ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 24-28 September 2011, Aarhus Denmark

Frontmatter

Dynamic Self-moderation in a Corporate Wiki to Improve Participation and Contribution Quality

Abstract

Contribution to a corporate wiki for the purpose of knowledge transfer can be very low because of continuously pressing tasks, a chronic lack of spare time, and motivational reasons. This is a problem because the wiki fails to achieve its purpose of collecting valuable knowledge, and becomes less attractive through this over time. We present a reputation-based system that socially rewards employees for their contributions, and thereby increases their motivation to contribute to the wiki. In a four months trial of productive use with two work groups, we could show that our concept increases the quantity and quality of articles in the repository, leads to higher activity in general, and draws employees to the wiki who had not contributed before.

Silviya Dencheva, Christian R. Prause, Wolfgang Prinz

Digital Traces of Interest: Deriving Interest Relationships from Social Media Interactions

Abstract

Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we consume information, allowing the people we follow to become our “social filters” and determine the content of our information stream. The capability to discover the individuals a user is most interested in following has therefore become an important aspect of the struggle against information overflow. We argue that the people users are most interested in following are not necessarily those with whom they are most familiar. We compare these two types of social relationships – interest and familiarity – inside IBM. We suggest inferring interest relationships from users’ public interactions on four enterprise social media applications. We study these interest relationships through an offline analysis as well as an extensive user study, in which we combine people-based and content-based evaluations. The paper reports a rich set of results, comparing various sources for implicit interest indications; distinguishing between content-related activities and status or network updates, showing that the former are of more interest; and highlighting that the interest relationships include very interesting individuals that are not among the most familiar ones, and can therefore play an important role in social stream filtering, especially for content-related activities.

Michal Jacovi, Ido Guy, Inbal Ronen, Adam Perer, Erel Uziel, Michael Maslenko

Studying the Adoption of Mail2Tag: an Enterprise2.0 Tool for Sharing

Abstract

The Mail2Tag system leverages existing practices around enterprise email to move relevant information out from individual inboxes. With Mail2Tag users share information by emailing content to a special email address, such as CC to sometag@share.company.com, where ‘sometag’ can be any keyword. The system then adaptively redistributes the information based on profiles inferred from prior user activity in the system. In this way no changes to the email client are required for users to participate in the system and information is routed based on individual need, while the amount of information noise is reduced. We study the Mail2Tag system and its 20-month deployment in an organization as a lens to understand how to measure the adoption for this type of tool for sharing. We assess adoption via quantitative and qualitative measures and identify key factors that facilitate or constrain adoption. Our findings suggest that perceived usefulness is a key facilitator and that people are drawn to different levels of use depending on their social role in the organization. Each level of use is a valuable contribution in itself and should be accounted for when assessing adoption.

Les Nelson, Gregorio Convertino, H. Chi, Rowan Nairn

Challenges and Opportunities for Collaborative Technologies for Home Care Work

Abstract

This article offers an exploration of home care work and the design of computational devices in support of such work. We present findings from a field study and four participatory design workshops. Themes emerging from the findings suggest that home care work may be highly cooperative in nature and requires substantial articulation work among the actors, such as family members and care workers engaged in providing care for older adults. Although they provide home care for older adults in cooperation, family members and care workers harbour diverging attitudes and values towards their joint efforts. The themes emerging are used to elicit a number of design implications and to promote some illustrative design concepts for new devices in support of cooperative home care work.

Lars Rune Christensen, Erik Grönvall

The Use of Narratives in Medical Work: A Field Study of Physician-Patient Consultations

Abstract

Medical reasoning involves more than just summarizing clinical data and guidelines. Illness trajectories of chronic patients are often long, complex and full of uncertain information that requires interpretation. Understanding the complex interrelations is an important aspect of medical reasoning that displays narrative rather than scientific characteristics. While the qualities of the medical record as a repository of information or as a coordinative tool are well known, the role it plays in the unfolding of narratives in medical reasoning is less discussed. This paper examines this issue through a case study of patient consultations that take place as part of a distributed treatment of chronic heart patients. We found that the record, even though fragmented and to some extent incomplete, enables the physician to construct an ad hoc narrative. During the actual consultation, physicians and patients unfold a more detailed narrative, which we refer to as the re-emplotted narrative, that includes additional information and entails a collaborative exploration of uncertainties. While this may point to some inadequacies of the medical record as a supportive tool for the process of unfolding narrative, we suggest that is it in fact a crucial component of the medical reasoning activity that must be considered in design of supportive systems.

