Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces
01 Dec 1992-pp 107-114
TL;DR: A study of shared editor use is discussed which suggests that awareness information provided and exploited passively through the shared workspace, allows users to move smoothly between close and loose collaboration, and to assign and coordinate work dynamically.
Abstract: Awareness of individual and group activities is critical to successful collaboration and is commonly supported in CSCW systems by active, information generation mechanisms separate from the shared workspace. These mechanisms pena~ise information providers, presuppose relevance to the recipient, and make access difficult, We discuss a study of shared editor use which suggests that awareness information provided and exploited passively through the shared workspace, allows users to move smoothly between close and loose collaboration, and to assign and coordinate work dynamically. Passive awareness mechanisms promise effective support for collaboration requiring this sort of behaviour, whilst avoiding problems with active approaches.
Citations
More filters
07 Nov 2002
TL;DR: A descriptive theory of awareness is developed for the purpose of aiding groupware design, focusing on one kind of group awareness called workspace awareness, which focuses on how small groups perform generation and execution tasks in medium-sized shared workspaces.
Abstract: Supporting awareness of others is an idea that holds promise for improving the usability of real-time distributed groupware. However, there is little principled information available about awareness that can be used by groupware designers. In this article, we develop a descriptive theory of awareness for the purpose of aiding groupware design, focusing on one kind of group awareness called i>workspace awareness. We focus on how small groups perform generation and execution tasks in medium-sized shared workspaces – tasks where group members frequently shift between individual and shared activities during the work session. We have built a three-part framework that examines the concept of workspace awareness and that helps designers understand the concept for purposes of designing awareness support in groupware. The framework sets out elements of knowledge that make up workspace awareness, perceptual mechanisms used to maintain awareness, and the ways that people use workspace awareness in collaboration. The framework also organizes previous research on awareness and extends it to provide designers with a vocabulary and a set of ground rules for analysing work situations, for comparing awareness devices, and for explaining evaluation results. The basic structure of the theory can be used to describe other kinds of awareness that are important to the usability of groupware.
1,111 citations
Cites background from "Awareness and coordination in share..."
...…and insights of other groupware developers on issues concerning awareness (e.g. Stefik et al., 1987a; Tang, 1991; Beaudouin-Lafon and Karsenty, 1992; Dourish and Bellotti, 1992; Dix et al., 1993); • theories developed by psychologists, linguists, ethnographers and human factors researchers on…...
[...]
...Even though a person can keep track of many things in a shared workspace, elements from a basic set make repeated appearances in research literature (e.g. Dourish and Bellotti, 1992; Sohlenkamp and Chwelos, 1994; McDaniel and Brinck, 1997)....
[...]
...Key words: awareness, groupware design, groupware usability, real-time distributed groupware, situation awareness, shared workspaces, workspace awareness...
[...]
...For example, Dourish and Bellotti (1992) observed that people involved in a shared editing task “continually moved between concurrent, but more or less independent, work . . . to very tightly focused group consideration of single items....
[...]
...Awareness has recently begun to receive considerable attention in CSCW and groupware research (e.g. Dourish and Bellotti, 1992; McDaniel and Brinck, 1997; Rodden, 1996; Gutwin and Greenberg, 1998a)....
[...]
TL;DR: A vision of knowledge communities, conversationally based systems that support the creation, management and reuse of knowledge in a social context, is developed and it is suggested that they have three characteristics—visbility, awareness, and accountability—which enable people to draw upon their experience and expertise to structure their interactions with one another.
Abstract: We are interested in desiging systems that support communication and collaboration among large groups of people over computing networks. We begin by asking what properties of the physical world support graceful human-human communication in face-to-face situations, and argue that it is possible to design digital systems that support coherent behavior by making participants and their activites visible to one another. We call such systems “socially translucent systems” and suggest that they have three characteristics—visbility, awareness, and accountability—which enable people to draw upon their experience and expertise to structure their interactions with one another. To motivate and focus our ideas we develop a vision of knowledge communities, conversationally based systems that support the creation, management and reuse of knowledge in a social context. We describe our experience in designing and deploying one layer of functionality for knowledge communities, embodied in a working system called “Barbie” and discuss research issues raised by a socially translucent approach to design.
1,026 citations
11 Feb 2012
TL;DR: It is found that people make a surprisingly rich set of social inferences from the networked activity information in GitHub, such as inferring someone else's technical goals and vision when they edit code, or guessing which of several similar projects has the best chance of thriving in the long term.
Abstract: Social applications on the web let users track and follow the activities of a large number of others regardless of location or affiliation. There is a potential for this transparency to radically improve collaboration and learning in complex knowledge-based activities. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with central and peripheral GitHub users, we examined the value of transparency for large-scale distributed collaborations and communities of practice. We find that people make a surprisingly rich set of social inferences from the networked activity information in GitHub, such as inferring someone else's technical goals and vision when they edit code, or guessing which of several similar projects has the best chance of thriving in the long term. Users combine these inferences into effective strategies for coordinating work, advancing technical skills and managing their reputation.
939 citations
Cites background from "Awareness and coordination in share..."
...Previous work on awareness has explored the value of activity information for small groups [7, 12]....
[...]
03 Oct 2010
TL;DR: S soylent, a word processing interface that enables writers to call on Mechanical Turk workers to shorten, proofread, and otherwise edit parts of their documents on demand, and the Find-Fix-Verify crowd programming pattern, which splits tasks into a series of generation and review stages.
