Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Thinking about groups, collaboration, and communication

Project Part 3 See me if you need resources for your evaluation – Room, equipment, etc. Presentation – In-class on April 24 & 29 – 15 minutes total – hard limit – Formal and professional – Upload slides on Wiki – Sign up on Wiki for time slot

Presentation Parts: – Motivation – Requirements learning from users – Design learning from prototyping – Evaluation – Conclusions – Q&A Include all parts, but focus on evaluation in particular

CSCW Study of how people work together and how technology affects this Support the social processes of work, often among geographically separated people HCI so far:CSCW: – Individual use? – Psychology?

Examples The “system” becomes the moderator between people There are now many collaborations, like: – Scientists collaborating on a technical issue – Authors editing a document together – Programmers debugging a system concurrently – Workers collaborating over a shared video conferencing application – Buyers and sellers meeting on eBay

CS C W? The Second “C” – Group work not always cooperative or collaborative The “W” – Not just about “work” anymore – Support the social processes of a group of people communicating or collaborating on anything

Examples Awareness of people in your family, community, physical space... Mobile communication Online discussions, blogs Sharing photos, stories, experiences Recommender systems Playing games

Groupware Software specifically designed – to support group working or playing – with cooperative requirements in mind Groupware can be classified by – when and where the participants are working – the function it performs for cooperative work Specific and difficult problems with groupware implementation and evaluation

The Time/Space Matrix Classify groupware by: when the participants are working, at the same time or not where the participants are working, at the same place or not Common names for axes: time: synchronous/asynchronous place: co-located/remote different time same time same place different place

Applied to “traditional” technology Different timeSame time same place different place face-to-face conversation, whiteboard phone call post-it note letter

Applied to computer technology Time Place Synchronous Co-located Asynchronous Remote Face-to-face E-meeting room Post-it note Argument. tool Phone call Video window,wall Letter

A More-fleshed Out Taxonomy A typical space/time matrix (after Baecker, Grudin, Buxton, & Greenberg, 1995, p.742)

Styles of Groupware Systems Computer-mediated communication Meeting and decision support systems Shared applications and tools

Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) Aids Examples – , Chat, virtual worlds – Desktop videoconferencing – Video/Audio chat – Blogs

CMC applications Support a wide range of communication needs Allow large number of people to quickly and easily communicate Can be combined with other activities and systems Lead to many new social conventions and issues

Social implications Less rich channels – fewer details, higher likelihood of misunderstanding More anonymous More autonomy, more ability to control message Can be less intrusive – I’ll IM you before I stop by your office

Food for thought… Why aren’t videophones or video conferencing more popular? How and when do you use Instant Messaging? How does this differ from ? What communication technology do you still want?

Meeting and Decision Support Systems Examples – Corporate decision-support conference room Provides ways of rationalizing decisions, voting, presenting cases, etc. Concurrency control is important – Shared computer classroom/cluster Group discussion/design aid tools

Shared Applications and Tools Shared editors, design tools, etc. – Want to avoid “locking” and allow multiple people to concurrently work on document – Requires some form of contention resolution – How do you show what others are doing?

Social Issues People bring in different perspectives and views to a collaboration environment Goal of CSCW systems is often to establish some common ground and to facilitate understanding and interaction

Turn Taking There are many subtle social conventions about turn taking in an interaction – Personal space, closeness – Eye contact – Gestures – Body language – Conversation cues How is turn taking handled in IM?

Geography, Position In group dynamics, the physical layout of individuals matters a lot – “Power positions” How can you tell power in a videoconference?

Awareness What is happening? Who is there? e.g. IM buddy list What has happened … and why? How do you use awareness in IM? What other systems have awareness?

Groupware implementation Often more complicated – feedback and network delays – architectures for groupware – feedthrough and network traffic – robustness and scaling

Feedback and network delays At least 2 network messages + four context switches With protocols 4 or more network messages screen feedback user types local machine client remote machine server remote application network

Types of architecture centralized – single copy of application and data – client-server – simplest case replicated – copy on each workstation – also called peer-to-peer – + local feedback – race conditions

Feedthrough & traffic Need to inform all other clients of changes Few networks support broadcast messages, so … n participants  n–1 network messages! Solution: increase granularity – reduce frequency of feedback – but … poor feedthrough  loss of shared context Trade-off: timeliness vs. network traffic

Evaluation Evaluating the usability and utility of CSCW tools is quite challenging – Need more participants – Logistically difficult – Apples - oranges Often use field studies and ethnographic evaluations to assist Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for Developers – By Jonathan Grudin (now at Microsoft) –

Groupware Challenges (Grudin) Who does work vs. who gets benefit – The system may require extra effort for people not really receiving benefit Critical mass – Need enough people before system is successful

More Grudin challenges Social, political, and motivational factors – Outside factors can affect system success No “standard procedures” – Many procedures and exceptions when it comes to groups interacting

More Grudin challenges Infrequent features – How often do we actually use groupware anyway? – Solution: add groupware features to existing individual software Evaluation is longer, more complicated, less precise

Recommendations Add group features to existing apps Benefit all group members Start with niches were application is highly needed Consider evaluation and adoption early Expect and plan for development and evaluation to take longer

Let’s consider: Facebook Is it groupware? What general types of group features does it have? How does it differ from blogs? Flickr? Personal web pages? What features do you think they should add? Why do you think it is so successful? What social issues (good and bad) are occurring because of Facebook?