Collaboration vs. Cooperation
Collaboration is more of a group effort, with a single purpose. Cooperation is more of an individual effort that ties in other people or resources.
Cooperative is more deliberate, requires more planning to get together. Collaboration can happen unintentionally; in the way that a wiki happens… there isn’t necessarily a group plan to make it happen, it just does.
How does technology change things
Technology changes social norms… voice mail used to be a “reply quickly” but now email is a “reply quickly” and voicemail is a “when you get around to it.”
Technology changes the connotation of a conversation… where is the camera placed, how does it affect the presenter, where is the microphone placed?
The ability to connect with multiple quickly at the same time (email)
The ability to do things easier… email used to be a “at the computer” activity. With smart phones now its an “instant” activity for many people.
What doesn’t change with technology
Hierarchy
The need for physical reunion
The need for goals / Human Side / Incentives / Initiative
Why all of this?
Technology can mediate, can make things easier, but it can’t replace the human side of things
Overview of CSCW
- An Intro to the Field –
What is CSCW:
Multidisciplinary -> Social Science, Design, Engineering
People interacting and collaborating through and around technology
Design of technology for groups, organizations, communities
Human Organizational Structures:
- Team: A group organized to work together with a shared goal
- Organization: A number of people or groups having specific duties and are united for a specific purpose
- Community: A group or class having common interests
Characterization of the Field:
The term CSCW was coined in 1984, in a workshop at MIT by Irene Geirf and Paul Cashman
Social Science View:
an identifiable research field focused on the role of the computer in group work
Design Centric View
the design of computer-based technologies with explicit concern socially organized practices of their intended users
Software Engineering, CS
Architecture, protocols, toolkits, distributed systems, concurrency (ability to do something at the same time)
HCI
Usability, evaluation methods, design methods
Social Psychology
groups and teams, trust, person perception, social dimensions of motivation
Ethnography
Studies of particular settings
Sustained Topics
- who is around (or not)
- What activities are occurring
- What the environment is like
- Who is working on what in a shared workspace
- Architecture, performance, concurrency
- People change the same doc at the same time
- Investigations of the value of different media (face to face vs. email vs. im vs. blog etc
- Methods
- Multiple-user interfaces
Recent Trends
- Communities
- Non-collocated collaboration
- culture and language
- gaming play
- tagging, folksonomies
- Social network and coordination patterns (Social Network Analysis)
- avoiding disaster relief and information science
Cooperation: Dimensions
- collaboration modes
- same time, different times
- same place, different places
- tasks
- pooled, sequential
- incentive structures and motivation
- common ground (in communication)
- coordination on content
- coordination on process
- Methods from HCI
- User-centered design
- Participatory design
- methods adapted from social sciences
- ethnography
- ethnomethologloy
- methods adapts from software engineering
- use case
- objected-orientated analysis
- methods specific to CSCW
- contextual design
CSCW Design Methods
Issues to think about when designing technology:
What is the technology for and in what way will it be used?
The process of collaboration and coordination for any workgroup or task situation
The information that is created and / or exchanged
The medium of exchange
The effect of exchange
The effort of exchange
The integration of information, communication, awareness and computation within and across a tools.