Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today. CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices

Tuple board: a new distributed computing paradigm for mobile ad hoc networks

In this project, we introduce a new distributed computing paradigm called tuple board which is based on the tuple space abstraction originated by Gelernter and the blackboard architecture popular in distributed artificial intelligence. Most prominent implementations of tuple space systems including JavaSpaces and T-Spaces follow a centralized architecture where the space itself resides on a server, akin to a database server. Recently, researchers have attempted to develop decentralized architectures for tuple space systems. Some work includes LIME and PeerSpaces. In our opinion, the traditional implementation of tuple spaces is not well suited for ad hoc networks where devices frequently lose network access. The tuple space architecture attempts to provide persistent storage of tuples irrespective of the state of nodes in the network. While persistence may be easily implemented in centralized systems such as JavaSpaces, achieving this end in a purely decentralized environment would require complex replication schemes. This would place undue overhead on the resource-constrained devices that are typical for ad hoc networks. In the architecture used in this project the availability of tuples is determined by the state of devices participating in the network. At any given point of time, only the tuples contained in devices that are active in the network are available on the tuple board. As part of the project, a specific instance of the tuple board architecture was realized using the Anhinga Infrastructure. The system, called Anhinga Board, uses the M2MI protocol for the implementation of tuple board semantics. To demonstrate the Anhinga Board, a collaborative conference information system, consisting of tuple board based applications running on attendees devices, vendors devices, and the conference center s devices, was also developed

Co-located Photo-Sharing on Mobile Devices

Recent years have seen great advances in the field of mobile device technology and digital photography. These advances have resulted in a significant increase in popularity of such devices. Despite this rise in popularity, technology aimed at facilitating the sharing of the digital photographs using mobile devices is still limited. This paper aims to further the research into such technology, by detailing the creation of an application, for use in co-located sharing of digital photographs, on mobile devices. The application, nicknamed FunkyShare, will allow users to share photographs in a group setting. Our application proposes to take advantage of the digital photographs format and mobile devices technology, to enhance the sharing experience and promote photo-based storytelling. A user centred design process is used in the iterative development and evaluation of two software prototypes. Prototype evaluations, in the form of user experiments, yielded several results, from which new requirements for future prototype iterations are elicited. These requirements form a concrete basis for any future work on an application of this nature

Enveloping Sophisticated Tools into Process-Centered Environments

We present a tool integration strategy based on enveloping pre-existing tools without source code modifications or recompilation, and without assuming an extension language, application programming interface, or any other special capabilities on the part of the tool. This Black Box enveloping (or wrapping) idea has existed for a long time, but was previously restricted to relatively simple tools. We describe the design and implementation of, and experimentation with, a new Black Box enveloping facility intended for sophisticated tools --- with particular concern for the emerging class of groupware applications

A context-aware framework for collaborative activities in pervasive communities

Pervasive environments involve the interaction of users with the objects that surround them and also other participants. In this way, pervasive communities can lead the user to participate beyond traditional pervasive spaces, enabling the cooperation among groups taking into account not only individual interests, but also the collective and social context. In this study, the authors explore the potential of using context-aware information in CSCW application in order to support collaboration in pervasive environments. In particular this paper describes the approach used in the design and development of a context-aware framework utilizing users' context information interpretation for behaviour adaptation of collaborative applications in pervasive communities

