Results 1 - 10
of
179
A Descriptive Framework of Workspace Awareness for RealTime Groupware
- Computer Supported Cooperative Work
, 2002
"... 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 o ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 251 (26 self)
- Add to MetaCart
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 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. Key words: awareness, groupware design, groupware usability, real-time distributed groupware, situation awareness, shared workspaces, workspace awareness
The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The Gap Between Social Requirements and Technical Feasibility
- Human-Computer Interaction
, 2000
"... Over the last 10 years, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a base set of findings. These findings are taken almost as assumptions within the field. In summary, they argue that human activity is highly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized and that computational entities such a ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 225 (12 self)
- Add to MetaCart
Over the last 10 years, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a base set of findings. These findings are taken almost as assumptions within the field. In summary, they argue that human activity is highly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized and that computational entities such as information transfer, roles, and policies need to be similarly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized. However, current systems cannot fully support the social world uncovered by these findings. This paper argues that there is an inherent gap between the social requirements of CSCW and its technical mechanisms. The social-technical gap is the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically. Exploring, understanding, and hopefully ameliorating this social-technical gap is the central challenge for CSCW as a field and one of the central problems for HCI. Indeed, merely attesting the continued centrality of this gap could be one of the important intellectual contributions of CSCW. This paper also argues that the challenge of the social-technical gap creates an opportunity to refocus CSCW as a Simonian science of the artificial. To be published in Human-Computer Interaction Preprint- Ackerman- Challenge of CSCW 1 1.
Operational Transformation in Real-Time Group Editors: Issues, Algorithms, and Achievements
, 1998
"... Real-time group editors allow a group of users to view and edit the same document at the same time from geographically dispersed sites connected by communication networks. Consistency maintenance is one of the most significant challenges in the design and implementation of these types of systems. Re ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 180 (11 self)
- Add to MetaCart
Real-time group editors allow a group of users to view and edit the same document at the same time from geographically dispersed sites connected by communication networks. Consistency maintenance is one of the most significant challenges in the design and implementation of these types of systems. Research on real-time group editors in the past decade has invented an innovative technique for consistency maintenance, called operational transformation. This paper presents an integrative review of the evolution of operational transformation techniques, with the goals of identifying the major issues, algorithms, achievements, and remaining challenges. In addition, this paper contributes a new optimized generic operational transformation control algorithm. Keywords Consistency maintenance, operational transformation, convergence, causality preservation, intention preservation, group editors, groupware, distributed computing. INTRODUCTION Real-time group editors allow a group of users to ...
Building Real Time Groupware with GroupKit, A Groupware Toolkit
, 1995
"... This paper presents an overview of GroupKit, a groupware toolkit that lets developers build applications for synchronous and distributed computer-based conferencing. GroupKit was constructed from our belief that programming groupware should be only slightly harder than building functionally similar ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 168 (23 self)
- Add to MetaCart
This paper presents an overview of GroupKit, a groupware toolkit that lets developers build applications for synchronous and distributed computer-based conferencing. GroupKit was constructed from our belief that programming groupware should be only slightly harder than building functionally similar single-user systems. We have been able to significantly reduce the implementation complexity of groupware through the key features that comprise GroupKit. A runtime infrastructure automatically manages the creation, interconnection, and communications of the distributed processes that comprise conference sessions. A set of groupware programming abstractions allows developers to control the behaviour of distributed processes, to take action on state changes, and to share relevant data. Groupware widgets let interface features of value to conference participants to be easily added to groupware applications. Session managers⎯interfaces that let people create and manage their meetings⎯are decoupled from groupware applications and are built by developers to accommodate the group’s working style. Example GroupKit applications in a variety of domains have been implemented with only modest effort.
