Gary M. Olson

Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development

When virtual teams need to establish trust at a distance, it is advantageous for them to use rich media to communicate. We studied the emergence of trust in a social dilemma game in four different communication situations: face-to-face, video, audio, and text chat. All three of the richer conditions were significant improvements over text chat. Video and audio conferencing groups were nearly as good as face-to-face, but both did show some evidence of what we term delayed trust (slower progress toward full cooperation) and fragile trust (vulnerability to opportunistic behavior)

From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories

Promoting affiliation between scientists is relatively easy, but creating larger organizational structures is much more difficult, due to traditions of scientific independence, difficulties of sharing implicit knowledge, and formal organizational barriers. The Science of Collaboratories (SOC) project conducted a broad five-year review to take stock of the diverse ecosystem of projects that fit our definition of a collaboratory and to distill lessons learned in the process. This article describes one of the main products of that review, a seven-category taxonomy of collaboratory types. The types are: Distributed Research Centers, Shared Instruments, Community Data Systems, Open Community Contribution Systems, Virtual Communities of Practice, Virtual Learning Communities, and Community Infrastructure Projects. Each of the types is defined and illustrated with one example, and key technical and organizational issues are identified.

Trust without touch: jumpstarting long-distance trust with initial social activities

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is thought to be inadequate when one needs to establish trust. If, however, people meet before using CMC, they trust each other, trust being established through touch. Here we show that if participants do not meet beforehand but rather engage in various getting-acquainted activities over a network, trust is much higher than if they do nothing beforehand, nearly as good as a prior meeting. Using text-chat to get acquainted is nearly as good as meeting, and even just seeing a picture is better than nothing

i2i trust in e-commerce

The Internet has brought about the New Economy and with it a host of research on e-commerce. Most people familiar with ecommerce think of it as, first, the ability of consumers to buy products and services online (an arrangement known as B2C). Alternatively, it’s also the ability of businesses to interact with one another electronically (B2B) in the interests of, say, supporting the supply chain, the next step beyond electronic data interchange. Another important change the Internet has meant for commerce is that individuals have the ability to communicate with one another, independent of location (or i2i, for individual-toindividual). i2i plays a big role in e-commerce in two main scenarios: global teams inside organizations and advisor/advisee interactions from one organization to another or from an agent to a customer. Global teams. For global teams, managers can choose members from around the world, extending their reach to find the most appropriate experts for the job at hand. Many companies have gone global, assigning people from different continents, time zones, areas of expertise, even from outside the organization, to work toward a common goal. Ford Motor Co. is an example of a global organization assigning global teams to design various automobile components and produce cars for all regions, rather than different cars for different regions, as it had previously; Ford calls it “virtual collocation.” Meanwhile, although a number of companies have been doing software development around the world and around the clock, such global work has become much easier in recent years thanks to the Internet. Where these companies used to work through ftp and version-control software to share the code itself, today’s Netbased communication makes it easier to discuss the work, clarify misunderstandings, coordinate changes, and monitor and maintain the schedule through email, attachments, and textchat capabilities, as well as through audio and videoconferencing. Advisor/advisee relations. The Internet was originally expected to be a great medium for “disintermediation,” or the elimination of people as intermediaries to sources and services. We would be able to explore enormous digital libraries without a reference librarian; access medical information before meeting a physician; view ongoing changes in the stock market, allowing us to make decisions without a broker; or secure travel arrangements without a travel agent. Although such access is widespread today, and many of us are able to work independently, people are beginning to reappear in our online interchanges. We now recognize the value these intermediaries might offer us, including counsel, guidance to the right sources of information, assessment of the quality of the sources, and customized advice, because they understand our overall goals and needs. Today, we are seeing “reintermediation,” or the reintroduction of people to online interaction to link sources and services. Services include live chat with human advisors—on-screen videoconferencing to hone the advice for the individual being served. Reintermediation via i2i affects both B2C and B2B. Trust is the principle challenge in both areas—connecting teammates across long distances and the interaction of advice seekers and advisors on the Internet. In order for teammates to work productively and efficiently, they have to trust one an-