Abstract: This paper introduces architectural and interaction patterns for integrating crowdsourced human contributions directly into user interfaces. We focus on writing and editing, complex endeavors that span many levels of conceptual and pragmatic activity. Authoring tools offer help with pragmatics, but for higher-level help, writers commonly turn to other people. We thus present Soylent, a word processing interface that enables writers to call on Mechanical Turk workers to shorten, proofread, and otherwise edit parts of their documents on demand. To improve worker quality, we introduce the Find-Fix-Verify crowd programming pattern, which splits tasks into a series of generation and review stages. Evaluation studies demonstrate the feasibility of crowdsourced editing and investigate questions of reliability, cost, wait time, and work time for edits.
814 citations
Cites background from "Awareness and coordination in share..."
...Writing is no exception [7]: we commonly recruit friends and colleagues to help us shape and polish our writing....
[...]
29 Apr 2007
TL;DR: The growth of non-direct work in Wikipedia is examined and the development of tools to characterize conflict and coordination costs in Wikipedia are described, which may inform the design of new collaborative knowledge systems.
Abstract: Wikipedia, a wiki-based encyclopedia, has become one of the most successful experiments in collaborative knowledge building on the Internet. As Wikipedia continues to grow, the potential for conflict and the need for coordination increase as well. This article examines the growth of such non-direct work and describes the development of tools to characterize conflict and coordination costs in Wikipedia. The results may inform the design of new collaborative knowledge systems.
610 citations
Cites background from "Awareness and coordination in share..."
...This allows us to develop quantitative measures of coordination costs, and also has broader implications for systems in which maintenance and consolidation occur, such as group work systems [10, 13]....
[...]
...a group must engage in both task-focused and group maintenance activity [4][10]....
[...]
...This suggests that despite the many unique qualities of Wikipedia – such as its size, low participation costs, and “swarm” intelligence – the results found here may have broad application to other systems in which maintenance activities occur, or where multiple viewpoints interact, including many group work systems [10][13]....
[...]
References
More filters
01 Jun 1992
TL;DR: Initial experiences of the system in use at EuroPARC and PARC suggest that Portholes both supports shared awareness and helps to build a “sense of community”.
Abstract: We are investigating ways in which media space technologies can support distributed work groups through access to information that supports general awareness. Awareness involves knowing who is “around”, what activities are occurring, who is talking with whom; it provides a view of one another in the daily work environments. Awareness may lead to informal interactions, spontaneous connections, and the development of shared cultures—all important aspects of maintaining working relationships which are denied to groups distributed across multiple sites. The Portholes project, at Rank Xerox EuroPARC in Cambridge, England, and Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California, demonstrates that awareness can be supported across distance. A data network provides a shared database of image information that is regularly updated and available at all sites. Initial experiences of the system in use at EuroPARC and PARC suggest that Portholes both supports shared awareness and helps to build a “sense of community”.
1,148 citations
01 Jun 1989
TL;DR: An algorithm for concurrency control in real-time groupware systems is presented and its advantages are its simplicity of use and its responsiveness: users can operate directly on the data without obtaining locks.
Abstract: Groupware systems are computer-based systems that support two or more users engaged in a common task, and that provide an interface to a shared environment. These systems frequently require fine-granularity sharing of data and fast response times. This paper distinguishes real-time groupware systems from other multi-user systems and discusses their concurrency control requirements. An algorithm for concurrency control in real-time groupware systems is then presented. The advantages of this algorithm are its simplicity of use and its responsiveness: users can operate directly on the data without obtaining locks. The algorithm must know some semantics of the operations. However the algorithm's overall structure is independent of the semantic information, allowing the algorithm to be adapted to many situations. An example application of the algorithm to group text editing is given, along with a sketch of its proof of correctness in this particular case. We note that the behavior desired in many of these systems is non-serializable.
1,047 citations
"Awareness and coordination in share..." refers methods in this paper
...Although the dOPT synchronisation algorithm [5] which underlies GROVE can manage simple text streams as well as outline documents, GROVE’s structuring of the document also implicitly serves, in some ways, to structure the activities in which the group engages....
[...]
TL;DR: Basic version control concepts are introduced and the practice of version control using RCS is discussed, and usage statistics show that RCS's delta method is space and time efficient.
Abstract: An important problem in program development and maintenance is version con- trol, i.e., the task of keeping a software system consisting of many versions and configurations well organized. The Revision Control System (RCS) is a software tool that assists with that task. RCS manages revisions of text documents, in particular source programs, documentation, and test data. It automates the storing, retrieval, log- ging and identification of revisions, and it provides selection mechanisms for composing configurations. This paper introduces basic version control concepts and discusses the practice of version control using RCS. For conserving space, RCS stores deltas, i.e., differences between successive revisions. Several delta storage methods are discussed. Usage statistics show that RCS's delta storage method is space and time efficient. The paper concludes with a detailed survey of version control tools.
1,026 citations
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: Examination of several application areas reveals a common dynamic: a factor contributing to the application’s failure is the disparity between those who will benefit from an application and those who must do additional work to support it.
Abstract: Many systems, applications, and features that support cooperative work share two characteristics: A significant investment has been made in their development, and their successes have consistently fallen far short of expectations. Examination of several application areas reveals a common dynamic: 1) A factor contributing to the application’s failure is the disparity between those who will benefit from an application and those who must do additional work to support it. 2) A factor contributing to the decision-making failure that leads to ill-fated development efforts is the unique lack of management intuition for CSCW applications. 3) A factor contributing to the failure to learn from experience is the extreme difficulty of evaluating these applications. These three problem areas escape adequate notice due to two natural but ultimately misleading analogies: the analogy between multi-user application programs and multi-user computer systems, and the analogy between multi-user applications and single-user applications. These analogies influence the way we think about cooperative work applications and designers and decision-makers fail to recognize their limits. Several CSCW application areas are examined in some detail. Introduction. An illustrative example: automatic meeting
986 citations
Journal Article•
406 citations