Valeria Herskovic

Structuring dimensions for collaborative systems evaluation

Collaborative systems evaluation is always necessary to determine the impact a solution will have on the individuals, groups, and the organization. Several methods of evaluation have been proposed. These methods comprise a variety of approaches with various goals. Thus, the need for a strategy to select the most appropriate method for a specific case is clear. This research work presents a detailed framework to evaluate collaborative systems according to given variables and performance levels. The proposal assumes that evaluation is an evolving process during the system lifecycle. Therefore, the framework, illustrated with two examples, is complemented with a collection of guidelines to evaluate collaborative systems according to product development status.

Evaluation methods for groupware systems

Evaluation of collaborative systems is necessary in several situations. However, evaluation is frequently done in an ad-hoc manner or not at all. This paper presents a survey of evaluation methods for groupware systems. The analysis, comparison and classification of these methods will help developers choose the appropriate methods for their situation. Furthermore, the survey allows identification of strengths and weaknesses of existing methods, opening opportunities for research in this area. The proposed comparison criteria represent a framework to evaluate and classify new evaluation methods.

Reviewing the quality of awareness support in collaborative applications

We propose a set of design elements that correspond to important awareness functions.We built a checklist for developers to review awareness in collaborative software.The checklist was applied to software, providing insight about missing features. Awareness to users is a valuable feature of a collaborative system. Therefore, the designers of a system of this type may find it useful to receive hints on the awareness support provided by the system when it is under development or evolution. This paper proposes a tool for their use to obtain suggestions on the awareness features provided by the system and those not currently supported by it. The considered kinds of awareness were obtained from a review of a significant number of proposals from the literature. The tool is based on a checklist of design elements related to these awareness types to be applied by the application designer. The construction of this checklist was done as follows. The process started with an analysis of the types of awareness to be provided. This step ended with 54 selected design elements and six awareness types. Experts on the development of collaborative systems used their experience to provide correlations between the design elements and the types of awareness previously identified, thus encapsulating their expertise within the checklist. The proposal was applied to three existing collaborative systems and the results are presented. The obtained results suggest that the checklist is adequate to provide helpful hints that may be used to improve an applications awareness support.

Towards a reference architecture for the design of mobile shared workspaces

Software design is a complex and expensive socio-technical process, for which reuse is an increasingly important concern. This article presents an abstract structure capturing the essence of a mobile shared workspace (MSW), and how a particular MSW can be obtained by instantiating such a structure. It is intended to assist designers of mobile groupware tools to conceive new products reusing design knowledge proved successful in previous solutions. The article also illustrates how the abstract structure can be instantiated to obtain MSWs that support construction inspection activities, hospital work and urban emergency responses. This abstract structure can be evolved in order to make it a reference architecture for mobile shared workspaces.

Modeling groupware for mobile collaborative work

The complexity of modeling mobile groupware systems is well known. The mobility of the collaborators, the diverse technologies available to support them and the continuous change in the collaboration scenarios bring new challenges to the design of these applications. Currently there are few languages explicitly designed to model these groupware systems. This paper presents the Mobile Collaboration Modeling language, a graphical language to represent loosely coupled mobile collaborative work. This language may be used to communicate work practices, determine user requirements and design a groupware application that accurately supports collaborative mobile work. This article presents a case study illustrating the suitability of the proposal.

General requirements to design mobile shared workspaces

Traditionally, collaborative systems have been difficult to conceive, design and implement. Although several requirements involved in these products are recurrent, some become invisible to clients and developers because they are part of the product back- end. This situation is worse in the case of mobile groupware because the general requirements to support mobile collaboration are still unclear. This paper presents a framework of general requirements that are usually present in mobile shared workspaces. These requirements are not always visible; therefore the framework acts as a checklist helping developers to consider them. Thus, the framework could increase the success probability of mobile shared workspaces.

Measuring User Experience in Latin America: An Exploratory Survey

User experience (UX) is a relatively new field of research and practice. There have been several attempts to define the scope of UX and to explore if UX is measurable and how. Some studies have analyzed cultural differences in regards to UX. However, no studies have focused on Latin American / Spanish-speaking practitioners. We replicated a previous study, translated it into Spanish and added new questions about specific aspects of UX practice aimed to help us understand the background of the respondents. In this paper we present the results of our survey. We had 112 responses from Spanish speakers - practitioners, researchers and students, from industry and academia. Most respondents agreed that it is reasonable to measure UX and that the biggest challenges are costs and time. This exploratory research paves the way for future work to: (1) understand how cultural background and industry or research maturity may play a role in the state of the art of the practice of UX; (2) search for methods and tools to solve specific issues related to the Latin American context; (3) develop specific education and research programs aimed to take UX field of study and research to a more mature level.

Understanding presence awareness information needs among engineering students

The flexibility and changing nature of loosely coupled work makes presence awareness crucial to promote interactions among collaborators. Undergraduate students, in their efforts to accomplish coursework-related tasks, must deal with having several available channels to interact with others, accessing and sharing educational material, and the need to optimize their time. Most of them work in a loosely coupled way as the main strategy to reduce the effort spent in the educational process. Presence awareness may help them achieve interactions among potential collaborators in this scenario. This paper aims to identify the most suitable presence awareness information to promote on-demand interactions among college students. A study was conducted for this purpose, involving undergraduate engineering students from two universities in Chile. This article also presents a classification of presence awareness mechanisms for loosely-coupled mobile group work.

Increasing opportunities for interaction in time-critical mobile collaborative settings

The critical nature of some working environments, such as hospitals or search and rescue operations, gives rise to the need for timely collaboration. However, interactions are not always possible since potential collaborators may be unreachable because of the lack of a communication channel to carry out the interaction or due to their involvement in other activities. The use of adequate interaction facilitators may allow users to collaborate even in these circumstances. This paper presents a characterization of this type of situation and then introduces a set of design suggestions that may help improve opportunities for user interaction in time critical mobile collaborative settings.

Modeling highly collaborative processes

Difficulties creating process descriptions can occur because the processes extend beyond coordination, including for instance conversations, meetings, and discussions. These tasks are difficult to describe using conventional business process modeling languages, which tend to emphasize coordination. There is a need then to provide facilities for the description of highly collaborative activities. This paper proposes an extension to the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modeling language. It includes notation to handle some of the commonly occurring tasks in highly collaborative processes. A case study concerning emergency response is presented showing how the proposed notation can be used, and how the extension provides additional expressiveness to BPMN.