Communications of the ACM August 1994 1994 AC

17MB

"Groupware" is a label for computer-based systems explicitly designed to support groups of people working together. It is growing rapidly as a new application category in the computer industry. Familiar groupware examples include electronic mail, bulletin boards, group schedulers, group decision support systems, workflow systems, collaborative authoring tools, and screen sharing software.

Most of the current groupware systems are devoted to computational support and are designed under the constraint of limited communication bandwidth. However, the deployment of broadband digital networks opens a new future for multimedia collaboration environments that integrate realtime audio and video communication links with computer-based shared workspaces. We have been exploring the future of collaboration media that make good use of broadband networks through the iterative design of various CSCW systems.

This article introduces the progression of iterative media design from TeamWorkStation to ClearBoard. These systems were designed to support focused realtime collaboration by distributed group members. The key concept behind our iterative design is "seamlessness." Seamless design pursues the following two goals:

1) Seamlessness (continuity) with existing work practices: People develop their own work practices after using a wide variety of tools and interacting with a large number of people. We believe the continuity with existing work practices and everyday skills is essential. Groupware that asks users to abandon their acquired skills and to learn a new protocol is likely to encounter strong resistance.

2) Seamlessness (smooth transition) between functional spaces: Collaboration requires us to shift among a variety of functional spaces or modes. Seamless design undertakes to decrease the cognitive load of users as they move dynamically across different spaces. For example, TeamWorkStation was designed to enable smooth transition between individual workspaces and shared workspaces by allowing users to keep using both familiar desktop tools and computer tools. ClearBoard realizes seamless integration of interpersonal space and shared workspace allowing people to use various non-verbal cues such as a partner's gaze direction for smooth focus switching between these two spaces.