Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall: Collaborative Screen-Mirroring for Small Groups

Screen mirroring has been available to consumers for some time, however if every mobile device in the room supports screen mirroring to the main display (e.g. a shared TV), this necessitates a mechanism for managing its use. As such, this paper investigates allowing users in small intimacy groups (friends, family etc.) to self-manage mirrored use of the display, through passing/taking/requesting the display from whomever is currently mirroring to it. We examine the collaborative benefits this scheme could provide for the home, compared to existing multi-device use and existing screen mirroring implementations. Results indicate shared screen mirroring improves perceived collaboration, decreases dominance, preserves independence and has a positive effect on a group's activity awareness

Rethinking 'multi-user': an in-the-wild study of how groups approach a walk-up-and-use tabletop interface

Multi-touch tabletops have been much heralded as an innovative technology that can facilitate new ways of group working. However, there is little evidence of these materialising outside of research lab settings. We present the findings of a 5-week in-the-wild study examining how a shared planning application – designed to run on a walk-up- and-use tabletop – was used when placed in a tourist information centre. We describe how groups approached, congregated and interacted with it and the social interactions that took place – noting how they were quite different from research findings describing the ways groups work around a tabletop in lab settings. We discuss the implications of such situated group work for designing collaborative tabletop applications for use in public settings

Expanding Technological Frames Towards Mediated Collaboration

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the technological and social factors that led to the successful adoption of groupware by a virtual team in a educational setting. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on the concept of technological frames, we conducted an action research study to analyse the chronological sequence of events in groupware adoption. We argue that groupware adoption can be conceptualised as a three-step process of expanding and aligning individual technological frames towards groupware. The first step comprises activities that bring knowledge of new technological opportunities to the participants. The second step involves facilitating the participants to articulate and evaluate their work practices and their use of technology. The third and final step deals with the participants\u27 commitment to, and practical enactment of, groupware technology. The alignment of individual technological frames requires the articulation and re-evaluation of experience with collaborative practice and with the use of technology. One of the key findings is that this activity cannot take place at the outset of groupware adoption

Web collaboration for software engineering

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Improving groupware design for loosely coupled groups

Loosely coupled workgroups are common in the real world, and workers in these groups are autonomous and weakly interdependent. They have patterns of work and collaboration that distinguish them from other types of groups, and groupware systems that are designed to support loose coupling must address these differences. However, they have not been studied in detail in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and the design process for these groups is currently underspecified. This forces designers to start from scratch each time they develop a system for loosely coupled groups, and they must approach new work settings with little information about how work practices are organized. In this dissertation, I present a design framework to improve the groupware design process for loosely coupled workgroups. The framework has three main parts that add a new layer of support to each of the three stages in the general groupware design process: data collection about the target work setting, analysis of the data, and system design based on the analysis results. The framework was developed to provide designers with support during each of these stages so that they can consider important characteristics of loosely coupled work practice while carrying out design for the target group. The design framework is based on information from CSCW and organizational research, and on real-world design experiences with one type of loosely coupled workgroup—home care treatment teams. The framework was evaluated using observations, interviews, and field trials that were carried out with multidisciplinary home care treatment teams in Saskatoon Health Region. A series of field observations and interviews were carried out with team members from each of the home care disciplines. The framework was then used to develop Mohoc, a groupware system that supports work in home care. Two field trials were carried out where the system was used by teams to support their daily activities. Results were analyzed to determine how well each part of the design framework performed in the design process. The results suggest that the framework was able to fill its role in specializing the general CSCW design process for loosely coupled groups by adding consideration for work and collaboration patterns that are seen in loosely coupled settings. However, further research is needed to determine whether these findings generalize to other loosely coupled workgroups

From pattern to practice: evaluation of a design pattern fostering trust in Virtual teams

Rusman, E., Van Bruggen, J., Cörvers, R., Sloep, P. B., & Koper, R. (2009). From pattern to practice: evaluation of a design pattern fostering trust in Virtual teams. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(5), 1010-1019.This article describes the implementation and evaluation of a design pattern that fosters trust in mediated collaborative settings. The pattern proposed here should provide a profile with static and/or dynamic information about the participants of a collaborative environment. It aims to foster initial (in the first two to three weeks) trust in situations in which people don’t know each other and don’t have a chance to meet, but need to collaborate. A simple and low cost implementation of this pattern was realized by conducting a case study with participants of the European Virtual Seminar on Sustainable Development (EVS). They were asked to fill in a template with personal information about themselves. In the EVS, students collaboratively have to address sustainable development problems. Afterwards, students were questioned on the use of this template, called PEXPI, and their impressions of each other during and after the EVS; questionnaires and a semi-structured interview were used. The results show that the implementation of the static profile, derived from the pattern, initially helped students to form an impression of each other. After this initial period, however, students base their impression on factors such as the quality of work-related contributions, behaviour during collaboration (e.g. responsiveness), and communication style. This case study also shows that the pattern could easily be applied and transferred to a new context, as long as the conditions described in the ‘context’-section of the pattern, were met. The case study provided a means for evaluation of the pattern and a source for its refinement. We are also grateful for the collaboration with colleagues in the E-LEN project, which provided ample opportunities to learn about and elaborate on design patterns as a design construct. Last, but not least, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback, which helped us to improve this article.We would like to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the COOPER Project, that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority 2 IST. Contract no.: 027073 (www.cooper-project.org ) and which has part-funded this work

