Giant strides in information technology at the turn of the century may have unleashed unreachable goals. With the invention of groupware, people expect to communicate easily with each other and accomplish difficult work even though they are remotely located or rarely overlap in time. Major corporations launch global teams, expecting that technology will make "virtual collocation" possible. Federal research money encourages global science through the establishment of "collaboratories." We review over 10 years of field and laboratory investigations of collocated and noncollocated synchronous group collaborations. In particular, we compare collocated work with remote work as it is possible today and comment on the promise of remote work tomorrow. We focus on the sociotechnical conditions required for effective distance work and bring together the results with four key concepts: common ground, coupling of work, collaboration readiness, and collaboration technology readiness. Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters.

Distance matters

The emergence of ubiquitous computing as a new design paradigm poses significant challenges for human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. Traditionally, HCI has taken place within a constrained and well-understood domain of experience—single users sitting at desks and interacting with conventionally-designed computers employing screens, keyboards and mice for interaction. New opportunities have engendered considerable interest in “context-aware computing”—computational systems that can sense and respond to aspects of the settings in which they are used. However, considerable confusion surrounds the notion of “context”—what it means, what it includes and what role it plays in interactive systems. This paper suggests that the representational stance implied by conventional interpretations of “context” misinterprets the role of context in everyday human activity, and proposes an alternative model that suggests different directions for design.

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What we talk about when we talk about context

An intelligent automated assistant system engages with the user in an integrated, conversational manner using natural language dialog, and invokes external services when appropriate to obtain information or perform various actions. The system can be implemented using any of a number of different platforms, such as the web, email, smartphone, and the like, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, the system is based on sets of interrelated domains and tasks, and employs additional functionally powered by external services with which the system can interact.

Intelligent Automated Assistant

Many collaborative and communicative environments use notions of “space” and spatial organisation to facilitate and structure interaction. We argue that a focus on spatial models is misplaced. Drawing on understandings from architecture and urban design, as well as from our own research findings, we highlight the critical distinction between “space” and “place”. While designers use spatial models to support interaction, we show how it is actually a notion of “place” which frames interactive behaviour. This leads us to re-evaluate spatial systems, and discuss how “place”, rather than “space”, can support CSCW design.

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Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems

Ecological approaches to psychology suggest succinct accounts ofeasily-used artifacts. Affordances are properties of the world that are compatible with and relevant for people’s interactions. When affordances are perceptible, they offer a direct link between perception and action; hidden and false affordances lead to mistakes. Complex actions can be understood in terms of groups of affordances that are sequential in time or nested in space, and in terms of the abilities of different media to reveal them. I illustrate this discussion with several examples of interface techniques, and suggest that the concept of affordances can provide a useful tool for user-centered analyses of technologies.

Technology affordances

It is impossible to design systems which are appropriate for all users and all situations. We believe that a useful technique is to have end users tailor their systems to match their personal work practices. This requires not only systems which can be tailored, but a culture within which users feel in control of the system and in which tailoring is the norm. In a two-pronged research project we have worked closely with a group of users to develop a system to support tailoring and to help the users evolve a “tailoring culture”. This has resulted in a flexible system based around the use of distributed on-screen Buttons to support a range of tailoring techniques.

User-tailorable systems: pressing the issues with buttons

At EuroPARC, we have been exploring ways to allow physically separated colleagues to work together effectively and naturally. In this paper, we briefly discuss several examples of our work in the context of three themes that have emerged: the need to support the full range of shared work; the desire to ensure privacy without giving up unobtrusive awareness; and the possibility of creating systems which blur the boundaries between people, technologies and the everyday world.

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Realizing a video environment: EuroPARC's RAVE system

A browser-based email system has a thin client connected to a host mail server. The thin client implements a browser. The host mail server provides pages to the thin client, which can be rendered by the browser to present an email service to a user. The thin client is equipped to receive audio and video data and supports a user interface to facilitate capture of the audio or video data for inclusion in an email message. After a data stream is captured and stored locally at the client, the browser submits a request to the host mail server that contains a token in lieu of the data stream. The host mail server returns a response specifying a new page that contains the email message. The response also includes the token and indicates a location in the new page at which the audio or video data is to be rendered. Upon receiving the response, the browser inserts the data stream into the new page at the location and renders the new page. After the user has reviewed the email message, the user can send the email message, causing the browser to submit another request to the host mail server that contains both the email message and the audio or video data. Upon receiving this second request, the host mail server converts the email message and the audio or video data to a MIME message and forwards the MIME message to the intended recipient.

Browser-based email system with user interface for audio/video capture

Khronika is an event browsing and notification system that attacks the problems of information overload and information distribution for a wide range of information sources. It implements a shared network server that manages a database of general events, personal event daemons, and automatically generated notifications that are distributed over time. It supports both traditional search and retrieve operations as well as automatic notifications and combinations of both. Together, these two modes complement each other. The first provides a way for the user to actively find out about past, present, or future events; the second causes the system to automatically deliver notifications about pending events of interest. This means that a user can find information when she or he wants to know about it, and be automatically told when she or he needs to know about it.

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Being selectively aware with the Khronika system

Server-side scripting for creating customized documents for clients is disclosed. A server application (144) processes code included in a script (146), causing the server application (144) to issue a request to a decision engine (148) to select content (150) that is designated as appropriate for a client (100) based on attributes (152) of the client (100). The request is issued to the decision engine (148) without the server application (144) indicating the decision criteria that are to be used or the particular attributes (152) of the client (100) on which the selection is to be based. The decision engine (148) uses the appropriate decision criteria and selects content (150) for the document from content files (150a-150n) associated with the decision engine. The decision engine (148) can instead select further portions of script (146) from the content files (150a-150n), which are processed by the server application (144) and result in additional decisions being made by the decision engine (148). In this manner, the customization process can be made as complex as necessary without significantly increasing the complexity of the scripts (146) executed by the server application (144). The selection complexity is shifted to the decision engine (148), and changes to the selection logic can be made there rather than at the scripts.

Lennart Lövstrand

Papers

User-tailorable systems: pressing the issues with buttons

Realizing a video environment: EuroPARC's RAVE system

Browser-based email system with user interface for audio/video capture

Being selectively aware with the Khronika system

Server-side scripting that enables creation of customized documents for clients