The Locales Framework: Understanding and Designing for CooperativeWork

The word ‘groupware’ brings together the concepts of a group of people and ‘ware’. The term ‘ware’ is often described in dictionaries as ‘manufactured articles, products of art or craft’, ‘an article of merchandise’ or ‘an intangible item (as a service) that is a marketable commodity’. Hence ‘groupware’ can mean tools, equipment or services to be used by groups. If we acknowledge this broad definition, then we probably could think of almost anything that is used to help groups to collaborate to be group ware, including writing boards, bulletin boards, slide or overview projectors as well as group process techniques, such as brainstorming or Synectics (Rickards, 1974). All these artefacts physical or abstract can be used to enhance or support group activity. However the designation ‘groupware’ has gained a new meaning within the context of Information Systems literature and more specifically within its specialised sub fields of Office Information Systems and more recently Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW). According to Johansen (1988), ‘groupware’ covers a set of computer assisted aids designed for the use of collaborative work within groups; these involve “hardware, software, services and group process support”. Grudin (1991) claims that all kinds of Information Technology have always supported groups in a certain way. Howeyer, groupware’s support differs from other kinds of IT support to groups in its being purposefully designed and conceived to support groups. The author argues here that this field of research is brought about under the influences of different stakeholders in the IT business. This makes it very difficult to reach an agreement on terms such as groupware or CSCW. Clearly the notion of ‘co-operative work’ needs to be properly addressed if one wants to make sense of the terms groupware or CSCW. A different and promising new angle to the conceptualisation of CSCW was not so recently proposed by Lyytinen and Ngwenyama (1992). These authors have also identified the fragmented nature of CSCW as field (which can include contributions ranging from studies of organisational culture to the development of network protocols) and argue that it

CSCW (computer supported cooperative work) has been around for many years. However, despite growing use of CSCW, general infrastructures that support it are few, and seldom provide data consistency management. A question at issue is how to easily provide different consistency policies for CSCW applications. In a modeling and simulation project at the Swedish Defense Research Agency we have evaluated technologies for developing a CSCW infrastructure. Frequently used distributed simulation architecture, the HLA, appeared as a candidate for beneficially providing CSCW services. Hence we have investigated the use of HLA for the purpose, with successful result. This paper presents some of the outcome, and the experiences from adapting an application to CSCW utilizing HLA. It presents performance experiments for evaluation of three consistency policies for CSCW using HLA, conclusions, future work and some recommendations.

The topic of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has attracted much attention in the last few years. While the field is obviously still in the process of development, there is a marked ambiguity about the exact focus of the field. This lack of focus may hinder its further development and lead to its dissipation. In this paper we set out an approach to CSCW as a field of research which we believe provides a coherent conceptual framework for this area, suggesting that it should be concerned with thesupport requirements of cooperative work arrangements. This provides a more principled, comprehensive, and, in our opinion, more useful conception of the field than that provided by the conception of CSCW as being focused on computer support for groups. We then investigate the consequences of taking this alternative conception seriously, in terms of research directions for the field. As an indication of the fruits of this approach, we discuss the concept of ‘articulation work’ and its relevance to CSCW. This raises a host of interesting problems that are marginalized in the work on small group support but critical to the success of CSCW systems ‘in the large’, i. e., that are designed to meet current work requirements in the everyday world.

CSCW (computer supported cooperative work) means a group of people cooperate to finish the same task with the help of computers. Under such a working environment, a safety mechanism is vital important to ensure unwanted information leakage. At present the encryption algorithms widely used in CSCW system are inefficient, and can't realize the real-time communication model satisfactorily. DES and ECC are both widely recognized data encryption algorithms, which have already been applied to CSCW security system, but each has his own strengths and weaknesses. DES is efficient but its key is easily revealed; the key of ECC is well managed, but the process efficiency is lower than DES. This paper puts forward a combined encryption algorithm based on 3DES and ECC to improve the performance of the CSCW system encryption. It is proved that the algorithm is feasible and effective.

The Design of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware Systems

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is a relatively new and dynamic field dealing with the development and use of groupware technologies in organizations. Several frameworks and models have been proposed for studying CSCW, each conveying a different perspective and theoretical basis. Although these frameworks have contributed much to our understanding of the field, they can be criticized for a lack of holistic understanding of the complex social activity that is constitutive of groupwork. This often leads to the failure of otherwise well designed CSCW applications. In this paper we take up this challenge and propose a social action framework for analyzing groupware technologies. The framework is based on Habermas‘s theory of social action and four action categories, and the idea that groupware applications serve as sets of rules and resources which mediate group interactions. We demonstrate the value of the framework by analyzing a wide range of existing groupware technologies for their appropriateness to specific groupwork situations in terms of their espoused or implicit assumptions of groupwork, and the action constitutive resources they provide. Our analysis points out that a host of current groupware applications can be fairly easily classified and examined by the way they are configured to support different types of social action. It also suggests that, when implementing groupware applications, developers should critically evaluate: (a) the need for supporting a rich variety of action types, (b) the possible role of computer support in the specific groupwork situations, and (c) the underlying assumptions of groupwork embedded in the groupware platform. Finally, we will discuss how the framework can inform future research and development in the field.

