Tom Gross

User-Centered Awareness in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work-Systems: Structured Embedding of Findings from Social Sciences

An increasing number of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) software systems try to provide users with awareness information-information about the presence, activities, and availability of members of a community. However, most of these software systems are designed from a feature-oriented, rather than a human-oriented, point of view. In this article, a structured embedding of findings in social sciences is proposed. It reveals the variety of approaches in technology-driven CSCW developments featuring awareness, as well as the variety of empirical evidence in small-group research with respect to awareness. The authors have been looking at different aspects of awareness: the terminology used in both disciplines, the concepts that have been developed, and the different constructs that have evolved from empirical research. Finally, operational instances of awareness have been revisited. From these findings it can be concluded that awareness addresses different constellations of group settings, different types of individual behavior, and different contexts of use. These findings can be used by CSCW software system developers for postevaluation-that is, to identify empirical evidence for awareness features already implemented and to identify those already implemented features still lacking empirical evidence. The findings should also encourage social scientists to empirically investigate the usage of existing and envisioned software features in CSCW settings. Overall, the results should help to achieve a shift from technology-driven development toward human-centered design of collaborative communities, due to the envisioned integration of understandings and concepts.

Awareness in Context-Aware Information Systems

The paper describes the idea of bringing awareness to nomadic users. Based on a discussion of different context models and approaches to model context, several scenarios for awareness in context-aware systems are presented. We describe the combination of a context aware guidance system and an awareness platform to enable awareness for nomadic users about other users that are either in a similar electronic of spatial context. This could enhance the communication and interaction facilities for nomadic users by localisation, user modelling and an awareness platform to monitor state and events of the electronic and the physical environment.

Modelling Shared Contexts in Cooperative Environments: Concept, Implementation, and Evaluation

Users who work together require adequate information about their cooperative environment: about other group members’ presence and activities, about shared artefacts, etc. In the CSCW literature several concepts, prototypes, and systems for providing this group awareness information have been presented. In general, they capture information from the environment, process it, and present it to the users. This paper addresses the processing aspect; in particular, we present a concept for processing awareness information by means of awareness contexts. With this concept we address the problem of contextualising event notifications enabling the presentation of notifications in the appropriate user situation. We describe a lightweight model and its integration into an event and notification infrastructure. We report on an empirical study, and draw some conclusions for the design of context-awareness for cooperative environments.

Sens-ation: a service-oriented platform for developing sensor-based infrastructures

Context-aware systems use sensors in order to analyse their environment and to adapt their behaviour. We have designed and developed Sens-ation, an open and generic service-oriented platform, which provides powerful, yet easy-to-use, tools to software developers who want to develop context-aware, sensor-based infrastructures. The service-oriented paradigm of Sens-ation enables standardised communication within individual infrastructures, between infrastructures and their sensors, but also among distributed infrastructures. On a whole, Sens-ation facilitates the development allowing developers to concentrate on the semantics of their infrastructures, and to develop innovative concepts and implementations of context-aware systems.

Computer-supported cooperative work and the Internet

Research has been carried out in the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) for over ten years. Many different groupware prototypes have been developed and are being developed. However, CSCW is still considered as an isolated field of research and in several other areas of computer science collaborative aspects are neglected. Actually most Internet information services ignore the co-presence of many people in cyberspace at the same time. Consequently the possibilities of coordination and cooperation among the users are not taken advantage of. The authors are investigating ways in which this isolation of Internet users from each other could be reduced and how they could take advantage of the awareness of others.

Presenting Activity Information in an Inhabited Information Space

A group of people that work together in the same spatial environment relies on various possibilities to observe the activities of partners, to monitor the progress of a project or to recognise the development of group structures. Such activities are often recognised peripherally; nevertheless, they stimulate spontaneous and informal communication. Although the computer supported co-operative work (CSCW) research area yielded a number of systems and solutions that enable and support distributed co-operation processes, distributed work is still significantly more difficult to manage than co-located work. A significant reason for this is the missing perception of the activities and actions within a distributed group. Therefore, distributed groups often suffer from a lack of awareness of the common activities. Co-operation partners are often not aware of activities of other co-operation partners that are relevant for their own work. The synchronisation problems resulting from this often lead to decision problems, misunderstandings or duplicated work. Thus, effectiveness, spontaneity, and social orientation possibilities in distributed teams are limited. The social forces which facilitate the behaviourmilieu synomorphy in an environment – that is, in a behaviour setting (Barker, 1968) – are very limited in electronic spaces. Awareness support can make the difference between an electronic behaviour setting and a pure electronic space (Pankoke-Babatz, 2000). Apart from the lack of awareness of actions that could be co-operative, there are limited opportunities for chance meetings. In the local working environment, coincidental meetings often initiate communication and the exchange of experience and knowledge. Prussak (1997) describes this phenomenon very appropriately: “If the water cooler was 011

The cuetable: cooperative and competitive multi-touch interaction on a tabletop

In this paper we explain how we built cueTable, a multi-touch interactive tabletop, as a base technology to explore new interaction concepts for cooperative and competitive multi-touch applications. We present the Puh game application. And most of all we report on user feedback to the cueTable and the Puh game.

Technological support for e-democracy: history and perspectives

The interdependence of technology and society is unquestioned and has influenced research in technical sciences as well as social sciences for a long time. Technology to support citizen participation and e-democracy can potentially influence a whole political system. This paper discusses the role of technology with respect to citizen participation and e-democracy. Three core requirements for systems supporting citizen participation and e-democracy are specified and it is analysed how they are met by current systems. Community networks are introduced and their evolution is characterised as an example of sociotechnical evolution with respect to citizen participation and e-democracy.

AwarenessMaps: visualizing awareness in shared workspaces

In cooperative activity users require information about their cooperative environment. AwarenessMaps provide the members of shared workspaces with an overview of users and shared documents: the PeopleMap shows an array of pictures of active users fading out over time; and the DocumentMap provides a schematic overview of the structure of a shared workspace and indicates recent changes.

PRIMI - an open platform for the rapid and easy development of instant messaging infrastructures

Many concepts and systems for the technical support of communication, cooperation, and coordination of workgroups have been developed in the research field of computer-supported cooperative work over the last two decades. Yet, spontaneous coordination with remote parties can still be a challenge. Instant messaging tools improve the situation by providing users with presence and availability information about other users, and by supporting spontaneous text chat among co-present users. In this paper, we present PRIMI (Platform for Research on Instant Messaging Infrastructures) -an open and flexible platform that provides software developers with powerful, yet easy to use support for the implementation of novel concepts for instant messaging infrastructures. It offers the core functionalities for the development of instant messaging infrastructures; and it uses a sophisticated plug-in mechanism for adding user interfaces and communication protocols, as well as logging mechanisms.