual variables (mainly the user’s location and platform). In this paper, we firstly re-conceptualize the notion of “context of use”, in order to consider the main characteristics of collaborative environments. Based on this new notion, we then design and implement a framework that allows application developers to specify the adaptability of groupware systems in terms of the state of activities, roles, collaborators’ location, available resources, and other typical variables of working groups. This framework has been generalized from scenarios that highlight dynamic situations presented in real collaborative settings. Finally, we validate our proposal by a set of applications that are able to adapt their user interface and functionality, when significant changes are produced in the environment, the working group, and/or the used devices.     

Integration of collaboration and interaction analysis mechanisms in a concern-based architecture for groupware systems

Collaboration and interaction analysis allows for the characterization and study of the collaborative work performed by the users of a groupware system. The results of the analyzed processes allow problems in users’ collaborative work and shortcomings in the functionalities of the groupware system to be identified. Therefore, automating collaboration and interaction analysis enables users’ work to be assessed and groupware system support and behavior to be improved. This article proposes a concern-based architecture to be used by groupware developers as a guide to the integration of analysis subsystems into groupware systems. This architecture was followed to design the COLLECE groupware system, which supports collaborative programming practices and integrates an analysis subsystem that assesses different aspects of the work carried out by the programmers and adapts the functionality of the system under specific conditions.     

A model-driven and task-oriented method for the development of collaborative systems

Groupware systems are usually difficult to design when following traditional methodologies and approaches for single user systems. In this regard, model-driven approaches have been gaining attention in recent years. In accordance with this paradigm, we developed the SpacEclipse method in a previous work, which is a method for developing collaborative modeling groupware based on the plug-ins in the Eclipse Modeling Project. However, this method presents some deficiencies that we have tried to overcome in this work. In order to achieve this goal, we have chosen the CIAM methodology, which allows the modeling of collaboration, users, tasks, sessions and interactive issues and which is also supported by Eclipse-based tools. In this paper, we explain how the integration of CIAM elements in the SpacEclipse method has been carried out and resulted in a new method with its own methodological, conceptual and technological frameworks. To prove the validity of the method, we have applied it to a re-engineering process in the development of an existing tool.     

Studies of mobile document work and their contributions to the Satchel project

This paper provides a retrospective account of the field studies, questionnaire surveys and user trials we carried out during our Satchel research project. Satchel is a system that supports mobile document work by providing streamlined access to documents and document services. We describe each study and present illustrative results to show how each one contributed to the overall success of the research project. More specifically, we describe how each study affected the design of our Satchel prototypes and the design of the scenarios that were used as communication tools during the course of the project. We analyse the relative value of each of the studies and trials, concentrating on cost factors such as research effort, expenses, and amount of subject time required. Although we acknowledge that not all research projects will be able to include such a wide number or variety of user studies, we hope that our analysis will provide useful information for other research projects.     

Collaborative video searching on a tabletop

Almost all system and application design for multimedia systems is based around a single user working in isolation to perform some task yet much of the work for which we use computers to help us, is based on working collaboratively with colleagues. Groupware systems do support user collaboration but typically this is supported through software and users still physically work independently. Tabletop systems, such as the DiamondTouch from MERL, are interface devices which support direct user collaboration on a tabletop. When a tabletop is used as the interface for a multimedia system, such as a video search system, then this kind of direct collaboration raises many questions for system design. In this paper we present a tabletop system for supporting a pair of users in a video search task and we evaluate the system not only in terms of search performance but also in terms of user–user interaction and how different user personalities within each pair of searchers impacts search performance and user interaction. Incorporating the user into the system evaluation as we have done here reveals several interesting results and has important ramifications for the design of a multimedia search system.     

