Steven E. Poltrock

Organizational obstacles to interface design and development: two participant-observer studies

The development of human-computer interfaces was studied in two large software product development organizations. Researchers joined development projects for approximately one month and participated in interface design while concurrently interviewing other project participants and employees, recording activity in meetings and on electronic networks, and otherwise observing the process. The two organizations differed in their approaches to development, and, in each case, the approach differed in practice from the model supported by the organizational structure. Development practices blocked the successful application of accepted principles of interface design. The obstacles to effective design that results from people noticing and being affected by interface changes, and a lack of communication among those sharing responsibility for different aspects of the interface.

Meeting at the desktop: an empirical study of virtually collocated teams

Corporate mergers, global markets, reduced willingness to relocate, and the increased need to reorganize and respond dynamically - we are entering an era of distributed organizations and groups. New technologies are needed that enable distributed teams to work as though virtually collocated. This case study examines how one such technology, desktop conferencing with application sharing, is used routinely by four groups within a major company. We discuss differing and evolving patterns of use. A range of difficulties arising from impoverished communication are documented. Success factors are identified, focusing on the use of technology facilitation and meeting facilitation. We conclude by describing benefits possible with this merger of communication and application sharing, as well as the challenges of organizational change that may be needed to achieve the benefits.

Information seeking and sharing in design teams

Information retrieval is generally considered an individual activity, and information retrieval research and tools reflect this view. As digitally mediated communication and information sharing increase, collaborative information retrieval merits greater attention and support. We describe field studies of information gathering in two design teams that had very different products, disciplinary backgrounds, and tools. We found striking similarities in the kinds of information they sought and the methods used to get it. For example, each team sought information about design constraints from external sources. A common strategy was to propose ideas and request feedback, rather than to ask directly for recommendations. Some differences in information seeking and sharing reflected differences in work contexts. Our findings suggest some ways that existing team collaboration tools could support collaborative information retrieval more effectively.

A team collaboration space supporting capture and access of virtual meetings

In this paper, we address the design issues of a collaborative workspace system, called TeamSpace, that supports geographically distributed teams by managing shared work processes and maintaining shared artifacts in a project. TeamSpace attempts to integrate both synchronous and asynchronous types of team interaction into a task-oriented environment. Since meetings are an integral part of teamwork, our current work focuses on supporting virtual meetings as part of a larger collaborative work process. We present an initial TeamSpace prototype that supports asynchronous meeting management seamlessly integrated with capture and access of synchronous distributed meetings. The captured synchronous data is integrated with other related information in TeamSpace, enabling users to efficiently gain knowledge of both current and past team activities.

Integrating Meeting Capture within a Collaborative Team Environment

Meeting capture has been a common subject of research in the ubiquitous computing community for the past decade. However, the majority of the research has focused on technologies to support the capture but not enough on the motivation for accessing the captured record and the impact on everyday work practices based on extended authentic use of a working capture and access system. Our long-term research agenda is to build capture services for distributed workgroups that provide appropriate motivation and further understand how access of captured meetings impacts work practices. To do this, we have developed a testbed for meeting capture as part of a larger distributed work system called TeamSpace. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for meeting capture within TeamSpace, describe the initial prototype developed, and report on initial usage.

Requirements for a virtual collocation environment

Abstract We analyze how physically collocated teams work together now and what services they require to work together across distances, focusing on real time interactions because those interactions justify collocating teams today. We explain how Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) are organized in system development programs and how their physical collocation facilitates communication, collaboration, and coordination within the team. Interactions within IPTs take two forms: scheduled meetings and opportunistic interactions. Scenarios of scheduled IPT meetings help motivate and identify requirements for supporting distributed meetings. Opportunistic interactions are far more common than scheduled meetings and more difficult to observe and analyze because they are not scheduled or predictable.

A comparison of the collaborative information retrieval behaviour of two design teams

The goal of the collaborative information retrieval (CIR) project is to study situations where members of a work team are seeking, searching and using information collaboratively. A field study of two design teams (one at Microsoft and the other at the Boeing Company), guided by cognitive work analysis, has provided preliminary results. These show that: (a) the concept of CIR is elusive and does not easily lend itself to an operational definition; (b) work context has a strong effect on CIR behaviour; and (c) not all activities relating to CIR are carried out collaboratively.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware.

This chapter surveys Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research and groupware development. In the 1980s, as computer and software vendor companies focused attention on supporting networked groups, they came to share interests with researchers and developers oriented toward management information systems, social sciences and other disciplines. CSCW can be seen as a forum attracting diverse people who have partially overlapping interests and a willingness to overcome the difficulties of multidisciplinary interaction. In this chapter, we discuss the different assumptions and priorities that underlie small-system and large-system work. We note differences in emphasis that are found in North America, Europe and Asia. We then provide an overview of the current state of research and development by technology area, examining in turn technologies that focus primarily on supporting human communication, on providing shared information spaces, and on coordinating the flow of work. We discuss challenges to designing and deploying groupware, taking particular note of the behavioral challenges that often prove to be thornier than technical challenges. Approaches to addressing these challenges are described, followed by our summary of some trends and future issues. The first part of this chapter extends work presented in Gredin (1994a).

Computer supported cooperative work and groupware

Abstract This chapter surveys Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research and groupware development. In the 1980s, as computer and software vendor companies focused attention on supporting networked groups, they came to share interests with researchers and developers oriented toward management information systems, social sciences and other disciplines. CSCW can be seen as a forum attracting diverse people who have partially overlapping interests and a willingness to overcome the difficulties of multidisciplinary interaction. In this chapter, we discuss the different assumptions and priorities that underlie small-system and large-system work. We note differences in emphasis that are found in North America, Europe and Asia. We then provide an overview of the current state of research and development by technology area, examining in turn technologies that focus primarily on supporting human communication, on providing shared information spaces, and on coordinating the flow of work. We discuss challenges to designing and deploying groupware, taking particular note of the behavioral challenges that often prove to be thornier than technical challenges. Approaches to addressing these challenges are described, followed by our summary of some trends and future issues. The first part of this chapter extends work presented in Gredin (1994a).

User interface design in large corporations: coordination and communication across disciplines

This report describes some of the results of a survey constructed to address the multidisciplinary, collaborative nature of user interface design as it is practiced in large software development organizations today. Survey forms were prepared for Software Engineers, Human Factors Engineers, Industrial Design Engineers, Technical Writers, Training Developers, and Marketing representatives. The survey was filled out by over 200 designers from multiple sites within 7 large companies. Previous interview studies of user interface design have relied on far smaller samples taken primarily from single organizations, and have focused on the individual designers perspective, primarily that of programmers or software engineers. While surveys have limitations as information-gathering tools, the findings in this report suggest specific places where organizational change or tool development might improve the coordination or communication among the different professionals and managers who contribute to interface design in large company settings.