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Chapter 10 Section introduction: CSCW languages and environments
The Design of Computer SupportedCooperativeWork and Groupware Systems D. Shapiro, M. Tauber and R. Traunmtiller (Editors) 9 1996Elsevier ScienceB.V. All fights reserved.
153
Chapter 10
Section Introduction" CSCW Languages and Environments Simon Kaplan
Dan Shapiro
University of Queensland
Lancaster University
In the final analysis, any computer-supported cooperative work must, by definition, be supported on a computer in some way. This section of the book contains chapters giving a cross-section of approaches that are investigating problems in hosting collaboration support on computers. Although each of the approaches and chapters is different, they all demonstrate the depth and variety of the problems of supporting collaboration on the computer, and the rapidly evolving synergy between sociological and technical concerns in the CSCW research arena. This synergy is extremely important: good CSCW technology will require adequate theoretical orientations and groundings, and traditional sources for those grounding (for example, formal descriptions of systems behaviour) do not seem attainable in a world which is continually changing and highly dependant on the mix of participants using a system. The human and social sciences are fast becoming a resource for such theories and groundings, opening up fascinating new avenues for interdisciplinary research. Indeed, I believe that in many of these chapters we see the first glimmerings of a new field, in which traditional engineering and social sciences are fused together through the medium of the computer.
154
Simon Kaplan and Dan Shapiro
In Putting it all together: Requirements for a CSCW platform, Schmidt and Rodden consider the unification of two major strands driving CSCW research. The sociological strand studies work practice in order to gain insight into work situations that can inform development of CSCW systems. The systems strand considers aspects of the tool building process that leads to various kinds of CSCW platforms. In this chapter, the authors argue for a two-level approach to building CSCW systems. At the lower level, they postulate a generic family of facilities supporting collaboration, and at the higher level families of domainspecific mechanisms of collaboration built on the more generic facilities. A sociological conceptualization of w o r k - i.e. what work is, how people work together and the appropriate role of the computer in work activities - is used to inform and shape the facilities provided in their CSCW platform. Igor Hawryszkiewycz considers a framework for CSCW based on the concept of Generic Objects in his chapter entitled A CSCW Design Tool Based on Generic Objects. His chapter defines a set of semantic concepts which form the basis for CSCW systems design. The particular concepts Hawryszkiewycz uses are grounded in ontological principles and activity theory, and are used as the basis for a library of genetic objects that are instantiated and composed to provide synthesized CSCW systems. Prinz, Rodden, Syri and Trevor give attention to the serious issue of developing an environment that will support cooperative interworking between heterogeneous applications. This strives for a middle way or a 'lightweight model' that avoids twin dangers. On the one hand, it avoids the over-restrictive idea that all cooperative applications can be built to some single common model. On the other hand it rejects, as wholly inadequate to people's real ways of working, diverse specialised cooperative applications which are unaware of each others' existence. The result is an infrastructure which is neutral but sensitive with respect to these applications. Matsuura, Fujino, Okada and Matsuhita consider ways in which "awareness" support can lead to spontaneous and informal interactions among distributed work groups. They take awareness to cover such things as knowing who is around, what activities are taking place, who is talking with whom and so on, arguing that the informal interactions realized through awareness support are indispensable for establishing and maintaining working relationships. Their system, VENUS, deploys a PilotWindow which provides information about daily work activities among distributed work groups through a "window" onto each office, and onto virtual common areas such as a refreshement room and a bulletin board. The system is not just an open video connection, but triggers
Section Introduction: CSCWLanguages and Environments
155
awareness in response to particular activities on the part of its users. The authors launch an interesting discussion of the part such systems can play in generating "active communication" among workgroups. Penz, Antunes and Fonesca face the problem of low-bandwidth collaboration in Feedback in Computer-Supported Cooperative Systems: Example of the User Interface Design for a Talk-Like Tool. In general, when people collaborate they use a variety of gestures, such as smiles, frowns and shrugs, to support their points as they speak. Purely text-based communication, such as mail or realtime communications programs, lose this vital aspect of communication. The "traditional" solution to the problem, adding audio and video channels to convey more information, is extremely expensive, not generally available, and not feasible over the internet or current commercial wide-area networks. The authors are therefore investigating how to convey gestures with minimal bandwidth overhead by using a combination of stored icons and freehand "facial expressions" which can be conveyed using the tools. These are a kind of generalization of the "smileys" and other gestures users often place in electronic mail messages, both in terms of their richness and in terms of their use in both asynchronous and realtime communication. Finally, in A LOTOS Specification of a CSCW Tool, Rekers and Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper look at the development of CSCW tools from a slightly different angle: what is the relationship between the architecture of CSCW systems and traditional distributed systems, and can one use the wealth of experience, techniques and notations for the latter to help with the design, specification and implementation of the former. The authors argue that this is indeed the case, and illustrate their argument by showing that the well-known LOTOS specification technique can indeed be used to specify CSCW tools. The importance of this research rests in the fact that building large distributed environments- such as CSCW environments- is extremely complex and timeconsuming, not to mention error-prone. Specification notations such as LOTOS help to reduce the development time, complexity and error rates of distributed systems, and CSCW environments should benefit from this also.
