Computer-Supported

Cooperative Work
(CSCW)

Thinking about groups, collaboration,

and communication
CSCW

 Computer Supported Cooperative

Work

 HCI connotations CSCW

 individual use

 psychology
CSCW

 Study of how people work together as

a group and how technology affects
this

 Support the social processes of work,

often among geographically separated
people
Examples
 The “system” becomes the medium, the
moderator, rather than “just” a tool
 There are now many collaborations, like:
 Scientists collaborating on a technical issue
 Authors editing a document together
 Programmers debugging a system
concurrently
 Workers collaborating over a shared video
conferencing application
 Buyers and sellers meeting on eBay
The second “C”

 Group work not always cooperative or

collaborative
CSC “anything”

 Not just about “work” anymore

 Support the social processes of a

group of people communicating or
collaborating
Examples

 Awareness of people in your family,

community, physical space...
 Mobile communication

 Online discussions, blogs

 Sharing photos, stories, experiences

 Recommender systems

 Playing games
Groupware
 Software specifically designed
 to support group working or playing
 with cooperative requirements in mind
 NOT just tools for communication
 Groupware can be classified by
 when and where the participants are
working
 the function it performs for cooperative work
 Specific and difficult problems with
groupware implementation
The Time/Space Matrix
Classify groupware by:
when the participants are working,
at the same time or not
where the participants are working,
at the same place or not
same different
Common names for axes: time time
time:
synchronous/asynchronoussame
place
place:
co-located/remote
different
place
Applied to “traditional”
technology
same different
time time

same face-to-face
conversation, post-it note
place whiteboard

different
phone call letter
place
 Applied to computer
technology
Time

Synchronous Asynchronous
Face-to-face Post-it note
Co-located
E-meeting room Argument. tool
Place
Phone call Letter
Remote
Video window,wall Email
 A More-fleshed Out Taxonomy

A typical space/time matrix (after Baecker, Grudin, Buxton, & Greenberg, 1995, p.742)
Styles of Systems

 Computer-mediated communication

 Meeting and decision support systems

 Shared applications and tools

Computer-mediated
Communication (CMC) Aids
 Examples
 Email, Chats, virtual worlds
 Desktop videoconferencing --
Examples:
• CUSee-Me
• MS NetMeeting
• SGI InPerson
CMC applications

 Support a wide range of

communication needs
 Allow large number of people to
quickly and easily communicate
 Can be combined with other activities
and systems
 Lead to many new social conventions
and issues
Social implications

 Less rich channels – fewer details,

higher likelihood of misunderstanding
 More anonymous

 More autonomy, more ability to control

message
 Can be less intrusive
 I’ll IM you before I stop by your office
Food for thought…

 Why aren’t videophones more

popular?
 How and when do you use Instant
Messaging? How does this differ from
email?
 What communication technology do
you still want?
Meeting and Decision
Support Systems
 Examples
 Corporate decision-support
conference room
• Provides ways of rationalizing decisions,
voting, presenting cases, etc.
• Concurrency control is important
 Shared computer classroom/cluster
• Group discussion/design aid tools
Shared Applications and
Tools
 Shared editors, design tools, etc.
 Want to avoid “locking” and allow
multiple people to concurrently work
on document
 Requires some form of contention
resolution
 How do you show what others are
doing?
Social Issues

 People bring in different perspectives

and views to a collaboration
environment
 Goal of CSCW systems is often to
establish some common ground and
to facilitate understanding and
interaction
Turn Taking

 There are many subtle social

conventions about turn taking in an
interaction
 Personal space, closeness
 Eye contact
 Gestures
 Body language
 Conversation cues
Geography, Position

 In group dynamics, the physical layout

of individuals matters a lot
 “Power positions”
Awareness
 What is happening?
 Who is there
e.g. IM buddy list
 What has happened
… and why?
Groupware implementation

 Often more complicated

 feedback and network delays
 architectures for groupware
 feedthrough and network traffic
 toolkits, robustness and scaling
 Feedback and network
delays
screen local remote remote
feedback machine machine application
network
9 8 7 6
5
2 3 4
1
user types client server

 At least 2 network messages + four context switches

 With protocols 4 or more network messages
Types of architecture
 centralised – single copy of application and data
 client-server – simplest case
 master-slave special case of client-server
• server merged with one client

 replicated – copy on each workstation

 also called peer-peer
 + local feedback
 race conditions
Feedthrough & traffic
 Need to inform all other clients of changes

 Few networks support broadcast messages,

so …
n participants  n–1 network
messages!

 Solution: increase granularity

 reduce frequency of feedback
 but …
poor feedthrough  loss of shared context

 Trade-off: timeliness vs. network traffic

Evaluation
 Evaluating the usability and utility of CSCW tools is
quite challenging
 Need more participants
 Logistically difficult
 Apples - oranges

 Often use field studies and ethnographic evaluations

to assist

 Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for

Developers
 By Jonathan Grudin (now at Microsoft)
 http://www.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/CACM94/cacm94.html
Groupware Challenges
(Grudin)
 Who does work vs. who gets benefit

 Critical mass
 prisoner’s dilemma
More Grudin challenges

 Social, political, and motivational

factors

 No “standard procedures”
More Grudin challenges

 Infrequent features

 Groupware intuition
More Grudin challenges

 Managing acceptance

 Evaluation is longer, more

complicated, less precise
Recommendations
 Add group features to existing apps
 Benefit all group members
 Start with niches were application is
highly needed
 Consider evaluation and adoption
early
 Expect and plan for development and
evaluation to take longer
Example

 TeamSpace: a meeting capture and

access system