Nils Jeners

Supporting the Change of Cooperation Patterns by Integrated Collaboration Tools

Although a number of new collaboration systems emerged of the last years, it is remarkable that email is still the most used collaboration application. However, this messaging based pattern of organizing collaboration causes a lot of problems like information and attachment overload and versioning problems. This paper discusses some of these problems as well as reasons why users are reluctant to switch to alternative cooperation means like document sharing in virtual project environments. Based on these observations we present tools developed with the EU funded Ecospace project that address these issue. These tools simplify the sharing process by combining and integrating sharing functionality with messaging, thus reducing the functional and cognitive distance between both environments.

From Groupware to Social Media - A Comparison of Conceptual Models

Although Groupware research has yielded a number of productive and successful systems, it appears that the current social media trend is somewhat out ruling the traditional cooperation support systems such as email or shared workspaces. In this paper we propose a conceptual model that identifies major elements and concepts of cooperative systems to provide a basis for their comparison. We will illustrate that social media systems apply the same basic concepts as other collaborative systems but with a different adoption creating a different user experience.

Making Groupware Social: The Case of a Cooperative Platform for Surgeons

This contribution describes the extension of a groupware platform with social media concepts to realize a learning and knowledge platform for surgeons, considering specific constraints from the medical domain. We start with a model that equally represents groupware and social software. The instantiation of this model enables the stepwise integration of social features into the groupware system. An important part of the instantiation process is the simplification of the given groupware system and its enrichment by core features of social software. The newly developed platform gets tailored to the surgical domain to fit a practical application domain. We describe in detail the process of modeling and integration of the systems and report about the experiences and lessons learned during this process as well as the user feedback.

A Meta-Model for Cooperation Systems

Today’s enterprise information and cooperation systems are numerous and diverse. Users have problems of information overload, task interruption and media discontinuity. A unification approach of existing systems would be supportive to overcome these issues by reducing the variety and thereby the complexity. A process of unification starts with the comprehension of existing systems belonging to the virtual environment, by modeling them. The second step is the unification on the model layer followed by the last step, the design of the user interface. This paper will present the first step, a meta-model for cooperation systems, which applies concepts used in professional groupware systems as well as social media platforms. Major elements and concepts of cooperation systems will be identified to provide a basis for the unification of the virtual environment.

Metrics for Cooperative Systems

This paper proposes performance indicators and metrics for the analysis of shared workspaces. We investigate user activity in various electronic workspaces of a shared workspace system and compare these on the basis of the proposed metrics: activity, productivity and cooperativity. Based on these results we further investigate the intensity of cooperation on shared documents. The investigations show that the proposed metrics permit an identification of the current cooperation status of a workspace as well as a classification of workspaces and benchmarking of the cooperation maturity.

What groupware functionality do users really use?: A study of collaboration within digital ecosystems

The current work environment is moving from monolithic, heavyweight cooperative systems to a more lightweight digital ecosystem with a tremendous choice of available systems. Big enterprise information systems compete with small specialized tools, which are not feature rich, but concentrate on one cooperation scenario they solve. We can observe that employees are moving their cooperation outside of the system and incorporate lightweight tools. This paper aims to have a fresh look at collaboration techniques and how a current groupware system is used nowadays. Therefore the paper describes the experiences and observations from several academic and commercial proects to inform the design of future collaborative environment.

Analyzing Tie-Strength across Different Media

Human interactions are becoming more and more important in computer systems. The interactions can be classified according to predefined rules, based on the assumption that relations between humans differ greatly. The tie-strength notion is used throughout the social sciences literature in order to denote this classification. The present paper researches how the tie-strength between two persons can be computed automatically by applying structural data from different sources, e.g. email, shared workspaces. This data can provide a virtual copy of the ego-centric network of a user and therefore be utilized for social intelligent computing.

Portal modules for Groupware systems

Groupware Systems become more and more functional and complex. Often many features are integrated in a monolithic interface that should fit all needs. A new trend towards portal systems can provide flexible and user-adaptable environments. This paper therefore presents a new approach for the modularization of collaborative systems. We present the requirements analysis, the concept and implementation as well as experiences from a pilot of portal modules that were added to an existing Groupware system.

Kennzahlen kooperativer Arbeitsbereiche / Metrics for cooperative shared workspaces

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag schlägt Kennzahlen und Metriken zur Analyse von gemeinsamen Arbeitsbereichen vor. Dazu werden die Benutzeraktivitäten in verschiedenen elektronischen Arbeitsbereichen des BSCW Systems untersucht und anhand der vorgeschlagenen Metriken Aktivität, Produktivität und Kooperativität verglichen. Die Untersuchungen zeigen, dass die ermittelten Metriken einerseits eine Zuordnung von Arbeitsbereichen zu einer Nutzungsintention, andererseits einen Benchmark untereinander ermöglichen. Eine weitere Erkenntnis ist, dass sich auch in der kooperativen Nutzung solcher Systeme das Paretoprinzip (80/20-Regel) für das Verhältnis zwischen aktiven und passiven Benutzern wiederfinden lässt. Zusätzlich zeigt die Untersuchung wie schnell Information innerhalb der Arbeitsbereiche gelesen und werden und wie hoch deren Anteil an der Gesamtmenge der ausgetauschten Information ist. Summary The paper presents metrics for shared workspaces, based on the analysis of user activities in the shared workspace system BSCW. We propose metrics to compare the activity, productivity and cooperativity of users in different shared workspaces. Our analysis indicates that the metrics allow for a mapping of workspaces to a usage intention as well as a benchmark between different user groups. Furthermore we observed the Pareto principle known from other statistical evaluations also in the ratio between active and passive users of a workspace. Additionally our research indicates the distribution ratio of information within a shared workspaces.

Kennzahlen kooperativer Arbeitsbereiche

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag schlägt Kennzahlen und Metriken zur Analyse von gemeinsamen Arbeitsbereichen vor. Dazu werden die Benutzeraktivitäten in verschiedenen elektronischen Arbeitsbereichen des BSCW Systems untersucht und anhand der vorgeschlagenen Metriken Aktivität, Produktivität und Kooperativität verglichen. Die Untersuchungen zeigen, dass die ermittelten Metriken einerseits eine Zuordnung von Arbeitsbereichen zu einer Nutzungsintention, andererseits einen Benchmark untereinander ermöglichen. Eine weitere Erkenntnis ist, dass sich auch in der kooperativen Nutzung solcher Systeme das Paretoprinzip (80/20-Regel) für das Verhältnis zwischen aktiven und passiven Benutzern wiederfinden lässt. Zusätzlich zeigt die Untersuchung wie schnell Information innerhalb der Arbeitsbereiche gelesen und werden und wie hoch deren Anteil an der Gesamtmenge der ausgetauschten Information ist. Summary The paper presents metrics for shared workspaces, based on the analysis of user activities in the shared workspace system BSCW. We propose metrics to compare the activity, productivity and cooperativity of users in different shared workspaces. Our analysis indicates that the metrics allow for a mapping of workspaces to a usage intention as well as a benchmark between different user groups. Furthermore we observed the Pareto principle known from other statistical evaluations also in the ratio between active and passive users of a workspace. Additionally our research indicates the distribution ratio of information within a shared workspaces.