Workspace awareness in real-time distributed groupware
, 1997
"... The rich person-to-person interaction afforded by shared physical workspaces allows people to maintain up-to-the minute knowledge about others ’ interaction with the workspace. This knowledge is workspace awareness, part of the glue that allows groups to collaborate effectively. In real-time groupwa ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 142 (22 self)
- Add to MetaCart
The rich person-to-person interaction afforded by shared physical workspaces allows people to maintain up-to-the minute knowledge about others ’ interaction with the workspace. This knowledge is workspace awareness, part of the glue that allows groups to collaborate effectively. In real-time groupware systems that provide a shared virtual workspace, the possibilities for interaction are impoverished when compared with physical workspaces, partly because support for workspace awareness has not generally been a priority in groupware design. In this paper, we present the concept of workspace awareness as one key to supporting the richness evident in face-to-face interaction. We construct a conceptual framework that describes the elements and mechanisms of workspace awareness, and then show several widgets that can be embedded in relaxed-WYSIWIS groupware systems to support the maintenance of workspace awareness.
Designing Storytelling Technologies to Encourage Collaboration Between Young Children
, 2000
"... We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 131 (30 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves. Keywords Children, Single Display Groupware (SDG), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Education, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). INTRODUCTION Collaboration is an important skill for young children to learn. Educational research has found that working in pairs or small groups can have beneficial effects on l...
Designing object-oriented synchronous groupware with COAST
, 1996
"... This paper introduces COAST, an object-oriented toolkit for the development of synchronous groupware, which enhances the usability and simplifies the development of such applications. COAST offers basic and generic components for the design of synchronous groupware and is complemented by a methodolo ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 116 (13 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
This paper introduces COAST, an object-oriented toolkit for the development of synchronous groupware, which enhances the usability and simplifies the development of such applications. COAST offers basic and generic components for the design of synchronous groupware and is complemented by a methodology for groupware development. Basic features of the toolkit include transaction-controlled access to replicated shared objects, transparent replication management, and a fully optimistic concurrency control. Development support is provided by a session concept supporting the flexible coupling of shared objects' aspects between concurrent users and by a fully transparent updating concept for displays which is based on declarative programming. KEYWORDS: toolkit, synchronous collaboration, groupware, replicated objects, sessions, display updating, concurrency control 1 INTRODUCTION Groupware allows several geographically distributed people to work together with the aid of a computerized envi...
Achieving Convergence, Causality-preservation, and Intention-preservation in Real-time Cooperative Editing Systems
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
, 1998
"... ing with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, to redistribute to lists, or to use any component of this work in other works, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Permissions may be requested from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., 1515 Broadway, New York, N ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 109 (18 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
ing with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, to redistribute to lists, or to use any component of this work in other works, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Permissions may be requested from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 USA, fax 1 (212) 869-0481, or permissions@acm.org. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions, Vol.5, No.1, March 1998, Pages 63-108. 2 \Delta Chengzheng Sun, et al. 1. INTRODUCTION Cooperative editing systems are very useful groupware tools in the rapidly expanding areas of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) [Ellis et al. 1991], They can be used to allow physically dispersed people to edit a shared textual document [Ellis and Gibbs 1989
An Integrating, Transformation-Oriented Approach to Concurrency Control and Undo in Group Editors
, 1996
"... Concurrency control and group undo are important issues in the design of groupware, especially for interactive group editors. We present an improved version of an existing distributed algorithm for concurrency control that is based on operation transformations. Since the usability of the algorithm r ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 100 (0 self)
- Add to MetaCart
Concurrency control and group undo are important issues in the design of groupware, especially for interactive group editors. We present an improved version of an existing distributed algorithm for concurrency control that is based on operation transformations. Since the usability of the algorithm relies on its formal correctness, we present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to be satisfied in order to ensure consistency in a replicated architecture. We identify desirable properties of operation transformations and show how our approach can be employed to implement group undo. The approach has been applied to build a prototypical group editor for text; some experiences gained are presented. Keywords Concurrency Control, Group Editors, Group Undo, Groupware, Interaction Model, Operation Transformation. INTRODUCTION Groupware systems, i.e., multi-user applications for cooperative work [2, 5], present remarkable challenges for application designers. Concurrency control and ...
Consistency Maintenance in Real-Time Collaborative Graphics Editing Systems
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
, 2002
"... this article, we propose an object-level multi-versioning approach to consistency maintenance in real-time collaborative graphic editors ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 88 (6 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
this article, we propose an object-level multi-versioning approach to consistency maintenance in real-time collaborative graphic editors