Troels Mønsted, Madhu C. Reddy, Jørgen P. Bansler

The Pendulum of Standardization

Abstract

Cooperation and collaboration are generally an inherent part of everyday practice, and particularly among nurses. However, the technologies that support these practices are still inadequate. In this study, we present and discuss the use of classifications in nursing practice, and highlight the collective re-construction of classifications that emerge over time. Specifically, we study how the negotiation between global classifications and local practice takes place with long-term use, and depict this dynamic interaction as a pendulum movement. Furthermore, we characterize this standardization as a collective re-construction grounded in everyday practice. This paper contributes to the body of research on this topic by doing the following: (i) characterizing the process of standardization as a pendulum movement; (ii) drawing out theoretical perspectives for standardization as a collective, emerging accomplishment; (iii) stating the practical implications of our perspective. Finally, we compare the local adjustment (local classifications) discussed in this study with social classifications (social tagging), and suggest how social classification may lead to increased flexibility in the use of classifications.

Torbjørg Meum, Eric Monteiro, Gunnar Ellingsen

MyReDiary: Co-Designing for Collaborative Articulation in Physical Rehabilitation

Abstract

In this paper we present our exploration of co-designing for supporting a collaborative articulation of rehabilitation process. Based on our reading of key CSCW literature, we describe three facets of a collaboratively articulated rehab process: Interdependence, Distributed Process, and Interoperability. We highlight Magic-Mirror- Spiral, the design ideal guiding the co-designing of MyReDiary that is aimed to support the three facets as an example in this regard. We offer the conceptual understanding of Collaborative Articulation, the Magic-Mirror-Spiral and MyReDiary as a ‘compositional Whole’: an example manifestation providing an enhanced conceptual understanding that is built around our experiences of designing for collaborative articulation in specific design situations.

Naveen Bagalkot, Tomas Sokoler

Relation work: Creating socio-technical connections in global engineering

Abstract

In this article the notion of relation work will be put forward to describe efforts of connecting people and artefacts in a multitude of ways as part of facilitating global interaction and coordination in an engineering firm. Relation work can be seen as a parallel to the concept of articulation work. Articulation work describes efforts of coordination necessary in cooperative work, but, arguably, focuses mainly on taskspecific aspects of cooperative work. As a supplement, the concept of relation work focuses on the fundamental relational aspect of cooperative work. Relation work forms the fundamental activities of creating socio-technical connections between people and artefacts during collaborative activities required to create and enact the human and electronic network and engage with articulation work in cooperative engagements. The concept of relation work is applied within an ethnographic study of War Room meetings in a Global engineering firm. It is argued that relation work is a perquisite for other activities such as articulation work. Relation work is described in a number of dimensions, including connecting people with people, people with artefacts, and artefacts with other artefacts.

Pernille Bjørn, Lars Rune Christensen

Discriminating Divergent/Convergent Phases of Meeting Using Non-Verbal Speech Patterns

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to focus on non-verbal speech information during meeting and see if this information contains cues enabling the discrimination of meeting phases—divergent and convergent phases using decision trees. Group task experiments were conducted using a modified 20Q. The recorded speech was analyzed to identify various utterance pattern features—utterance frequency, length of utterance, turn-taking pattern frequency, etc. Discrimination trials were conducted on groups of friends, groups of strangers, and on both groups together using these features, and discrimination accuracy rates were obtained of 77.3%, 85.2% and 77.3%, respectively, in open tests. These results are quite good, considering that they are based on non-verbal speech information alone. Among the features relating to utterance patterns used in this work, we found that silence frequency and quasi-overlapping frequency were especially effective for discrimination. Our results did not find that group friendliness or task difficulty information contributed to effective discrimination of the meeting phases.

Junko Ichino

“You probably shouldn’t give them too much information” – Supporting Citizen-Government Collaboration

Abstract

This paper discusses the challenge of supporting digitally mediated citizengovernment collaboration in public service provision. With a vantage point in activity theory and the empirical data from three exploratory design cases, we derive a theoretical framework for understanding the way in which citizens share information with government. Through the proposed framework and the notion of Participatory Citizenship, we propose a set of central design challenges to supporting collaboration within this setting. We argue that civil servants and citizens have inherently different foci in the service provision process. Hence, we conclude that the focus of design should not be to support a shared motive for the overall service delivery, but to support a better common understanding of the case process in itself, i.e. the involved actors, their motives, and their mediating artifacts. Moreover, we argue that the aim of technological support for complex collaboration should not be leaner, more rational case processes, but improved citizen involvement in the configuration of service provision and the alignment of actor motives. Lastly, we exemplify how these design challenges can be met by discussing how a concrete exploratory prototype in the form of a web-based timeline addresses collaboration within a complex service provision setting.

