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Jonathan Grudin
Information and Computer Science Department
University of California at Irvine
Irvine, CA 92717
+1 714 824 8674
grudin@ics.uci.edu
Steven Poltrock
Boeing Information & Support Services
PO Box 24346 MS 7L-41
Seattle, WA 98124-0346
+1 206 865 3270
poltrock@atc.boeing.com
Technology to support groups is rapidly coming into use and is starting to have an impact on us, our organizations, and society. This course addresses recent experiences, current possibilities, and future trends and shocks. Lecture and video illustrations are accompanied by discussions in which participants organize and present their collective experiences with and interests in groupware and workflow technologies, and CSCW issues and methods. The instructors summarize the current composition of the CSCW community and the state of the art in technology, and organize discussion of fundamental challenges that face us as users (and developers) of these technologies.
Groupware, workflow, computer-supported cooperative work, coordination theory, organizational design, sociotechnical evolution
Five years ago most experience in computer-supported cooperative work was confined to research laboratories. The situation has changed. Although relying primarily on lecture and video illustrations, this tutorial provides a framework for attendees who have some experience as designers, developers, evaluators, marketers, buyers, and users of these technologies, to share and build on their diverse experiences. We identify the most important challenges and what has been responsible for successes and failures that have been experienced. The participants and organizers will discuss and present their experiences with different types of groupware. No one person has had all of these experiences, but collectively the tutorial participants provide a qualified, thoughtful group of discussants. Past tutorials benefited from the observations and insights of tutorial participants.
Most CHI Conference-goers have a general awareness of CSCW research and groupware technology, but it is easy to lose track of how varied the people working on these topics are. By reviewing their backgrounds as technologists, behavioral and social scientists, customers, and users (who themselves come from a wide range of organizational contexts), we can see the opportunities to learn from people whose expertise or experience complements our own. We will outline the major contributors to CSCW and groupware: researchers from diverse fields, developers working in varied contexts, users in different cultures...
Our survey of the state of the art serves two purposes: It provides information about research and development activity to tutorial participants whose experience or expertise is likely to be focused in one or two areas, and the framework for presenting the technologies serves to focus subgroup discussions of experiences with the technologies. We identify three categories of groupware: communication, cooperation, and coordination.
Five trends have guided the evolution of communication groupware. (1) Capabilities for communication are improving within a given medium. (2) Multiple media are being integrated within single communication systems. (3) The interfaces to communication tools are strongly influenced by metaphors, and these metaphors are often the basis of social control. (4) Structure is added to communication media to support performing tasks. (5) Standards are emerging and solidifying to support both platform and application interoperability.
Electronic mail, desktop conferencing, and video conferencing are changing both personal and business communications. Businesses use email to accelerate the flow of information and reduce coordination costs [7]. Video conferencing is used for group communication within geographically distributed companies and between corporate partners. Desktop conferencing focuses communication on work products. Each type of communication groupware offers unique advantages, and new technologies can achieve all the advantages by integrating email and conferencing features.
Groupware supports cooperation by enabling interaction through a shared document or collection of documents. For example, document management systems help teams collaborate by providing access and version control, document search, and status tracking. Application development environments such as Oval and Lotus Notes customize the structure and functionality of the system to the task. These environments integrate both communication and workflow features on a core of cooperation support [5].
Meeting support products and prototypes enable all participants to collaborate in the production of a shared document or documents. The strength of these systems is generation of alternatives [6]. In a brainstorming session all users can enter as many ideas as they want anonymously. A recent study of the benefits of a meeting system found that it saved 91% of the work flow time over 64 meetings.
Businesses are attempting to increase quality and reduce cost by modeling and improving their internal processes. Coordination groupware can capture and coordinate these processes. Work flow management systems model the sequence of subtasks in a work process and the roles performed by each individual. When each subtask is completed, the work is automatically routed to the person responsible for the next subtask.
Coordination groupware can also support group work that does not conform to a formal process. Ad hoc coordination is supported by groupware that accommodates the informal rules of communication that occur in the workplace. The theoretical foundation for these technologies is Speech Act Theory [1].
Successfully overcoming technical hurdles has not guaranteed success. In this section of the tutorial we briefly review behavioral, social, and organizational phenomena that have been observed to undermine technically impressive applications. Some of these obstruct the development of useful and usable software, some hinder the acquisition of the systems, and many get in the way of successful use. Throughout the tutorial, participants will be invited to identify those challenges that they have encountered or anticipate as they set about acquiring, using, or developing groupware.
The literature includes case studies of successful use of groupware technologies, including some recently conducted by the organizers. Tutorial participants will contribute others. In this section, we will briefly review several promising, novel approaches to the successful design and introduction of groupware that are being explored.
Although we can point to trends and possibilities, we cannot predict which groupware or workflow products will emerge, which will succeed, or which will fail. Nevertheless, at a broader level, we can identify changes that are likely to raise fundamental questions for us as users as well as developers of these technologies. Members of society, informed or otherwise, will have to resolve how these technologies are used. We will conclude the tutorial by identifying a few global developments and invite the participants to identify others. One is the tension between liberating and constraining effects that often accompany technologies, including groupware. Another, perhaps the most fundamental, is the increased visibility of activity in the global village and our reaction to seeing much of that activity for the first time.
1. Flores, F., Graves, M., Hartfield, B. and Winograd, T. Computer systems and the design of organizational interaction. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 6, 2, 1988, 153-172.
2. Grudin, J. CSCW: History and focus. IEEE Computer, 27, 5, 1994, 19-26.
3. Grudin, J. Groupware and social dynamics: Eight challenges for developers. Communications of the ACM, 37, 1, 1994, 92-105.
4. Grudin, J. and Palen, L. Why groupware succeeds: Discretion or mandate? Proceedings ECSCW'95 European Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference, 1995, in press.
5. Malone, T.W. and Lai, K-Y. Toward intelligent tools for information sharing and collaboration. In R. P. Bostrom, R. T. Watson & S. T. Kinney (Eds.), Computer Augmented Teamwork: A Guided Tour. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY, 1992.
6. Nunamaker, J.F., Dennis, A.R., Valacich, J.S., Vogel, D.R., and George, J.F. Electronic meeting systems to support group work. Communications of the ACM, 34, 1991, 30-61.
7. Sproull, L. and Kiesler, S. Connections: New ways of working in the networked organization. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991.