Investigating teamwork and taskwork in single- and multi-display groupware systems

Multi-display groupware (MDG) systems, which typically comprise both public and personal displays, promise to enhance collaboration, yet little is understood about how they differ in use from single-display groupware (SDG) systems. While research has established the technical feasibility of MDG systems, evaluations have not addressed the question of how users’ behave in such environments, how their interface design can impact group behavior, or what advantages they offer for collaboration. This paper presents a user study that investigates the impact of display configuration and software interface design on taskwork and teamwork. Groups of three completed a collaborative optimization task in single- and multi-display environments, under different task interface constraints. Our results suggest that MDG configurations offer advantages for performing individual task duties, whereas SDG conditions offer advantages for coordinating access to shared resources. The results also reveal the importance of ergonomic design considerations when designing co-located groupware systems.     

Understanding children's collaborative interactions in shared environments

  Traditional computer technology offers limited support for face-to-face, synchronous collaboration. Consequently, children who wish to collaborate while using computers must adapt their interactions to the single-user paradigm of most personal computers. Recent technological advances have enabled the development of co-located groupware systems offering support for concurrent, multi–user interactions around a shared display. These systems provide a unique collaboration environment in which users share both the physical and the virtual workspace. This paper examines how such technology impacts children's collaboration. Findings from this research show that when concurrent, multi–user interaction is supported on a shared display, children exhibit collaborative behaviour similar to their interactions during paper-based activities. The findings also suggest strengths and weaknesses of various mechanisms for supporting synchronous interactions that have implications for the design of computer systems to support children's face-to-face collaboration.     

Groupware and social networks: will life ever be the same again?

Over the past twenty years industry and academia have been working to develop computer systems to increase work group's productivity, commonly referred to as groupware. Groupware encompasses a broad spectrum of research and development including group support systems, computer-supported collaborative work, group decision support systems, and computer mediated collaboration. Applications arising out of these efforts included concurrent multi-user authoring systems, computer conferencing, integrated computer/video meeting systems, electronic voting, brainstorming, and workflow systems. The papers in this special issue are some of the best from over 100 papers submitted to the GROUP'97 conference sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Supporting Group Work. They represent work conducted by researchers on four continents from both industry and academia. As a group the authors present a blend of theory, practice, and technological innovation from the groupware research arena. This paper is intended to serve as an introduction to the area of groupware research and development. In it we explore the evolution of groupware and expose some of its effects on organizations and society.     

Changing interpersonal communication through groupware use

Interpersonal communication is the basis for almost any type of cooperation. Changing patterns of communication may have an impact on the quality of cooperative work. In this paper, user experiences are described in a long-term groupware project. Communication changes, both planned and unplanned, were examined as a result of the system introduction. Reduced face-to-face communication, task-related and taskunrelated, were found, as well as a changing dissemination of information. Certain losses in interpersonal communication were compensated for by user advocacy and design team-user workshops. It is proposed that with groupware introduction, organizations should consider support for both planned and informal means as compensation for reduced communication.     

Ontology-Based User Modeling in an Augmented Audio Reality System for Museums

Ubiquitous computing is a challenging area that allows us to further our understanding and techniques of context-aware and adaptive systems. Among the challenges is the general problem of capturing the larger context in interaction from the perspective of user modeling and human–computer interaction (HCI). The imperative to address this issue is great considering the emergence of ubiquitous and mobile computing environments. This paper provides an account of our addressing the specific problem of supporting functionality as well as the experience design issues related to museum visits through user modeling in combination with an audio augmented reality and tangible user interface system. This paper details our deployment and evaluation of ec(h)o – an augmented audio reality system for museums. We explore the possibility of supporting a context-aware adaptive system by linking environment, interaction objects and users at an abstract semantic level instead of at the content level. From the user modeling perspective ec(h)o is a knowledge-based recommender system. In this paper we present our findings from user testing and how our approach works well with an audio and tangible user interface within a ubiquitous computing system. We conclude by showing where further research is needed.     

Towards a uniform cooperative platform: Cova approach and experience

A cooperative platform called Cova is presented, which aims to uniformly model a wide range of cooperation scenarios and to reduce the groupware design and development work. To achieve these goals, Cova provides two facilities, namely a specification language for developers to describe various cooperation modes uniformly and a run-time system that provides some general-purposed services guaranteeing the semantics specified. With these facilities, the developers can then concentrate on the application specific functions rather than the control mechanisms. There-fore, the development efficiency is promoted. This paper details the design and implementation issues of the platform including the model and the specification language, platform architecture,transaction management, service integration and so on. Application development with Cova plat-form is also covered.     