Nikolaj Gandrup Borchorst, Susanne Bødker

Theories of cognition in CSCW

Abstract

There are many theories useful for framing CSCW research and they may in principle be irreducible to a single theory. CSCW research explores questions involving numerous distinct—though interacting—phenomena at multiple levels of description. The useful approach may be to clearly distinguish levels such as individual, small-group and community units of analysis, and to differentiate terminology for discussing these different levels. Theory in general has evolved dramatically over the ages, with a trend to extend the unit of cognition beyond the single idea or even the individual mind. Seminal theoretical works influential within CSCW suggest a post-cognitive approach to group cognition as a complement to analyzing cognition of individuals and of communities of practice.

Gerry Stahl

Lest we forget

The European field study tradition and the issue of conditions of work in CSCW research

Abstract

The paper intends to direct attention to the rich and variegated European field study tradition. Focusing on the Francophone ergonomic tradition and especially the German studies of work and working conditions, both based on in-depth field studies in ordinary work settings, the paper attempts to situate these traditions vis-a-vis the research program of CSCW.

Liam Bannon, Kjeld Schmidt, Ina Wagner

Flypad: Designing Trajectories in a Large-Scale Permanent Augmented Reality Installation

Abstract

A long-term naturalistic study reveals how artists designed, visitors experienced, and curators and technicians maintained a public interactive artwork over a four year period. The work consisted of a collaborative augmented reality game that ran across eleven networked displays (screens and footpads) that were deployed along a winding ramp in a purpose-built gallery. Reflections on design meetings and documentation show how the artists responded to this architectural setting and addressed issues of personalisation, visitor flow, attracting spectators, linking real and virtual, and accessibility. Observations of visitors reveal that while their interactions broadly followed the artists’ design, there was far more flexible engagement than originally anticipated, especially within visiting groups, while interviews with curators and technicians reveal how the work was subsequently maintained and ultimately reconfigured. Our findings extend discussions of ‘interactional trajectories’ within CSCW, affirming the relevance of this concept to describing collaboration in cultural settings, but also suggesting how it needs to be extended to better reflect group interactions at multiple levels of scale.

Martin Flintham, Stuart Reeves, Patrick Brundell, Tony Glover, Steve Benford, Duncan Rowland, Boriana Koleva, Chris Greenhalgh, Matt Adams, Nick Tandavanitj, Ju Row Farr

Characterizing Deixis over Surfaces to Improve Remote Embodiments

Abstract

Deictic gestures are ubiquitous when people work over tables and whiteboards, but when collaboration occurs across distributed surfaces, the embodiments used to represent other members of the group often fail to convey the details of these gestures. Although both gestures and embodiments have been well studied, there is still little information available to groupware designers about what components and characteristics of deictic gesture are most important for conveying meaning through remote embodiments. To provide this information, we conducted three observational studies in which we recorded and analysed more than 450 deictic gestures. We considered four issues that are important for the design of embodiments on surfaces: what parts of the body are used to produce a deictic gesture, what atomic movements make up deixis, where gestures occur in the space above the surface, and what other characteristics deictic gestures exhibit in addition to pointing. Our observations provide a new design understanding of deictic gestures. We use our results to identify the limitations of current embodiment techniques in supporting deixis, and to propose new hybrid designs that can better represent the range of behavior seen in real-world settings.

Aaron Genest, Carl Gutwin

VideoPal: Exploring Asynchronous Video-Messaging to Enable Cross-Cultural Friendships

Abstract

Pen pal programs for connecting students from around the world through letter writing have been popular for generations. However, traditional technologies have several limitations in supporting pen pal activities. In this study, we explored the potential of video-based asynchronous messaging in supporting the development of children’s cross-cultural friendships. This paper presents the results of a 2-month study of 30 children from the USA and Greece, exploring their uses of, and experiences with, email and an asynchronous video-based messaging tool we developed called VideoPal. The results from this work highlight the important benefits video provides compared to its text counterpart - email. We conclude with a discussion of the key factors that video enables to benefit the development of children’s long-distance friendships.

Honglu Du, Kori Inkpen, Konstantinos Chorianopoulos, Mary Czerwinski, Paul Johns, Aaron Hoff, Asta Roseway, Sarah Morlidge, John Tang, Tom Gross

Mixed-Initiative Friend-List Creation

Abstract

Friend lists group contacts in a social networking site that are to be treated equally in some respect. We have developed a new approach for recommending friend lists, which can then be manually edited and merged by the user to create the final lists. Our approach finds both large networks of friends and smaller friend groups within this network by merging virtual friend cliques. We have identified new metrics for evaluating the user-effort required to process friend-list recommendations, and conducted user studies to evaluate our approach and determine if and how the recommended lists would be used. Our results show that (a) our approach identifies a large fraction of the friend lists of a user, and seeds these lists with hundreds of members, few of which are spurious, and (b) users say they would use the lists for access control, messaging, filling in friend details, and understanding the social structures to which they belong.