153
Chapter 10
Section Introduction" CSCW Languages and Environments Simon Kaplan
Dan Shapiro
University of Queensland
Lancaster University
In the final analysis, any computer-supported cooperative work must, by definition, be supported on a computer in some way. This section of the book contains chapters giving a cross-section of approaches that are investigating problems in hosting collaboration support on computers. Although each of the approaches and chapters is different, they all demonstrate the depth and variety of the problems of supporting collaboration on the computer, and the rapidly evolving synergy between sociological and technical concerns in the CSCW research arena. This synergy is extremely important: good CSCW technology will require adequate theoretical orientations and groundings, and traditional sources for those grounding (for example, formal descriptions of systems behaviour) do not seem attainable in a world which is continually changing and highly dependant on the mix of participants using a system. The human and social sciences are fast becoming a resource for such theories and groundings, opening up fascinating new avenues for interdisciplinary research. Indeed, I believe that in many of these chapters we see the first glimmerings of a new field, in which traditional engineering and social sciences are fused together through the medium of the computer.
154
Simon Kaplan and Dan Shapiro
In Putting it all together: Requirements for a CSCW platform, Schmidt and Rodden consider the unification of two major strands driving CSCW research. The sociological strand studies work practice in order to gain insight into work situations that can inform development of CSCW systems. The systems strand considers aspects of the tool building process that leads to various kinds of CSCW platforms. In this chapter, the authors argue for a two-level approach to building CSCW systems. At the lower level, they postulate a generic family of facilities supporting collaboration, and at the higher level families of domainspecific mechanisms of collaboration built on the more generic facilities. A sociological conceptualization of w o r k - i.e. what work is, how people work together and the appropriate role of the computer in work activities - is used to inform and shape the facilities provided in their CSCW platform. Igor Hawryszkiewycz considers a framework for CSCW based on the concept of Generic Objects in his chapter entitled A CSCW Design Tool Based on Generic Objects. His chapter defines a set of semantic concepts which form the basis for CSCW systems design. The particular concepts Hawryszkiewycz uses are grounded in ontological principles and activity theory, and are used as the basis for a library of genetic objects that are instantiated and composed to provide synthesized CSCW systems. Prinz, Rodden, Syri and Trevor give attention to the serious issue of developing an environment that will support cooperative interworking between heterogeneous applications. This strives for a middle way or a 'lightweight model' that avoids twin dangers. On the one hand, it avoids the over-restrictive idea that all cooperative applications can be built to some single common model. On the other hand it rejects, as wholly inadequate to people's real ways of working, diverse specialised cooperative applications which are unaware of each others' existence. The result is an infrastructure which is neutral but sensitive with respect to these applications. Matsuura, Fujino, Okada and Matsuhita consider ways in which "awareness" support can lead to spontaneous and informal interactions among distributed work groups. They take awareness to cover such things as knowing who is around, what activities are taking place, who is talking with whom and so on, arguing that the informal interactions realized through awareness support are indispensable for establishing and maintaining working relationships. Their system, VENUS, deploys a PilotWindow which provides information about daily work activities among distributed work groups through a "window" onto each office, and onto virtual common areas such as a refreshement room and a bulletin board. The system is not just an open video connection, but triggers
Section Introduction: CSCWLanguages and Environments
155
awareness in response to particular activities on the part of its users. The authors launch an interesting discussion of the part such systems can play in generating "active communication" among workgroups. Penz, Antunes and Fonesca face the problem of low-bandwidth collaboration in Feedback in Computer-Supported Cooperative Systems: Example of the User Interface Design for a Talk-Like Tool. In general, when people collaborate they use a variety of gestures, such as smiles, frowns and shrugs, to support their points as they speak. Purely text-based communication, such as mail or realtime communications programs, lose this vital aspect of communication. The "traditional" solution to the problem, adding audio and video channels to convey more information, is extremely expensive, not generally available, and not feasible over the internet or current commercial wide-area networks. The authors are therefore investigating how to convey gestures with minimal bandwidth overhead by using a combination of stored icons and freehand "facial expressions" which can be conveyed using the tools. These are a kind of generalization of the "smileys" and other gestures users often place in electronic mail messages, both in terms of their richness and in terms of their use in both asynchronous and realtime communication. Finally, in A LOTOS Specification of a CSCW Tool, Rekers and Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper look at the development of CSCW tools from a slightly different angle: what is the relationship between the architecture of CSCW systems and traditional distributed systems, and can one use the wealth of experience, techniques and notations for the latter to help with the design, specification and implementation of the former. The authors argue that this is indeed the case, and illustrate their argument by showing that the well-known LOTOS specification technique can indeed be used to specify CSCW tools. The importance of this research rests in the fact that building large distributed environments- such as CSCW environments- is extremely complex and timeconsuming, not to mention error-prone. Specification notations such as LOTOS help to reduce the development time, complexity and error rates of distributed systems, and CSCW environments should benefit from this also.