User‐centered design of collaboration technology

Groupware, like other forms of information technology, should be designed with the users’ needs and capabilities as the focus. User‐centered system design consists of observation and analysis of users at work, assistance in design from relevant aspects of theory, and iterative testing with users. We illustrate the various stages of this approach with our development of group ware for software designers. We have extensive studies of designers at work, have developed the beginnings of a theory of distributed cognition, and are at the first stages of iterative testing and redesign of a prototype of a shared editor to support their work.

Analysis of gestures in face-to-face design teams provides guidance for how to use groupware in design

Many phases of design projects are done in groups. Communication in these groups is naturally supported through a variety of gestures. We catalog four types of gestures that people use when engaged in design (kinetic, spatial, pointing, and other), and overlay it with the purpose of the design subtask, -design, meeting management, and other. From this and other observations, we list recommendations for supporting this kind of communication in settings which have technology support, either face-to-face with group editors (where people do not necessarily see the same thing at the same time), and remote work (where people see neither the same view of the object nor a full room view of the other participants).

Unblocking brainstorming through the use of a simple group editor

Earlier studies of computerized brainstorming showed that by restructuring group processes, groups can overcome well known performance deficits that groups suffer relative to nominal groups. These earlier tools are essentially computerized versions of Nominal Group Technique. We examined the ability of a simple, unstructured parallel editor to facilitate idea generation in face to face groups. Our results showed that parallel interacting groups outperformed serial interacting groups, and parallel interacting groups did not differ significantly from nominal, non interacting groups. Thus, an informal tool that allows parallel work is an effective way to increase idea generation in real interacting groups.

How a group-editor changes the character of a design meeting as well as its outcome

This study reports how the introduction of a simple collaborative tool changed the way groups of people did an interesting problem solving task, the design of an automatic post office. The designs produced by the groups supported with this tool were of higher quality than those who worked with conventional whiteboard and paper and pencil. They liked the process a little less, probably because it was a new tool. But, more surprising was the fact that those supported with the tool did less extensive exploration of the design space. Our expectation was just the opposite. It appears that the tool helped the supported group keep more focused on the core issues in the emerging design, to waste less time on less important topics, and to capture what was said as they went.

Research on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Publisher Summary Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the name of the research area that studies the use of computing and communication technologies to support group and organizational activity. CSCW as a field has emerged more recently than human-computer interaction and therefore, in many ways, is less mature. The field of CSCW has mostly been at the stage of building point systems. Proponents of user-centered design argue that an understanding of the work situation, the group members, and the task specifics is critical for designing new systems. This is difficult when the antecedent knowledge is missing. One reason for this state of affairs is that the prerequisite understanding of groups and organizations is itself only just emerging. As a result, a considerable amount of research that appears under the rubric of CSCW is basic research about the nature of groups, organizations, and work. But, trial and error from creative system builders is too slow a discovery process. This chapter reviews CSCW research. The chapter begins by describing some of the methods and issues involved in CSCW research. It considers a conceptual perspective that provides a framework for describing the human use of CSCW systems. It also presents a brief survey of recent research results. Finally, the chapter discusses some general research issues for the future.

Identifying and analyzing multiple threads in computer-mediated and face-to-face conversations

We compared face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated (CMC) conversations among small groups of scientists carrying out data collection campaigns. We found multiple threads of conversation in both settings, but this was much more extensive in the CMC cases. The two kinds of conversation were very similar in content and nature of participation, but difTered in their temporal flow. The software that supported the CMC conversations allowed interactions that were quite similar in character to the F TF situations. The low incidence of thread confusions and the potential value of overhearing uset%l conversations does not seem to warrant providing technology in the CMC situation to split apart conversational threads.