Bringing context-aware access to the web through spoken interaction

The web has become the largest repository of multimedia information and its convergence with telecommunications is now bringing the benefits of web technology to hand-held devices. To optimize data access using these devices and provide services which meet the user needs through intelligent information retrieval, the system must sense and interpret the user environment and the communication context. In addition, natural spoken conversation with handheld devices makes possible the use of these applications in environments in which the use of GUI interfaces is not effective, provides a more natural human-computer interaction, and facilitates access to the web for people with visual or motor disabilities, allowing their integration and the elimination of barriers to Internet access. In this paper, we present an architecture for the design of context-aware systems that use speech to access web services. Our contribution focuses specifically on the use of context information to improve the effectiveness of providing web services by using a spoken dialog system for the user-system interaction. We also describe an application of our proposal to develop a context-aware railway information system, and provide a detailed evaluation of the influence of the context information in the quality of the services that are supplied.     

An Integrated Approach to Designing and Evaluating Collaborative Applications and Infrastructures

Collaborative systems include both general infrastructures and specific applications for supporting collaboration. Because of the relative newness and complexity of these systems, it has been unclear what approach should be used to design and evaluate them. Based on the lessons learned from our work and that of others on collaborative systems, we have derived an integrated approach to researching collaborative applications and infrastructures. The approach can be described as a sequence of steps: We decompose the functionality of collaboration systems into smaller functions that can be researched more-or-less independently. For each of these functions, we adopt general (system-independent) principles regarding the design and implementation of the function, identify collaboration scenarios at multiple levels of abstraction, identify requirements based on the scenarios, adopt an interaction model to meet the requirements, realize the interaction model as a concrete user interface, develop a logical architecture of the system, identify a physical architecture for placing the logical components in a distributed system, develop infrastructure abstractions, use the abstractions to implement applications, and perform lab studies, field experiments, and simulations to evaluate the infrastructure and applications. As in other models with multiple phases, feedback from subsequent phases is used to modify the results from the previous phases. In this paper, we describe, illustrate and motivate this research plan.     

Interface with angels: the future of VIR and AR interfaces

Although real guardian angels aren't easy to get hold of, some of the computer technology needed for such a personal assistant is already available. Other parts exist in the form of research prototypes, but some technological breakthroughs are necessary before we can realize their potential, let alone integrate into our daily routines. Future VR and AR interfaces won't necessarily try to provide a perfect imitation of reality but instead will adapt their display mechanisms to their users' individual requirements. The emergence of these interfaces won't rely on a single technology but will depend on the advances in many areas, including computer graphics, display technology, tracking and recognition devices, natural and intuitive interactions, 3D interaction techniques, mobile and ubiquitous computing, intelligent agents, and conversational user interfaces, to name a few. The guardian angel scenario exemplifies how future developments in AR and VR user interfaces might change the way we interact with computers. Although this example is just one of several plausible scenarios, it demonstrates that AR and VP, in combination with user-centered design of their post-WIMP interfaces, can provide increased access, convenience, usability, and efficiency     

Supporting Cooperation through Customisation: The Tviews Approach

User interfaces for groupware systems rarely reflectthe different requirements for support of theirend-users. Here we present an approach to designingmulti-user interfaces for cooperative systems whichbuilds on previous work from the HCI community in thearea of end-user customisation. Using this approach wehave developed an approach and a system prototype basedon tailorable views, or Tviews, which allows end-usersengaged in group working to configure theircooperative system interfaces to support theirdifferent tasks, preferences and levels of expertise.Tviews are user interface components which can bedragged and dropped over representations ofapplication objects to customise presentation,interaction and event updating properties, and canthemselves be tailored using high-level, incrementalcustomisation techniques. We discuss the implicationsof this work for CSCW system development by referenceto studies of work carried out by the CSCW communitywhich point to a need for more flexible and tailorablesystem interfaces.