CS 160 Lecture 19 Professor John Canny Spring

CS 160: Lecture 19 Professor John Canny Spring 2004 3/3/2021 1

CSCW: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 4 Its about tools that allow people to work together. 4 Most of the tools support remote work * video, email, IM, Workflow 4 Some tools, e. g. Livenotes, augment local communication. 3/3/2021 2

Asynchronous Groupware 4 Email: still a killer app 4 Newsgroups: topical messaging 4 Structured messaging: e. g. Workflow – messages carry data, route automatically. 4 Cooperative hypertext/hypermedia authoring: e. g. swiki 4 Knowledge repositories: Answergarden, Mad. Sci. Net, Autonomy 3/3/2021 3

Workflow 4 Documents carry meta-data that describes their flow through the organization: * * Document X should be completed by Jill by 4/15 Doc X should then be reviewed by Amit by 4/22 Doc X should then be approved by Ziwei by 4/29 Doc X should finally be received by Don by 5/4 4 The document “knows” its route. With the aid of the system, it will send reminders to its users, and then forward automatically at the time limit. 3/3/2021 4

Knowledge repositories 4 Answer. Garden (Ackerman): database of commonly-asked questions that grows automatically. 4 User poses question as a text query: * System responds with matches from the database. * If user isn’t satisfied, system attempts to route query to an expert on the topic. * Expert receives query, answers it, adds answer to the database. 3/3/2021 5

Wither Email? 4 There is a lot of research on “Email++” * Automatic organization * Task management * Other functions: contacts, reminders 4 Multimedia email: Can include sound, video, images. * But who really does this? * May be important for developing economies. 3/3/2021 6

Extensible Groupware: Lotus Notes 4 Notes is a product that combines standard office software (email, calendar, contacts etc. ) with a scriptable database backend. 4 Easy to create new apps: PERT charts, novel workflow, custom shared authoring… 4 “most successful groupware system to date” 3/3/2021 7

Synchronous Groupware 4 Desktop Conferencing (MS Netmeeting) 4 Electronic Meeting Rooms (Access Grid) 4 Media Spaces (Xerox PARC) 4 Instant Messaging 3/3/2021 8

Video 4 Eye contact problems: * Offset from camera to screen * “Mona Lisa” effect 4 Gesture has similar problems: trying pointing at something across a video link. 3/3/2021 9

Sound 4 Good for one-on-one communication 4 Bad for meetings. Spatial localization is normally lost. Add to network delays and meeting regulation is very hard. 3/3/2021 10

Turn-taking, back-channeling 4 In a face-to-face meeting, people do a lot of self-management. 4 Preparing to speak: lean forward, clear throat, shuffle paper. 4 Unfortunately, these are subtle gestures which don’t pass well through today’s technology. 4 Network delays make things much worse. 3/3/2021 11

Breakdowns 4 Misunderstandings, talking over each other, losing the thread of the meeting. 4 People are good at recognizing these and recovering from them “repair”. 4 Mediated communication often makes it harder. 4 E. g. email often escalates simple misunderstandings into flaming sessions. 3/3/2021 12

Usage issues 4 Our model of tele-communication is episodic, and derives from the economics of the telephone. 4 Communication in the real world has both structured and unplanned episodes. Meeting by the Xerox machine. 4 Also, much face-to-face communication is really side-by-side, with some artifact as the focus. 3/3/2021 13

Solutions 4 Sharing experiences is very important for mutual understanding in team work (attribution theory). 4 So context-based displays (portholes) work well. 4 Video shows rooms and hallways, not just people or seats. 3/3/2021 14

Solutions 4 Props (mobile presences) address many of these issues. They even support exploration. 3/3/2021 15

Solutions 4 Ishii’s Clearboard: sketching + presence 3/3/2021 16

Solutions – Outpost (Berkeley) 4 Post-it capture system for web site design. 4 For collaboration, add pen traces and user shadows (to add awareness). 3/3/2021 17

Outpost Implementation 3/3/2021 18

Break 3/3/2021 19

Face-to-Face: the ultimate? 4 It depends. 4 Conveys the maximum amount of information, mere presence effects are strong. But… 4 People spend a lot of cognitive effort managing perceptions of each other. 4 In a simple comparison of F 2 F, phone and email, most subjects felt most comfortable with the phone for routine communication. 3/3/2021 20

Face-to-Face: the ultimate? 4 Kiesler and Sproull findings: * Participants talk more freely in email (than F 2 F). * Participation is more equal in email. * More proposals for action via email. * Reduced effects of status/physical appearance. 4 But * Longer decision times in email. * More extreme remarks and flaming in email. 3/3/2021 21

Face-to-Face: the ultimate? 4 Kiesler and Sproull found that email-only programming teams were more productive than email+F 2 F teams in a CS course. 4 There you want coordination, commitment, recording. 4 Conclusion: Match the medium to the mission 3/3/2021 22

Grudin: Eight challenges for CSCW 1. Disparity between those who benefit from the App, and those who have to work on it. 4 e. g. secretary uses calendars to schedule meeting, but others must maintain calendars. 2. Critical mass, Prisoner’s Dilemma * Need full buy-in to automate scheduling, similarly with Lotus Notes. 3/3/2021 23

Grudin: Eight challenges 3. Disruption of social processes: * people are flexible, adaptive, opportunistic, improvisors, sometimes imprecise. 4. Exception Handling: * People react to interruptions or exceptions and dynamically re-plan what to do. Most software doesn’t plan, so exception-handling must be anticipated and pre-programmed. 3/3/2021 24

Grudin: Eight challenges 5. Unobtrusive accessibility: * Group features should complement individual work functions, and be easily accessible 6. Difficulty of evaluation: * Collaborators add uncertainty! Hard to isolate the parameters you want to study. WOZ can help. 3/3/2021 25

Grudin: Eight challenges 7. Failure of intuition: * Group processes (and social psychology) are often counter-intuitive. This leads to mistakes both by adopters and designers. 8. The adoption process: * Very hard to get people to voluntarily change their habits. Incentives are often needed. Otherwise follows a (slow) adoption curve. 3/3/2021 26

Beyond communication 4 How can computers assist cooperative work beyond communication? 4 Can they “understand” conversation? 4 Speech-act based systems like the Coordinator attempted to do so. 4 General understanding is too hard. But business communication is mostly about propose-accept-acknowledge sequences. 3/3/2021 27

Coordinator 4 The Coordinator was a system that tried to track these speech acts. Users had to specify the type of each utterance (email message). 4 The experiment failed, it was too constraining. 4 But it was reborn as Workflow. 3/3/2021 28

CSCL: Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 4 Sub-area of CSCW concerned with learning and collaboration. 4 Peer interaction is a powerful source of learning, especially in universities. 4 Three powerful models: * TVI, DTVI: recorded instructor, team review * Peer instruction: pauses for group discussion * PBL: Problem-based learning, team problemsolving 3/3/2021 29

Summary 4 Asynchronous groupware: email, newsgroups, workflow, swiki, knowledge repositories. 4 Synchronous groupware: desktop, conference room, media spaces. 4 Issues with videoconferencing. 4 Alternative systems for remote presence. 4 Face-to-face vs. email 4 Grudin’s 8 challenges for CSCW 4 Beyond communication: smart groupware 4 CSCL 3/3/2021 30