Groupware Applications

What is Groupware? Groupware is technology designed to facilitate the work of groups. This technology may be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate. While traditional technologies like the telephone qualify as groupware, the term is ordinarily used to refer to a specific class of technologies relying on modern computer networks, such as email, newsgroups, videophones, or chat. Groupware technologies are typically categorized along two primary dimensions: 1. whether users of the groupware are working together at the same time ("realtime" or "synchronous" groupware) or different times ("asynchronous" groupware), and 2. whether users are working together in the same place ("colocated" or "face-toface") or in different places ("non-colocated" or "distance"). Same time Different time "synchronous" "asynchronous" Same Place "colocated" Different Place "distance"

voting, presentation support

shared computers

videophones, chat

email, workflow

What is CSCW? CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) refers to the field of study which examines the design, adoption, and use of groupware. Despite the name, this field of study is not restricted to issues of "cooperation" or "work" but also examines competition, socialization, and play. The field typically attracts those interested in software design and social and organizational behavior, including business people, computer scientists, organizational psychologists, communications researchers, and anthropologists, among other specialties.

How is Groupware Design Different from Traditional User Interface Design? Groupware design involves understanding groups and how people behave in groups. It also involves having a good understanding of networking technology and how aspects of that technology (for instance, delays in synchronizing views) affect a user's experience. All the issues related to traditional user interface design remain relevant, since the technology still involves people.

1

However, many aspects of groups require special consideration. For instance, not only do million-person groups behave differently from 5-person groups, but the performance parameters of the technologies to support different groups vary. Ease-of-use must be better for groupware than for single-user systems because the pace of use of an application is often driven by the pace of a conversation. System responsiveness and reliability become more significant issues. Designers must have an understanding of the degree of homogeneity of users, of the possible roles people play in cooperative work and of who key decision-makers are and what influences them.

Why Bother? Why is groupware design worth paying attention to in the first place? Groupware offers significant advantages over single-user systems. These are some of the most common reasons people want to use groupware: o o o o o o o o o

to facilitate communication: make it faster, clearer, more persuasive to enable communication where it wouldn't otherwise be possible to enable telecommuting to cut down on travel costs to bring together multiple perspectives and expertise to form groups with common interests where it wouldn't be possible to gather a sufficient number of people face-to-face to save time and cost in coordinating group work to facilitate group problem-solving to enable new modes of communication, such as anonymous interchanges or structured interactions

In addition to the benefits of groupware, another good reason to study usability and design issues in groupware is to avoid a failed design. Groupware is significantly more difficult to get right than traditional software. Typically, a groupware system can't succeed unless most or all of the target group is willing to adopt the system. In contrast, a single-user system can be successful even if only a fraction of the target market adopts it.

Groupware: Applications The following section describes several types of groupware applications and their associated design options. Comparing those design options across applications yields interesting new perspectives on well-known applications. Also, in many cases, these systems can be used together, and in fact, are intended to be used in conjunction. For example, group calendars are used to schedule videoconferencing meetings, multi-player games use live video and chat to communicate, and newsgroup discussions spawn more highly-involved interactions in any of the other systems. Consider how these systems can be integrated in other ways. We are still quite far from developing the grand groupware system that encompasses every type of communication,

2

and we will probably never get there since the possibilities are constantly evolving with changes in both our patterns of social interaction and the technology we have available.

