Groups often rely on the expertise of facilitators to support them in their collaboration processes. The design and preparation of a collaboration process is an important facilitation task. Although there is a significant body of knowledge about the effects of facilitation, there is a dearth of knowledge about the ways in which facilitators design collaboration processes. Increased understanding in this area will contribute to the effective design and use of collaboration support and to the development of collaboration process design support. The research reported in this paper explores the strategies and techniques facilitators use to design a collaboration process, and the aspects of this task they perceive as challenging. We present the results of a questionnaire among professional facilitators. We compare facilitators with different expertise levels to identify challenges in the design of collaboration processes. We discovered that although the activities performed and information used by novices is not very different from expert practices, their limited experience makes them less flexible. When the actual session brings surprises such as different outcomes or conflict, novices cannot easily adapt their designs to accommodate these.
Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach to design and implement sustained collaboration support for collaborative work practices. A collaboration engineer designs a collaboration process and trains a practitioner to execute it on a recurring basis, without further support from professional facilitators. The CE design should be predictable and transferable for successful reuse by the practitioner. The documentation requirements for a CE design are addressed so it can be effectively transferred to practitioners. This documentation or script should contain precise instructions and interventions that the practitioner should make to guide the group in achieving their goals. To detail the requirements for this design document, the authors analyzed the tasks of a facilitator as a basis to derive the tasks of a practitioner. Cognitive Load Theory was used to derive documentation requirements with respect to the CE process design. The authors validated these requirements in an expert validation session and through two case studies.
In homicide investigations, the growing availability of data results in an increasing amount of information and Persons of Interest (PoIs) that can be collected and incorporated during an investigation. This might result in information overload and increased tunnel vision during a homicide investigation. In this paper, we designed a system to support homicide investigations in such a way that it reduces information overload and tunnel vision. For evaluation purposes, we built a prototype that was filled with a fictional homicide investigation. A user study indicated that criminal investigators experienced a significantly low level of information overload and tunnel vision using the prototype. Moreover, the results showed acceptable usability and verbal statements indicated a largely positive attitude towards the prototype. This research clearly shows the opportunity to use interface design artefacts to support the prevention of information overload and tunnel vision.
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