Recommendation, collaboration and social search

This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology. Information searching and browsing have often been conceptualized as a solitary activity, however they always have a social component. We may talk about 'the' searcher or 'the' user of a database or information resource. Our focus may be on individual uses and our research may look at individual users. Our experiments may be designed to observe the behaviors of individual subjects. Our models and theories derived from our empirical analyses may focus substantially or exclusively on an individual's evolving goals, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions. Nevertheless there are always social aspects of information seeking and use present, both implicitly and explicitly. We start by summarizing some of the history of information access with an emphasis on social and collaborative interactions. Then we look at the nature of recommendations, social search and interfaces to support collaboration between information seekers. Following this we consider how the design of interactive information systems is influenced by their social elements

Collaborative Working Environments : Group Needs Approach to Designing Systems for Supporting Spatially Distributed Groups

Collaboration in spatially distributed groups requires technological support for mediating collaborative activities and members’ interactions over time and distance. Technology provides multiple tools for supporting individual, social and task requirements of collaborative groups. Nevertheless, many aspects of computer-mediated interactions are not sufficiently explained and creating an effective computer-supported environment for collaborative groups as a combination of these tools remains a challenge. Meeting this challenge requires taking into consideration different aspects of collaborative interactions from both social and technological perspectives. This thesis discusses the social and technical aspects of collaboration in spatially distributed groups and introduces a design approach for collaborative working environments. Firstly, it presents a comprehensive overview of research on collaborative groups, summarizing three interrelated elements under the umbrella of the group needs approach: individual, task and group maintenance needs. Secondly, it proposes a design approach for collaborative working environments on the basis of group needs and thus presents an alternative for designing computer-supported environment for collaborative groups. This research considers two main types of systems for supporting collaborative groups – groupware and social software – and discusses functionalities originating from these systems. It introduces the Quality Function Deployment method and utilizes its House of Quality concept in order to develop and initially evaluate the First-Stage Prototype – the prototypical implementation of the collaborative working environment combining these two main types. The presented framework is used as a benchmarking tool on the basis of which selected existing platforms for supporting collaboration are evaluated. This research contributes to the area of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and discusses actual trends in development of collaborative systems related to the application of new social tools for purposes of computer-supported collaboration.Kollaborative Arbeitsumgebungen – der Gruppenbedürfnisansatz zur Entwicklung von Systemen für die Unterstützung räumlich verteilter Gruppen Die Zusammenarbeit in räumlich verteilten Gruppen erfordert technologische Unterstützung um Interaktionen innerhalb der Gruppen über Zeit und Distanz zu ermöglichen. Dabei bieten heutige Technologien verschiedene Tools zur Unterstützung von individuellen, sozialen und aufgabenorientierten Anforderungen der Gruppen. Allerdings sind viele Aspekte von computervermittelten Interaktionen nicht ausreichend erforscht und die Gestaltung von effektiven computerunterstützten Umgebungen für zusammenarbeitende Gruppen als eine Kombination dieser Tools bleibt eine Herausforderung. Die Erfüllung dieser Anforderungen erfordert die Berücksichtigung unterschiedlicher Aspekte der Gruppeninteraktionen sowohl aus sozialer als auch aus technologischer Perspektive. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die sozialen und technischen Aspekte der Zusammenarbeit in räumlich verteilten Gruppen und präsentiert einen Entwicklungsansatz für Systeme zur Unterstützung der Zusammenarbeit. Zum einen gibt sie einen umfassenden Überblick über den aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Thema kooperative Gruppen und fasst dabei die drei verbundenen Elemente individuelle Bedürfnisse, Aufgabenbedürfnisse und Bedürfnisse zur Aufrechterhaltung der Gruppen unter dem Dach des Gruppenbedürfnisansatzes zusammen. Zum anderen präsentiert die Arbeit ein Entwicklungskonzept für kooperative Arbeitsumgebungen auf Grundlage dieses Ansatzes und somit eine Alternative für die Gestaltung von computerunterstützten Umgebungen für kollaborative Gruppen. Für diese Forschungsarbeit werden im Wesentlichen zwei Arten von Systemen sowie deren Funktionalitäten zur Unterstützung von kollaborativen Gruppen diskutiert – Groupware und Social Software. Um eine prototypische Implementierung einer kollaborativen Arbeitsumgebung zu entwickeln und eine erste Evaluation durchzuführen, wird die Quality Function Deployment Methode und das damit verbundene House of Quality Konzept verwendet. Die Forschungsergebnisse leisten einen Beitrag auf dem Gebiet der computerunterstützten Gruppenarbeit (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) und diskutieren aktuelle Trends im Bereich der Entwicklung kollaborativer Arbeitsumgebungen, die sich mit der Integration von neuen sozialen Tools zum Zweck computerunterstützter Zusammenarbeit beschäftigen