These documents are work in progress and are therefore not available directly. Much of the work has been adapted for inclusion in the deliverables. Requests for copies of any of these papers should be directed to Jacqui Forsyth in the first instance.
G. Smith and T. Rodden
LANCS-4-4
The emergence of CSCW has seen the development of a number of applications which simultaneously present a number of interfaces to a community of users. Limited consideration has been given to the provision of facilities that support the configuration and tailoring of these cooperative user interfaces. This paper presents a simple mechanism that enables dynamic support for tailoring user interfaces. Rather than focus on the interface as having been derived from a set of shared objects, we choose to view the problem as one of a shared interface constructed from a collection of interface objects and access to this shared interface. This paper presents an access model and an environment that facilitates the construction and run-time support of cooperative user interfaces.
M. Robinson
SG-4-10
An evaluation of whether or not documents should be regarded as common artefacts, giving overview, peripheral awareness, implicit communication, etc. This is possible within the current generation of "groupware" applications. The paper concludes that it is not desirable.
The Collaborative Desktop: Experience from Designing and Building an Environment for CSCW
KTH-4-16
Based on our experience from developing tools, for and prototypes of a CSCW environment, the Collaborative Desktop, we examine models for CSCW and elaborate on some building blocks for such environments. Designing and building efficient environments for CSCW includes abstraction into understandable building blocks for future support of new tools and extensions. We examine and separate the support into the fundamental components which emerge from considerations of cooperative work.
We classify the need for support into three categories of services: The user interface toolkit, the collaborative services for tool management, messages and real-time communica- tion, and a shared object service that handle the shared object space. This is based on real life cooperative work experience that CSCW systems based on "a shared information space" are attractive as both time and location independent but need to be augmented by direct user communication.
This work is a first atempt to realize parts of the COMIC Shared Object Service into a CSCW environment.
M. Robinson
SG-4-7
Support for work practice is better conceptualised as support for activity taking place in a multidimensional space than as prescription of temporal task sequences. The notion of "common artefact" is introduced to illustrate, unify, and summarise recent research that identifies significant dimensions of cooperative work. Common artefacts may be mundane, everyday objects like hotel keyracks or sophisticated computer tools. Both are multidimensional, in that they provide orthogonal features. They are predictable; help people see at a glance what others are doing (peripheral awareness); support implicit communications through the material being worked on; provide a focus for discussion of difficulties and negotiation of compromises (double level language); and afford an overview of the work process that would not otherwise be available. It is argued that CSCW should support these dimensions of work, rather than trying to anticipate its specific sequentiality.
G. Rodriguez
UPC-4-3
This paper shows a possible solution to design the Resource manager and the Trader into the SOS environment. This is done showing the computational model and the engineering model. To carry out the engineering model, we use the guidelines of the OMT method.
Finally, a first attempt to understand the necessary functionality to scale up these elements inside a co-operative environment is also given by this paper.
L. Navarro
UPC-4-4
This is a brief report of the ICDCS'94 Conference and their SDNE'94 Workshop. An overview of the conference topics and some ideas of interest to COMIC are presented.
The paper "Ecology in Global Distributed Sytems" that was presented in the SDNE'94 session "Collaborative Communications" is included. This paper presents some of the problems to operate a large computer system across different domains, governed by several authorities, without any required central authority. Federation is a mechanism to support that form of government.
This paper describes options, problems and solutions when designing a Resource Manager and a Trader which supports CSCW applications to work on different organisational environments (transportability in terms of the organisational context) and across organisational boundaries (inter-operability across organisational boundaries when members and resources of a group are distributed across several organisations).
M. Robinson
SG-4-12
An informal survey was conducted on uses, and general issues around the UNIX "finger" command. "Finger" was widely used, and considered useful. Some doubts arose because of asymmetry -- one user does not know another has accessed information on them. Automatic notification was generally rejected. It appeared that doubts could be alleviated, and "finger" enhanced by provision of a utility to configure the contents of, and control access to the .plan file. An optional and configurable notification utility might also be useful.
B. Eiderback and P. Hagglund
SICS_KTH-4-15
The main objective of this chapter is to emphasise some essential facilities of the SOS and SIS. We illustrate how to use the services for CSCW applications where users have essentially the same view of the document, have tailored views of the document or interact with different parts of the document. We describe and demonstrate an Interface Builder (IB) prototype, Collaborative Work Interface Builder (CWIB), which enables developers to construct CSCW applications of the three types above. We describe how CSCW applications can be developed with the help of CWIB, and demonstrate how it can be used as a distributed application in its own right, especially for cooperating developers while building or maintaining CSCW applications.