<p>This paper presents a cooperative work perspective on the role of computer artifacts in organisations. Traditionally the issue of cooperative work has been given little attention in the design of computer artifacts, and in fact much cooperative work has been disrupted rather than supported by computers.</p><p>Cooperative work is seen as a specific, prototypical kind of work with many desirable properties. Cooperative work has an informal nature and often this will not be reflected in the formal organisation of the work, its importance often being neglected. Cooperative work will often be found in health care teams, in office work, in many project groups, and also in many kinds of mechanical work.</p><p>Two ways of coordinating cooperative work can be identified. Coordination by explicit communication and coordination through the shared material of the working process. In parallel to this there are two main forms of computer support for cooperative work, computerised media for explicit communication and computer implemented shared material.</p>

This chapter is principally concerned with user agents as they might appear to users of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems: that is, with interface agents rather than software agents. I gives examples to show the difficulty of establishing a clear perspective on interface agents from the user-centred point of view. This difficulty is related to the differing conceptions of agents held within computer sciences and social sciences, and it is argued that this makes user agents a poor starting point for the design of CSCW systems. As an alternative, I suggest that CSCW design should start from the task domains, stages and functions of group work, and that the role of agents should then be situated within this framework. I sketch some initial steps towards developing this approach.

Research on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

The paper reviews the ways organizations are thought to be changing as a result of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). While claims which exaggerate the impact of technological changes should not be taken seriously, within the context of current developments in world capitalism CSCW assumes particular importance raising cultural and organizational problems at least as much as economic and technological ones. The flexibility, variety and disorder associated with ‘post-modern’ organizations (i.e. organizations characteristic of the epoch after modernism) necessitate the adoption of ‘postmodern’ approaches to understanding (i.e. approaches to the theory of knowledge developed in linguistics and philosophy) which emphasise the significance of communication, interpretation, improvization, negotiation and learning processes. The suggestion is that, for the impact of CSCW to be understood, conventional theories of organization should be replaced by theories of collective activity.

The design of systems which provide computer support for cooperative work (CSCW) has been dominated by models of collaborative teams in academic or design environments. Such settings are characterized by a relatively egalitarian power distribution and a division of labour established locally by the collaborating parties. This paper describes other types of collaborative work in which the roles of participants are characterized by pre-established divisions of labour and unequal power distribution. A case study is presented of a collaborative group allocating and scheduling service calls in an electricity company. Using the Organizational Requirements Definition for Information Technology (ORDIT) methods for responsibility analysis a number of alternative organizational structures are described which may serve this task. The alternatives are based upon different job design structures which distribute responsibilities to work roles by different rationales. An analysis is offered of the different CSCW systems that would be necessary to support these alternatives. The paper concludes by examining the implications of pre-established but variable organizational structures for the design of generic CSCW systems.

In trying to provide useful software engineering tools that utilise computer supported cooperative working (CSCW), it is necessary to examine the use of cognitive artefacts. This paper looks at using artefacts to support a prototype soft systems analysis tool based upon the work of P.B. Checkland (1981). This methodology is concerned with systems definition and relies heavily on people-to-people interaction. The need for a cognitive artefact arises both from the cooperative working environment and the iterative nature of the technique.

The authors discuss the work style that combines the traditional drilling engineering with the modern information technology and point out the future direction of the petroleum drilling information technology - cooperating work mode with the support of computer network environment. Aiming at the practicality and particular demands, This work mainly addresses itself in how to implement the real time drilling project from several aspects such as: the tendency of the drilling information technology, the decision-making manner in the multi-experts cooperating work mode, the construction of the basic computer communicating network, work style under the CSCW (computer supported cooperative work) environment.

This paper presents a cooperation technology perspective on cooperative artifacts within cooperative work environments in the maritime domain. The issue of cooperation technology can be seen in the design of artifacts, as much cooperation technology has been disrupted rather than supported by engineering design, an example of which is maritime technology. Maritime operation systems narrowly focus on "problem solving" functionalities. From the perspective of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), these system "problems" are not so much problems of function as they are problems raised from interactions among human operators, cooperative artifacts, and computer systems. Systems developers sometimes overlook cooperative works supported by cooperative artifacts in maritime operations. This article aims to introduce cooperation technology into the maritime technology community by presenting two ways to improve maritime technology. Systems developers from the engineering field and CSCW designers need to explore ways to help human operators who practice maritime technology in situ with safety and commitment to good user experience. It is important that systems developers keep an open mind and accept new knowledge from other research fields to balance the relationship between technology and intimacy in human interactions in maritime technology.

This chapter is about the system design process. More explicitly, it is about the process of developing computer-based artefacts “supporting” work in human organizations, primarily business organizations. It does not deal specifically with systems for supporting cooperative work; indeed all the case studies and theory that are discussed have been taken from the domain of information systems (IS) research. The querulous reader might wonder about the relevance of IS research to computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Behind this demurring, I suspect, lurks the question, unresolved in CSCW, of whether CSCW systems are (or ought to be) fundamentally different from traditional systems. If they are, then it is more than likely that their design will evoke new issues and the relevance of conventional knowledge will need to be qualified, perhaps profoundly.