Asynchronous Groupware Email is by far the most common groupware application (besides of course, the traditional telephone). While the basic technology is designed to pass simple messages between 2 people, even relatively basic email systems today typically include interesting features for forwarding messages, filing messages, creating mailing groups, and attaching files with a message. Other features that have been explored include: automatic sorting and processing of messages, automatic routing, and structured communication (messages requiring certain information). Newsgroups and mailing lists are similar in spirit to email systems except that they are intended for messages among large groups of people instead of 1-to-1 communication. In practice the main difference between newsgroups and mailing lists is that newsgroups only show messages to a user when they are explicitly requested (an "on-demand" service), while mailing lists deliver messages as they become available (an "interruptdriven" interface). Workflow systems allow documents to be routed through organizations through a relatively-fixed process. A simple example of a workflow application is an expense report in an organization: an employee enters an expense report and submits it, a copy is archived then routed to the employee's manager for approval, the manager receives the document, electronically approves it and sends it on and the expense is registered to the group's account and forwarded to the accounting department for payment. Workflow systems may provide features such as routing, development of forms, and support for differing roles and privileges. Hypertext is a system for linking text documents to each other, with the Web being an obvious example. Whenever multiple people author and link documents, the system becomes group work, constantly evolving and responding to others' work. Some hypertext systems include capabilities for seeing who else has visited a certain page or link, or at least seeing how often a link has been followed, thus giving users a basic awareness of what other people are doing in the system -- page counters on the Web are a crude approximation of this function. Another common multi-user feature in hypertext (that is not found on the Web) is allowing any user to create links from any page, so that others can be informed when there are relevant links that the original author was unaware of. Group calendars allow scheduling, project management, and coordination among many people, and may provide support for scheduling equipment as well. Typical features detect when schedules conflict or find meeting times that will work for everyone. Group calendars also help to locate people. Typical concerns are privacy (users may feel that certain activities are not public matters), completeness and accuracy (users may feel that

3

the time it takes to enter schedule information is not justified by the benefits of the calendar). Collaborative writing systems may provide both realtime support and non-realtime support. Word processors may provide asynchronous support by showing authorship and by allowing users to track changes and make annotations to documents. Authors collaborating on a document may also be given tools to help plan and coordinate the authoring process, such as methods for locking parts of the document or linking separately-authored documents. Synchronous support allows authors to see each other's changes as they make them, and usually needs to provide an additional communication channel to the authors as they work (via videophones or chat).

Synchronous or Realtime Groupware Shared whiteboards allow two or more people to view and draw on a shared drawing surface even from different locations. This can be used, for instance, during a phone call, where each person can jot down notes (e.g. a name, phone number, or map) or to work collaboratively on a visual problem. Most shared whiteboards are designed for informal conversation, but they may also serve structured communications or more sophisticated drawing tasks, such as collaborative graphic design, publishing, or engineering applications. Shared whiteboards can indicate where each person is drawing or pointing by showing telepointers, which are color-coded or labeled to identify each person. Video communications systems allow two-way or multi-way calling with live video, essentially a telephone system with an additional visual component. Cost and compatibility issues limited early use of video systems to scheduled videoconference meeting rooms. Video is advantageous when visual information is being discussed, but may not provide substantial benefit in most cases where conventional audio telephones are adequate. In addition to supporting conversations, video may also be used in less direct collaborative situations, such as by providing a view of activities at a remote location. Chat systems permit many people to write messages in realtime in a public space. As each person submits a message, it appears at the bottom of a scrolling screen. Chat groups are usually formed by having listing chat rooms by name, location, number of people, topic of discussion, etc. Many systems allow for rooms with controlled access or with moderators to lead the discussions, but most of the topics of interest to researchers involve issues related to unmoderated real-time communication including: anonymity, following the stream of conversation, scalability with number of users, and abusive users. While chat-like systems are possible using non-text media, the text version of chat has the rather interesting aspect of having a direct transcript of the conversation, which not only has long-term value, but allows for backward reference during conversation making it easier for people to drop into a conversation and still pick up on the ongoing discussion.

4

Decision support systems are designed to facilitate groups in decision-making. They provide tools for brainstorming, critiquing ideas, putting weights and probabilities on events and alternatives, and voting. Such systems enable presumably more rational and even-handed decisions. Primarily designed to facilitate meetings, they encourage equal participation by, for instance, providing anonymity or enforcing turn-taking. Multi-player games have always been reasonably common in arcades, but are becoming quite common on the internet. Many of the earliest electronic arcade games were multiuser, for example, Pong, Space Wars, and car racing games. Games are the prototypical example of multi-user situations "non-cooperative", though even competitive games require players to cooperate in following the rules of the game. Games can be enhanced by other communication media, such as chat or video systems.