J. Hughes, V. King, J. Mariani and T. Rodden
LANCS-4-8
The cooperative use of information plays a central role in many work settings. CSCW applications require facilities which promote cooperative access to shared information. It is important that these facilities are informed from an understanding of the socially organised nature of document use in work settings. This paper turns to the use of documents as a means of understanding the use of shared information. The pertinent features of documents are outlined before a critical re-examination of a previous field study is presented. Finally some of the facilities provided by a shared object service are outlined. This service has been motivated by many of the observations presented in the field study.
T. Rodden
LANCS-4-5
This document considers how the spatial model can be mapped onto general shared graphs. This paper introduces a mathematical consideration of graph structures. We then consider how we can model the sharing of these general graph structures using concepts drawn from the spatial model. Finally, we consider some potential interpretations of the model.
W. Prinz, T. Rodden, A. Syri and J. Trevor
LANCS-4-7
Within existing infrastructures and platforms the ability to support a diverse range of applications is limited. Most current cooperative applications are unaware of the existence of others and provide few mechanisms for working in conjunction with other applications. This isolated picture sits uneasily with the nature of cooperative work reported from empirical studies. The work presented in this paper attempts to tackle the mismatch between the nature of cooperative work and the models implicit within existing applications. The work described here has taken place as part of the development of an Environment - a distributed system that supports inter-working between heterogeneous applications. The environment is analogous to an operating system and provides a set of management services that allow the location and combination of heterogeneous tools. Our work focuses on support services for including information sharing; providing organisational context; supporting background social interaction; navigation and location; and awareness of on-going activity. It is not directly concerned with specific communication processes or application specific functions. This paper outlines the model of cooperative work and activity exploited within the environment. The work described in this paper has been realised in a number of platforms including COLA (Trevor 1993) which promotes a lightweight model of activity derived from the concepts of workspaces.
A. Bullock
NOTT-4-17
This document describes two systems which have been developed which visualize given information databases. The two systems differ in what they provide - one offers the ability to sort data according to relevence queries issued by the user whilst the other provides a graphical visual front end to hierarchical and graph-based information consisting of nodes and links between the nodes.
The first system is based on the VIBE work and is called VR-VIBE. The second system, called the Mapper, takes a given input file and then displays this visually according to one of a number of algorithms defined within the implementation.
An overview of the ideas and previous work each system is built on is given, together with a description of the system in operation. Screen shots are also provided to give a flavour of the advantages offered by a visualization approach.
J. Mariani and S. Benford
NOTT-4-12
This paper is a follow up to previous working papers on Populated Information Terrains. It contains more analysis and also some details of early prototyping activities.
The concept of Populated Information Terrains (PITS) aims to combine ideas from Virtual Reality (VR) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) to extend traditional database technology. PITS are virtual data spaces which support visualisation of, and cooperative work within, shared data. This paper identifies key techniques for building PITS for various types of database, including multi-dimensional visualisation, statistical approaches, graph drawing techniques and human centred approaches. We then discuss issues concerned with populating such terrains including communication between users, embodiment of users, peripheral awareness of others and its relation to database concurrency control. Finally, we describe a prototype implementation that demonstrates the concept of PITS and which helps clarifies key design issues for future full-scale implementations.
A. Syri
GMD-4-7
The work of the OMG aims at creating a platform that provides software developers and users with the possibility to develop and use integrating software systems. The object oriented approach supports modular production of software and encourages the reuse of code. The next step is to use the concepts for distribution of objects and to provide facilities that make it possible to call remote objects across different operating systems and hardware platforms.
We introducee the concepts of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture and the Object Services that are provided by the OMG.
In a next step we try to map the COMIC SOS services upon the facilities provided by the OMG. Especially event is supported by the concepts of the OMG and could be used for eventing, locking and versioning concepts of the SOS.
M. Robinson
SG-4-8
Analysis of real and complex work situations of the Great Belt bridge and tunnel project in Denmark shows the "asynchronous/synchronous & remote/co-located" distinctions frequently made in CSCW to be seriously misleading for an understanding of the work, the technology, and the design of appropriate CSCW tools. Both a general and an empirical critique are offered. More adequate design tools and distinctions, based on evolving work scenarios triggered by a range of design artefacts, are suggested.
