Supporting Computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) in conceptual design

In order to gain a better understanding of online conceptual collaborative design processes this paper investigates how student designers make use of a shared virtual synchronous environment when engaged in conceptual design. The software enables users to talk to each other and share sketches when they are remotely located. The paper describes a novel methodology for observing and analysing collaborative design processes by adapting the concepts of grounded theory. Rather than concentrating on narrow aspects of the final artefacts, emerging “themes” are generated that provide a broader picture of collaborative design process and context descriptions. Findings on the themes of “grounding – mutual understanding” and “support creativity” complement findings from other research, while important themes associated with “near-synchrony” have not been emphasised in other research. From the study, a series of design recommendations are made for the development of tools to support online computer-supported collaborative work in design using a shared virtual environment

Hierarchy and Competition in CSCW applications: Model and case study

CSCW applications need to adapt themselves to the functional and organizational structures of people that use them. However they do not usually support division in groups with a certain hierarchical structure among them. In this paper, we propose and study a theoretical model of groupware appliations that reflects those hierarchical interactions. The proposed model is also intended to evaluate the effects in performance derived from competitive and collaborative relationships among the components of a hierarchy of groups. In order to demonstrate the above ideas, a groupware game, called Alymod, was designed and implemented using a modified version of a well-known CSCW Toolkit, namely Groupkit. Groupkit was modified in order to support group interactions in the same CSCW application. In Alymod, participants compete or collaborate within a hierarchical structure to achieve a common goal (completing gaps in a text, finishing numerical series, resolving University course examinations, etc.).Publicad

From Offshore Operation to Onshore Simulator: Using Visualized Ethnographic Outcomes to Work with Systems Developers

This paper focuses on the process of translating insights from a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)-based study, conducted on a vessel at sea, into a model that can assist systems developers working with simulators, which are used by vessel operators for training purposes on land. That is, the empirical study at sea brought about rich insights into cooperation, which is important for systems developers to know about and consider in their designs. In the paper, we establish a model that primarily consists of a ‘computational artifact’. The model is designed to support researchers working with systems developers. Drawing on marine examples, we focus on the translation process and investigate how the model serves to visualize work activities; how it addresses relations between technical and computational artifacts, as well as between functions in technical systems and functionalities in cooperative systems. In turn, we link design back to fieldwork studies

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

Sketch-Based Interfaces to Support Collaborative Conceptual Design Learning

In order to gain a better understanding of online collaborative conceptual design processes this paper investigates how student designers make use of Lyceum, a shared virtual synchronous environment when engaged in conceptual design. The software enables users to talk to each other and share sketches when they are remotely located. The paper describes a novel methodology for observing and analysing collaborative design processes by adapting the concepts of grounded theory. Rather than concentrating on narrow aspects of the final artefacts, emerging 'themes' are generated that provide a broader picture of collaborative design process and context descriptions. Findings on the themes of 'grounding – mutual understanding' and 'support creativity' complement findings from other research, while important themes associated with 'near-synchrony' have not been emphasised in other research. From the study, a series of design recommendations are made for the development of tools to support online computer-supported collaborative work in design using a shared virtual environment

Integrating groupware technology into the learning environment

This paper presents the hard lessons learned from the introduction of groupware technology within a final‐year software engineering module. The module began in 1997 and is now in its fourth year. The paper provides a detailed account of our successes and failures in each year, and describes what the authors now feel is a successful model for integrating groupware into the learning environment. The paper is important because it provides a longitudinal study of the use of groupware within a learning environment and an insight into the key success factors associated with the use of groupware. Success factors relate not only to the technology but also to social factors such as group facilitation and social protocols, to factors associated with monitoring and assessment, and to factors related to the skills development associated with being a member of a global team