Groupware Design Issues As with all user interface design, the method used for designing a groupware system is more significant than specific design suggestions. This introduction thus begins with the groupware design process. The remaining sections address some of the most common issues that face groupware designers. All computer systems, single user or multi-user interact with the work groups and organizations in which they are used. However, group working is more complex than that of a single person. Discuss this statement and briefly explain how organizational factors can make or break groupware or single user factors. For broadly targeted groupware applications, such as videophones or email, understanding users can boil down to understanding how human beings communicate in the first place. A design is also best informed by conducting user studies on system prototypes. In these cases user testing is often significantly more difficult than with single-user systems for the following reasons: o o o o o o o o

Organizing and scheduling for groups is more difficult than for individuals. Group interaction style is hard to select for beforehand, whereas individual characteristics are often possible to determine before a study is conducted. Pre-established groups vary in interaction style, and the length of time they've been a group affects their communication patterns. New groups change quickly during the group formation process. Groups are dynamic; roles change. Many studies need to be long-term, especially when studying asynchronous groupware. Modifying prototypes can be technically difficult because of the added complexity of groupware over single-user software. In software for large organizations, testing new prototypes can be difficult or impossible because of the disruption caused by introducing new versions into an organization.

5

Adoption and Acceptance: Many groupware systems simply cannot be successful unless a critical mass of users chooses to use the system. Having a videophone is useless if you're the only one who has it. Two of the most common reasons for failing to achieve critical mass are lack of interoperability and the lack of appropriate individual benefit. Interoperability: Lack of interoperability/compatibility. Compatibility issues lead to general wariness among customers, who want to wait until a clear standard has emerged. Avoiding Abuse: Most people are familiar with the problem of spamming with email. Some other common violations of social protocol include: taking inappropriate advantage of anonymity, sabotaging group work, or violating privacy. Customization and Grounding: When groups are working together with the same information, they may individually desire customized views. The challenge of customized views is to support grounding: the establishment of a common ground or shared understanding of what information is known and shared between the different users. Groupware offers significant advantages over single-user systems. These are some of the most common reasons people want to use groupware: o o o o o o o o o

To facilitate communication: make it faster, clearer, more persuasive To enable communication where it wouldn't otherwise be possible To enable telecommuting To cut down on travel costs To bring together multiple perspectives and expertise To form groups with common interests where it wouldn't be possible to gather a sufficient number of people face-to-face To save time and cost in coordinating group work To facilitate group problem-solving To enable new modes of communication, such as anonymous interchanges or structured interactions

Organizational issues -Organizational factors can make or break groupware -Studying the work group is not sufficient any system is used within a wider context and --the crucial people need not be direct users -Before installing a new system, the designer must understand:     

Who benefits Who puts in effort The balance of power in the organization and how it will be affected Even when groupware is successful it may be difficult to measure that success

6

The Groupware Design Process It's best to start by gaining a solid understanding of your prospective users, what their goals are, and how they go about their work. For broadly-targeted groupware applications, such as videophones or email, understanding users can boil down to understanding how human beings communicate in the first place. A design is also best informed by conducting user studies on system prototypes. In these cases user testing is often significantly more difficult than with single-user systems for the following reasons: o o o o o o o o

Organizing and scheduling for groups is more difficult than for individuals. Group interaction style is hard to select for beforehand, whereas individual characteristics are often possible to determine before a study is conducted. Pre-established groups vary in interaction style, and the length of time they've been a group affects their communication patterns. New groups change quickly during the group formation process. Groups are dynamic; roles change. Many studies need to be long-term, especially when studying asynchronous groupware. Modifying prototypes can be technically difficult because of the added complexity of groupware over single-user software. In software for large organizations, testing new prototypes can be difficult or impossible because of the disruption caused by introducing new versions into an organization.

When designing groupware, it is often best to begin with field studies. The goal is to understand a particular type of group or organization that will be using the groupware system. A number of different studies can be conducted: interviews, surveys, analysis of artifacts used in the work process, examination of processes and workflows, etc. In all cases, the object is to identify the users' tasks and goals, understand how the group communicates and determine the power structures and roles. One key challenge is to appear non-threatening and objective to the users in order to obtain accurate information and to insure that they will accept any design that results. Another challenge is translating the findings from one organization to others -- this is especially a concern when the groupware is intended for organizations which are truly unique or too large to effectively study.

Adoption and Acceptance Many groupware systems simply cannot be successful unless a critical mass of users chooses to use the system. Having a videophone is useless if you're the only one who has it. Two of the most common reasons for failing to achieve critical mass are lack of interoperability and the lack of appropriate individual benefit.

