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.

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

This paper introduces the topic of "Collaborative Distance" within Distributed Collaboration as being an introduction to this Special Issue on Collaborative Working Environments1 CWE. In this paper, the authors discuss various related concepts, identified during an extensive literature review, on both proximity and distance in distributed collaboration. Then, a Collaborative Distance Framework CDF is proposed in deriving its four dimensions and related factors from the existing body of knowledge. The following section discusses the interest of such a CDF and introduces the articles published in this special issue. The concluding section discusses the articles' contributions, limitations and future work as well as recommendations for future research in this area.

Collaborative Distance: A Framework for Distance Factors Affecting the Performance of Distributed Collaboration

An approach to assessing virtual environments for synchronous and remote collaborative design

Both organisations and individuals are using more collaborative work, across geographic, disciplinary and organisational boundaries, leading to increased demand for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support a more effective and efficient distributed collaboration. This thesis presents an empirical study exploring various aspects related to collaborative distance in the context of innovation projects. It focuses on the investigation of issues related to distance factors that affect collaboration effectiveness and efficiency.
A total of 14 focus group interviews, undertaken with 75 participants in a comparative study of 14 project cases, revealed sufficient evidence on distance factors in the context of mixed (face-to-face and online or virtual) collocation modes. The results confirmed the positive role of collaboration technology for compressing geographical and temporal types of distance; other distance types were also bridged, however, other distance types were created. 

This empirical study aims to enlarge the academic understanding of distance factors by disambiguating their description and deciphering their role in the collaboration process, and clarifying the reasons for the use and improvement of collaboration technology for overcoming collaborative distances. It also confirms that distance factors raise collaboration barriers, and reveals that they disturb the collaboration mechanics by hindering knowledge workers’ capacity to reach a mutual understanding. Such findings have deep implications for the future enhancement of collaboration technology to fill the current gaps in distributed collaboration, also called e-Collaboration.

Collaborative distance: investigating issues related to distance factors affecting collaboration performance

A month-long quasi-experiment was conducted using a distributed team responsible for modeling, simulation, and analysis Six experiments of three different time durations (short, medium, and long) were performed The primary goal was to discover if synchronous collaboration capability through a particular application improved the ability of the team to form a common mental model of the analysis problem(s) and solution(s) The results indicated that such collaboration capability did improve the formation of common mental models, both in terms of time and quality (ie, depth of understanding), and that the improvement did not vary by time duration In addition, common mental models were generally formed by interaction around a shared graphical image, the progress of collaboration was not linear but episodic, and tasks that required drawing and conversing at the same time were difficult to do

https://mikeprocopio.com/pubs/p51-linebarger.pdf

Benefits of synchronous collaboration support for an application-centered analysis team working on complex problems: a case study

: Effective collaboration within culturally diverse multinational coalitions is essential in many military operations, especially in Operations Other Than War (OOTW). Unfortunately, effective collaboration is sometimes difficult to achieve within any collaboration team. Because methods to improve collaboration, including selecting the right team members, creating the right type of organization, providing the right kind of training, and selecting the right types of collaboration tools are not fully understood, identifying effective interventions requires experimentation. Metrics, and especially cognitive-oriented metrics that focus on team member understandings, are critical to such experimentation. Such cognitive-focused metrics can measure not only whether particular interventions are improving team effectiveness, but also can illuminate the cognitive reasons for the improvement. This paper reports on a three-year research effort to develop, test, and apply such metrics. It describes a model-based strategy for selecting metrics, several models useful for metrics generation, eight classes of metrics for measuring collaboration effectiveness and the factors that contribute to this effectiveness, and the results of two metrics evaluations that demonstrate the practicality of applying the metrics in military experiments. Five different collaboration models have contributed to the development of the cognitive-focused collaboration metrics: teamwork/taskwork model, planning/execution feedback model, individual-team interplay model, cognition-behavior-product model, and the transactive memory model. The handling of human and organizational issues, scenario development, selection of metrics, and use of models follows the recommendations of the Code of Best Practice. The paper is followed by 28 briefing charts that summarize the presentation. (6 tables, 6 figures, 7 refs.)

/pdf/cognitive-based-metrics-to-evaluate-collaboration-4me4pkl3lx.pdf

David Noble

Papers

Cognitive-Based Metrics to Evaluate Collaboration Effectiveness