Kelli Bacon, Prasun Dewan

What Are You Working On? Status Message Q&A in an Enterprise SNS

Abstract

Social networking services (SNS) have been deployed within enterprises to encourage informal social interactions and information sharing. As such, users have turned to the status message functionality in a SNS for social information seeking by employing it as a medium for question asking. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study observing emergent question and answer (Q&A) behaviors in an enterprise SNS and then describe user motivations in employing this medium for social information seeking. We report data describing the types and topics of questions asked within the workplace and the prevalence of questions and responses within this system. Results suggest that users choose status message Q&A for non-urgent information seeking needs and perceive question asking as a way to elicit social support from their professional networks.

Jennifer Thom, Sandra Yuen Helsley, Tara L. Matthews, Elizabeth M. Daly, David R. Millen

The Hugging Team: The Role of Technology in Business Networking Practices

Abstract

Technological devices for social networking are produced in droves and networking through media seems to be the way of getting ahead in business. We examine what role technology plays in the creation, development and maintenance of business relationships among entrepreneurs in Copenhagen. We find that mediated communication is useful in all stages of relational maintenance but only in a supportive role in relational development where co-presence and shared personal experiences take center-stage, generating trust necessary for business relationships to work. These trust-developing experiences take effort and hard work and although they can be successfully supported and even facilitated through the use of communication technologies, they need not be replaced or made simpler. The difficulties of creating these experiences make working business relationships viable in the uncertain and risky world of entrepreneurship.

Anne Thorsø Sørensen, Irina Shklovski

Group Crumb: Sharing Web Navigation by Visualizing Group Traces on the Web

Abstract

Although the sharing of Web navigation experiences can be useful, it is not supported by contemporary browsers. The Web has been constructed along the lines of a spatial metaphor, but with a flaw of not being able to share navigation experiences, that is, group traces, as is possible in a physical space. This paper shows that from the viewpoint of Information Foraging Theory, sharing Web navigation experiences among group members can increase their information foraging performance. To verify this, a simple prototype, the Group Crumb Prototype (GCP), has been designed. The GCP visualizes group Web traces by altering the appearance of links on a Web page according to their Group Crumb Scents, which are calculated from the recentness and times of group navigations to corresponding links. A longitudinal user study has been conducted to compare user performance and experience when surfing the Web with and without the aid of the GCP. Results show that making group navigation traces available on Web pages to group members increases their Web information foraging performance, promotes group collaboration, and enhances their Web browsing user experience as well.

Qing Wang, Gaoqiang Zheng, Ya Li, Huiyou Chang, Hongyang Chao

SCHO: An Ontology Based Model for Computing Divergence Awareness in Distributed Collaborative Systems

Abstract

Multi-synchronous collaboration allows people to work concurrently on copies of a shared document which generates divergence. Divergence awareness allows to localize where divergence is located and estimate how much divergence exists among the copies. Existing divergence awareness metrics are highly coupled to their original applications and can not be used outside their original scope. In this paper, we propose the SCHO ontology: a unified formal ontology for constructing and sharing the causal history in a distributed collaborative system. Then we define the existing divergence metrics in a declarative way based on this model. We validate our work using real data extracted from software engineering development projects.

Khaled Aslan, Nagham Alhadad, Hala Skaf-Molli, Pascal Molli

Common Ground and Small Group Interaction in Large Virtual World Gatherings

Abstract

Virtual worlds can allow conversational participants to achieve common ground in situations where the information volume and need for clarification is low. We argue in favor of this assertion through an examination of a semi-structured activity among hundreds of users held in a virtual world. Through the idea of implicit grounding, we argue that the affordances of contextualized space, knowledge of the social occasion, and creative self presentation allowed attendees to achieve common ground in a low information volume, low clarification need activity. We use the success of the event to reexamine and extend Clark and Brennan??s work on grounding in communication.

N. Sadat Shami, Thomas Erickson, Wendy A. Kellogg

Collaboration in Augmented Reality: How to establish coordination and joint attention?

Abstract

We present an initial investigation from a semi-experimental setting, in which an HMD-based AR-system has been used for real-time collaboration in a task-oriented scenario (design of a museum exhibition). Analysis points out the specific conditions of interacting in an AR environment and focuses on one particular practical problem for the participants in coordinating their interaction: how to establish joint attention towards the same object or referent. Analysis allows insights into how the pair of users begins to familarize with the environment, the limitations and opportunities of the setting and how they establish new routines for e.g. solving the ‘joint attention’-problem.

Christian Schnier, Karola Pitsch, Angelika Dierker, Thomas Hermann

Backmatter