Improving User Involvement Through Live Collaborative Creation

Creating an artifact - such as writing a book, developing software, or performing a piece of music - is often limited to those with domain-specific experience or training. As a consequence, effectively involving non-expert end users in such creative processes is challenging. This work explores how computational systems can facilitate collaboration, communication, and participation in the context of involving users in the process of creating artifacts while mitigating the challenges inherent to such processes. In particular, the interactive systems presented in this work support live collaborative creation, in which artifact users collaboratively participate in the artifact creation process with creators in real time. In the systems that I have created, I explored liveness, the extent to which the process of creating artifacts and the state of the artifacts are immediately and continuously perceptible, for applications such as programming, writing, music performance, and UI design. Liveness helps preserve natural expressivity, supports real-time communication, and facilitates participation in the creative process. Live collaboration is beneficial for users and creators alike: making the process of creation visible encourages users to engage in the process and better understand the final artifact. Additionally, creators can receive immediate feedback in a continuous, closed loop with users. Through these interactive systems, non-expert participants help create such artifacts as GUI prototypes, software, and musical performances. This dissertation explores three topics: (1) the challenges inherent to collaborative creation in live settings, and computational tools that address them; (2) methods for reducing the barriers of entry to live collaboration; and (3) approaches to preserving liveness in the creative process, affording creators more expressivity in making artifacts and affording users access to information traditionally only available in real-time processes. In this work, I showed that enabling collaborative, expressive, and live interactions in computational systems allow the broader population to take part in various creative practices.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145810/1/snaglee_1.pd

The design of a protocol for collaboration in a distributed repository - Nomad

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is the study of how people use technology, with relation to hardware and software, to work together in shared time and space. Mobile office environments are becoming commonplace. Workers form virtual online communities on a global scale and use groupware to collaborate and complete a common goal. We tend to be mobile, yet need to be available to collaborate. This thesis investigates a protocol for our decentralized artifact control system, Nomad. Nomad enables globally dispersed members of small casually connected communities to share artifacts which are gathered on a best effort approach. The Nomad protocol takes into consideration the work habits of users and their variety of devices. The major contribution of this thesis is a simulator of the Nomad protocol, which serves as a proof-of-concept for its design. Specifically, we look at how such a protocol handles casually connected small communities. We consider high level aspects such as setting up the community, the overhead of nodes, availability, scalability and connectivity. We demonstrate scenarios that the protocol will need to handle. Furthermore, we take a broad look at CSCW, push and pull technologies, peer-to-peer technologies, and enabling technologies such as Microsoft .Net. These form the basis of the Nomad design. In addition, we suggest the integration of mobile agents, which we consider a future addition to Nomad. It was found that the protocol had to compensate for two nodes that were never online at the same time. In the case that a best effort approach is not feasible, we propose alternate approaches at the cost of overhead on a propagation node. The developed concept provided valuable insight into the problem domain, outlined the boundaries of the protocol and provided a possible solution for Nomad. The simulator proved to be a useful tool for determining outcomes from possible scenarios. The results from the simulator will feed directly into the development of Nomad.Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007.Computer Scienceunrestricte

A decentralized framework for cross administrative domain data sharing

Federation of messaging and storage platforms located in remote datacenters is an essential functionality to share data among geographically distributed platforms. When systems are administered by the same owner data replication reduces data access latency bringing data closer to applications and enables fault tolerance to face disaster recovery of an entire location. When storage platforms are administered by different owners data replication across different administrative domains is essential for enterprise application data integration. Contents and services managed by different software platforms need to be integrated to provide richer contents and services. Clients may need to share subsets of data in order to enable collaborative analysis and service integration. Platforms usually include proprietary federation functionalities and specific APIs to let external software and platforms access their internal data. These different techniques may not be applicable to all environments and networks due to security and technological restrictions. Moreover the federation of dispersed nodes under a decentralized administration scheme is still a research issue. This thesis is a contribution along this research direction as it introduces and describes a framework, called \u201cWideGroups\u201d, directed towards the creation and the management of an automatic federation and integration of widely dispersed platform nodes. It is based on groups to exchange messages among distributed applications located in different remote datacenters. Groups are created and managed using client side programmatic configuration without touching servers. WideGroups enables the extension of the software platform services to nodes belonging to different administrative domains in a wide area network environment. It lets different nodes form ad-hoc overlay networks on-the-fly depending on message destinations located in distinct administrative domains. It supports multiple dynamic overlay networks based on message groups, dynamic discovery of nodes and automatic setup of overlay networks among nodes with no server-side configuration. I designed and implemented platform connectors to integrate the framework as the federation module of Message Oriented Middleware and Key Value Store platforms, which are among the most widespread paradigms supporting data sharing in distributed systems