Tailorability (or adaptability) of software becomes more important with the increasing use of off-the-shelf-software. On the other hand, computers support the work of many groups which in turn have to tailor a commonly used software to support individual as well as group needs. This includes not only groupware, i. e., software that directly supports collaborative work, but also single user software. Research has shown that often adaptations to single user software are distributed among colleagues, thus leading to a systematization in a group’s adaptations. Based on this observation an empirical field-study on the collaborative tailoring habits of users of a particular word processor was carried out. Based on these and literature research an add-on to this word processor was developed which provides a public and a private repository for adaptations as well as a mailing function for users to exchange adaptations. Some notification and annotation mechanisms are also provided. Results of two forms of evaluation indicate that users of different levels of qualification are able to handle the tool and consider it a relevant alternative to existing mailing mechanisms.

Collaborative systems need to provide some means for users to be aware of peer activities. Common approaches involve broadcasting events generated as a result of a particular user's actions at the interface to others. Rather than flooding users with information about all activities in the shared environment, filtration techniques provide each user with relevant awareness information. Filtration techniques depending on user configurable agents are popular but so far do not support satisfactorily the improvisational nature of collaborative activities. This is because user configuration tends to be more effective in cases where interactions can be anticipated and where configuration plans can be drawn. In addition, it is difficult for a configurable agent to capture the diversity and the complex interrelationships between collaborative activities. In the case of highly dynamic collaborative interactions, the task load on users increases when configurations have to be synchronised with rapidly evolving needs. This paper describes our attempt to build a highly flexible, automatic, and dynamic event filtration mechanism which is important for current desktops to evolve into systems that support complex collaborative interactions. In Moksha, our prototypical multi-user desktop, these problems are addressed by extending the desktop metaphor and automating the filtration control process so that it becomes invisible to the user. The cross-client linkage of the desktop interface elements, the use of multi-media and its browsing techniques are the main components underlying our strategy.

Ideally, a multi-user desktop environment must cater adequately for dynamic and possibly unanticipated awareness needs of each participant [6]. Any strategy to fulfil these needs appropriately without overloading the participant with awareness-information presupposes the ability of the multi-user environment to be continuously informed of her awareness requirements. This provides the awareness engine [9, 17, 18] of the multi-user environment with the necessary guidelines to synchronise evolving awareness requirements with the presentation of awareness-information on individual desktops. Two ways in which this can be achieved are considered. One involves supplying the participant with a number of tailoring primitives which can be selected to enable specific event-filtrations. The other involves endowing the multi-user system with the ability (1) to track continuously the participant’s behaviour at the interface, such as her direct manipulations of interface elements, (2) to deduce her awareness needs and (3) to automatically configure or tune appropriately the awareness engine of the multi-user system. In this short paper, we contrast between these two approaches as follows. The first one involves explicit tailoring for awareness-information as the tailoring operations are distinguishable and separate from actual task operations. The second one involves ubiquitous tailoring for awarenessinformation since the tailoring operations are indistinguishable from and inherent in actual task operations.

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, we describe user experiences in a longterm groupware project. We examined communication changes, both planned and unplanned, as a result of the system introduction. We found reduced face-to-face communication, task-related and taskunrelated, as well as a changing dissemination of information. Certain losses in interpersonal communication were compensated for by user advocacy and design team-user workshops. We propose that with groupware introduction, organizations should consider support for both planned and informal means as compensation for reduced communication.