Interoperability

7

In the early 90s, AT&T and MCI both introduced videophones commercially, but their two systems couldn't communicate with each other. This lack of interoperability/compatibility meant that anyone who wanted to buy a videophone had to make sure that everyone they wanted to talk to would buy the same system. Compatibility issues lead to general wariness among customers, who want to wait until a clear standard has emerged.

Perceived Benefit Even when everyone in the group may benefit, if the choice is made by individuals, the system may not succeed. An example is with office calendar systems: if everyone enters all of their appointments, then everyone has the benefit of being able to safely schedule around other people's appointments. However, if it's not easy to enter your appointments, then it may be perceived by users as more beneficial to leave their own appointments off, while viewing other people's appointments. This disparity of individual and group benefit is discussed in game theory as the prisoner's dilemma or the commons problem. To solve this problem, some groups can apply social pressure to enforce groupware use (as in having the boss insist that it's used), but otherwise it's a problem for the groupware designer who must find a way to make sure the application is perceived as useful for individuals even outside the context of full group adoption.

Avoiding Abuse Most people are familiar with the problem of spamming with email. Some other common violations of social protocol include: taking inappropriate advantage of anonymity, sabotaging group work, or violating privacy.

The Commons Problem If a village has a "commons" area for grazing cattle then this area can be a strong benefit to the community as long as everyone uses it with restraint. However, individuals have the incentive to graze as many cattle as possible on the commons as opposed to their own private property. If too many people send too many cattle to the commons, the area will be destroyed, and the whole village is worse off as a result. There are a couple of straightforward solutions to the Commons Problem: an appropriate fee can be charged for each head of cattle or a limit can be imposed on the number of cattle any individual may bring. These solutions are an appropriate starting point for solving problems of abuse in groupware.

Socially vs. Technologically-Determined Structure •

Communication Structure Communication between people is typically highly-structured. When someone asks a question, they usually expect either an answer or a request for clarification. After a request, a typical response is to fulfill the request or specify a reason for not fulfilling 8

•

•

•

the request. When someone fills out an official form, that form usually has a predetermined route that it takes through an organization -- possibly to a manager for a signature, then an administrator for processing and filing, then perhaps a duplicate is sent back to the original employee. The point is that most actions have a known range of responses and people to handle them -- communication has structure. Technological vs. Social When the type of structure is known, systems can take advantage of the structure to speed up communications and minimize errors. When the system determines exactly how the conversation is structured, this is known as technologically-mediated communication structure. The alternative is socially-mediated communication -when someone wants to make a request, they send, for instance, a plain email message to another person, and that person decides whether to respond, how to respond, and who to respond to. Socially-mediated Communication This type of structure can be more time-consuming and prone to error, and thus it may be unacceptable for certain types of organizations, especially ones that allow no exceptions to protocol, such as the military or certain safety-critical organizations. On the other hand, exceptions to the expected structure of communication are extremely common. For this reason, technologically-mediated communication may actually be an obstruction to getting work done efficiently and may lead people to not use a groupware system or use it incorrectly, especially when the designer has not completely anticipated the range of communication possibilities. Facilitation vs. Enforcement A reasonable compromise between the two possibilities is to make a groupware system aware of the common structure of communication so that it can make common communication tasks more straightforward (e.g. by providing a "quick send" button that routes a message to the appropriate person), but insure that any kind of message can be sent regardless. Thus, the communication is technologicallyfacilitated but not technologically-enforced.

Customization and Grounding When groups are working together with the same information, they may individually desire customized views. The challenge of customized views is to support grounding: the establishment of a common ground or shared understanding of what information is known and shared between the different users. Take for example a healthcare setting. When a physician talks to a lab technician about a patient, they may both have access to the same patient record, but because of their different interests, each may want a view on their computer screen which selects and emphasizes different pieces of information. This may cause confusion when a given piece of information, and therefore an obvious inference about a patient's condition, is readily available to one person and not the other. Another concern is if one user chooses to display exceptional values in red and another chooses to display exceptional values in blue, different users may be confused. When working together on the same screen, this inconsistency can result in dangerous miscommunication.

9

In communication situations, it's important to make it very clear what information is private and what is shared, and, as much as possible, make it clear what information the other user is seeing (for instance, provide a miniature or summary view of the other person's screen). In all cases, be sure to maintain consistency of the data. Users should never see spurious or irreconcilable differences.

