Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

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

2. 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

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

4. 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 ?

5. 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

6. 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

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

8. 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

9. sametime differenttime sameplace differentplace 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

10. Applied to “traditional” technology Same time Different time face-to-faceconversation, whiteboard sameplace post-it note differentplace letter phone call

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

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

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

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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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 email? • What communication technology do you still want?

18. 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

19. 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?

20. 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

21. 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?

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

23. 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?

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

25. local machine remote machine remote application screen feedback network 9 8 7 6 5 2 3 4 1 user types client server Feedback and network delays • At least 2 network messages + four context switches • With protocols 4 or more network messages

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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) • http://www.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/CACM94/cacm94.html

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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?