C. Greenhalgh
NOTT-4-19
This document discusses some current issues affecting the spatial model of interaction in a virtual environment, and proposes two extensions to the model . It looks at the two current views of the spatial model and suggests how they can be extended to incorporate non-spatial components. The scope and implementation of adaptors and barriers is discussed. The spatial model implementation in MASSIVE is briefly described and assessed. The addition of a group concept to the spatial model is considered, and the proxy or secondary source concept is suggested. Finally, a possible realisation of awareness calculations is presented.
M. Robinson, A. Clement and I. Wagner
SG-4-11
The objective of the paper is to discuss the possibilities of supporting cooperative health networks by computer technologies. We present the example of the Nicaraguan Health Care System, including a brief case study of an urban, decentralised Health Care network (Kohl et al 1991).
The case is then analysed from three perspectives, relevant to the integration of computer support with concrete medical, para-medical, and administrative practice. We first look at social practices of networking and the dilemmas that arise in an environment characterized by a high degree of risk and instability. The Nicaraguan experience is then translated into a "platform" of technical facilities, general requirements and design principles on which to build adequate communication and cooperation support.
Part three will focus on the importance of fostering local cooperative infrastructures, in particular the need for and emergence of 'local experts' who use the system as part of the ongoing work, but also assume key technical roles, serving as a vital resource in assisting others. The orientation of the paper is to offer helpful insights derived from use experiences in Western industrialized countries.
M. Robinson
SG-4-6
A working paper resulting from the discussions surrounding the Joint COMIC/EuroCODE workshop with Invited Participants, May, 1994, Aarhus University, Denmark.
The discussion in the workshop applied the varied backgrounds of the participants to "social dimensions of large information spaces". As might be expected, and as intended, the perspectives were diverse, and in some cases incommensurable. In this sense, the workshop embodied the CSCW ideal of the articulation of an issue by multiple voices.
L. Fuchs and W. Prinz
GMD-4-6
This paper presents an event distribution model for a computer based cooperative working environment. The proposed model aims to provide information about the ongoing and past activities of collaborating users in the context of their work, based on the semantics and contextual relationships of the shared artefacts. Thus we believe that the proposed model contributes to increase the awareness of the ongoing state of affairs in a group or organization without overloading the user with additional information.
M. Robinson
SG-4-9
Analysis of real and complex work situations of the Great Belt bridge and tunnel project in Denmark shows the "asynchronous/synchronous & remote/co-located" distinctions frequently made in CSCW to be seriously misleading for an understanding of the work, the technology, and the design of appropriate CSCW tools. Both a general and an empirical critique are offered. More adequate design tools and distinctions, based on evolving work scenarios triggered by a range of design artefacts, are suggested.
J. Trevor, T. Rodden and J. Mariani
LANCS-4-6
This paper examines the importance of providing effective management of sharing in cooperative systems and argues for a specialised service to support the cooperative aspects of information sharing. The relationship between features of the cooperative shared object service and existing services is briefly examined. A number of management services of particular importance to CSCW systems are identified. The paper presents a technique of realising a shared object service by augmenting existing object facilities to provide management of their cooperative use. These facilities are realised through object adapters that provide additional cooperative facilities and greater control over the supporting infrastructure.
S. Benford
NOTT-4-18
We present an example PIT called VR-VIBE which is intended to support the co-operative browsing and filtering of large document stores. VR-VIBE extends a visualisation approach proposed in a previous two dimensional system called VIBE into three dimensions, allowing more information to be visualised at one time and supporting more powerful styles of interaction. The essence of VR-VIBE is that multiple users can explore the results of applying several simultaneous queries to a corpus of documents. By arranging the queries into a spatial framework, the system shows the relative attraction of each document to each query by its spatial position and also shows the absolute relevance of each document to all of the queries. Users may then navigate the space, select individual documents, control the display according to a dynamic relevance threshold and dynamically drag the queries to new positions to see the effect on the document space. Co-operative browsing is supported by directly embodying users and providing them with the ability to interact over live audio connections and to attach brief textual annotations to individual documents. Finally, we conclude with some initial observations gleaned from our experience of constructing VR-VIBE and using it in the laboratory setting.