Session Control A session is a situation where a group of people are in a conversation together at a given time, such as a group of people together in a chat room or people talking together over the telephone. Metaphorically, session control is like a person standing at the door of a room checking IDs and deciding who gets to go in. Floor control, discussed below, is involves what you get to do once you're inside the room. The distinction between the two can be blurry when, for instance, you can look through the window of the room -- in some sense you have access to the room and in some sense you don't. Session control issues include finding out what rooms are available, determining who can enter and exit the room, and when and how. Here are some suggested policies for session control: o o

o

o o o

Decide what limits there are to who can join a session. Are there limits to the number of people or to who is qualified to enter? Allow people to join and leave at any time. Provide a "polite" protocol for doing so. Let people comfortably enter and leave conversations through continuous degrees of commitment and intrusion. Avoid intrusive situations where users are able to invade privacy or impose a session on others (a telephone call is an example of an intrusive session control mechanism -- in the absence of an answering machine or caller ID, a person has no way of determining whether a call is desired or not). Provide a means for preventing interruptions. Facilitate people getting together. Provide mechanisms for identifying appropriate conversational partners. Provide a means for setting up side conferences.

Floor Control Once people have joined a conversational session, it must be decided what kind of access each person has to shared artifacts, or conversational props. For instance, when using a shared whiteboard, can everyone draw on it at the same time (simultaneous access), can only one person access it at a time (by passing a token, or baton), is there a moderator who controls access, and is there a time limit for each person? Simultaneous access by everyone to everything is often preferred for the most fluid conversation, but it can be vulnerable (especially with a large number of people) to just a single non-cooperative person. The advantages to providing some kind of mediated access include preventing mistakes, preventing unauthorized access, and avoiding people making conflicting changes.

10

Of course, some intermediate solutions are also possible. For instance, in the shared whiteboard example, there can be multiple whiteboards. Some may be personal and others shared. Personal whiteboards may be visible to other users but non-editable by other users. This allows everyone to work simultaneously without interfering with the work of others.

Privacy •

•

•

Privacy, Security, and Anonymity Whenever using groupware, some information needs to be shared, and there is a concern that all other information remain private, and that critical information be secure even against aggressive attempts to obtain the information. In many situations, users choose to be anonymous or use a consistent pseudonym. Anonymity can be crucial in encouraging fair participation in discussions and is useful for providing protection from harassment. Sharing Information, Identification, and Accountability On the other hand, there is continuing pressure to share more information. The more information gets shared, the more easily common ground can be achieved. Sharing information about yourself enables many systems to provide more useful customization and matching to your interests. Furthermore, while anonymity can protect an individual, there are also quite legitimate reasons for identifying people for accountability, especially where security and the risk of abusive behavior are involved. Control and Reciprocity To resolve these conflicting needs, it's important to give users as much control as possible over what information gets shared and what remains private. Let users decide how much information to share, and use that to determine what kinds of information they can access. One example of privacy policy is the principle of reciprocity: if a user wants information about another user, then they must provide the equivalent information about themselves. Reciprocity isn't always the right policy, but serves as a useful starting point.

Awareness In addition to explicit communication, such as sending a message or speaking to someone, many group work situations benefit from implicit communication, such as indirect gestures, information about people's environment (whether their office door is open or closed), or biographical information about people in a conversation (what their job position is and what they had for lunch). This information helps people to establish common ground, coordinate their activities, and helps avoid surprises. Awareness information takes many forms. In videoconferencing, simply providing a wide-angle camera lens can provide a greater degree of environmental awareness. In email, simple information about the time and date of the message or the signature file of 11

the sender (i.e. with contact info, company info, etc.) gives context for making sense of the message. Awareness tools can be designed for letting others know when you're in the office or not, letting them know what document you're working on, or how you're feeling at any given time. Obviously, awareness can be at odds with privacy concerns, and as the last previous indicated, it's important to give users control over how much information about themselves is made available to others. This is not entirely a technical design issue, but is an issue we must be aware of as a society -- we will often want more and more information from others, and the social and economic pressure to share this information will increase over time. As a society, we are obligated to be sensitive to when we are asking for too much information and find other ways of achieving our common objectives without compromising individual privacy

12