Christine M. Neuwirth

Issues in the design of computer support for co-authoring and commenting

This paper reports on a project to develop a “work in preparation” editor, or PREP editor, to study co-authoring and commenting relationships. As part of the project, we have identified three issues in designing computer support for co-authoring and commenting: (1) support for social interaction among co-authors and commenters; (2) support for cognitive aspects of co-authoring and external commenting; and (3) support for practicality in both types of interaction. For each of these issues, the paper describes the approach the PREP editor takes to address them.

Designing for serendipity: supporting end-user configuration of ubiquitous computing environments

The future world of ubiquitous computing is one in which we will be surrounded by an ever-richer set of networked devices and services. In such a world, we cannot expect to have available to us specific applications that allow us to accomplish every conceivable combination of devices that we might wish. Instead, we believe that many of our interactions will be through highly generic tools that allow enduser discovery, configuration, interconnection, and control of the devices around us. This paper presents a design study of such an environment, intended to support serendipitous, opportunistic use of discovered network resources. We present an examination of a generic browser-style application built on top of an infrastructure developed to support arbitrary recombination of devices and services, as well as a number of challenges we believe to be inherent in such settings.

Taking it out of context: collaborating within and across cultures in face-to-face settings and via instant messaging

As new communications media foster international collaborations, we would be remiss in overlooking cultural differences when assessing them. In this study, 24 pairs in three cultural groupings--American-American (AA), Chinese-Chinese (CC) and American-Chinese (AC) --worked on two decision-making tasks, one face-to-face and the other via IM. Drawing upon prior research, we predicted differences in conversational efficiency, conversational content, interaction quality, persuasion, and performance. The quantitative results combined with conversation analysis suggest that the groups viewed the task differently--AA pairs as an exercise in situation-specific compromise; CC as consensus-reaching. Cultural differences were reduced but not eliminated in the IM condition.

Flexible Diff-ing in a collaborative writing system

An important activity in collaborative writing is communicating about changes to texts,, This paper reports on a software system, ji’exible cliff, that finds and reports differences (“cliffs”) between versions of texts. The system is flexible, allowing users to control several aspects of its operation including what changes are reported and how they are shown when they are reported. We argue that such flexibility is necessary to support users’ different social and cognitive needs.

A study of fonts designed for screen display

This study examined the readabiity.and subjective preferences of a set of fonts designed for screen display. Two new binary bitmap fonts performed well, suggesting that designers hould consider incorporating similar attributes into default fonts for online type.

Computer support for distributed collaborative writing: defining parameters of interaction

This paper reports research to define a set of interaction parameters that collaborative writers will find useful. Our approach is to provide parameters of interaction and to locate the decision of how to set the parameters with the users. What is new in this paper is the progress we have made outlining task management parameters, notification, scenarios of use, as well as some implementation architectures.

Distributed collaborative writing: a comparison of spoken and written modalities for reviewing and revising documents

Previous research indicates that voice annotation helps reviewers to express the more complex and social aspects of a collaborative writing task. Little direct evidence exists, however, about the effect of voice annotations on the writers who must use such annotations. To test the effect, we designed an interface intended to alleviate some of the problems associated with the voice modality and undertook a study with two goals: to compare the nature and quantity of voice and written comments, and to evaluate how writers responded to comments produced in each mode. Writers were paired with reviewers who made either written or spoken annotations from which the writers revised. The study provides direct evidence that the greater expressivity of the voice modality, which previous research suggested benefits reviewers, produces annotations that writers also find usable. Interactions of modality with the type of annotation suggest specific advantages of each mode for enhancing the processes of review and revision.

Coexistence and transformation of informal and formal structures: requirements for more flexible hypermedia systems

In this paper, we argue that some tasks (e.g., meeting support) require more flexible hypermedia systems and we describe a prototype hypermedia system, DOLPHIN, that implements more flexibility. As part of the argument, we present a theoretical design space for information structuring systems and locate existing hypertext systems within it. The dimensions of the space highlight a systems internal representation of structure and the users actions in creating structure. Second, we describe an empirically derived range of activities connected to conducting group meetings, including the pre- and post-preparation phases, and argue that hyptetext systems need to be more flexible in order to support this range of activities. Finally, we describe a hypermedia prototype, DOLPHIN, which implements this kind of flexible support for meetings. DOLPHIN supports different degrees of formality (e.g., handwriting and sketches as well as typed nodes and links are supported), coexistence of different structures (e.g., handwriting and nodes can exist on the same page) and mutual transformations between them (e.g., handwriting can be turned into nodes and vice versa).

From the Margins to the Center The Future of Annotation

This article describes the importance of annotation to reading and writing practices and reviews new technologies that complicate the ways annotation can be used to support and enhance traditional reading, writing, and collaboration processes. Important directions for future research are discussed, with emphasis on studying how professionals read and annotate, how readers might use annotations that have been produced by others, and how the interface of an annotation program affects collaboration and communication on revision. In each area, the authors emphasize issues and methods that will be productive for enhancing theories of workplace and classroom communication as well as implications for the optimal design of annotation technologies.

Effects of interfaces for annotation on communication in a collaborative task

Various interfaces exist for annotations. Little is known, however, about how such interface variations affect communication. We designed an annotation interface intended to facilitate annotation and undertook a study to compare this interface to two commonly used alternatives. Results support the hypothesis that annotation interfaces affect the number and types of problems about which collaborators communicate. Results also suggest the need for more research on interface effects within other communicative contexts.