Supporting social awareness @ work design and experience

Abstract

During the last year we have been designing and studying a computer based tool intended to strengthen social group awareness within a research laboratory. While awareness has been a subject of previous research it is still unclear how it should be conceptualized and how it can be provided for a CSCW system. In order to investigate this, and hence to attempt to create a system that would gain acceptance in the user community, we have been using a mixture of user-centered and participatory design methods. This paper presents the design process, the resulting system as well as users' comments on it. Based on all this, issues related to awareness are discussed and ideas for further studies are suggested.

Learning Environments

“…This social knowledge is essential because we can act according to their situation; for example, if a participant is sick maybe we should save the discussion for another day (Tollmar, Sandor, & Schmer, 1996).…”

Groupware Integration in Virtual Learning Teams

“…The need for 'knowing if people are available in a synchronous perspective' is thus not an issue. Therefore, our concept of social awareness differs, from Tollmar et al (1996) and Dourish and Bly (1992), which both focuses on a synchronous context. The awareness concept used in this paper can be defined as asynchronous social perspective awareness -here just referred to as social awareness.…”

Designing for awareness : from an experience-focused HCI perspective

“…Here awareness is seen to be supported by facilitating informal chat and discussions between remotely located colleagues, providing an idea of what is going on at the other end and supporting other social interactions in an informal way. More recently, awareness technologies for work environments such as @Work [235], Kandinsky system [75], Hermes [38], Elvin [71], Ambient Agoras [224] have been developed to convey information about co-workers' presence, their on-going activities and their personalized messages. The scope of technology design is broadening with the growing interest and need to support personally meaningful, authentic, sociable and rich everyday experiences.…”

“…Some of the early examples of awareness systems focused on conveying instrumental and productivity-oriented information such as co-workers' presence [54,181], activity levels [187], their constant updates [235], availability [115] and privacy concerns [180]. In fact, Gross and colleagues' [94] comprehensive review on 'awareness in CSCW' focuses on the very productivity and task-based issues of work environment.…”

“…Most awareness systems developed to support the work environments focused on the very aspect of productivity in users' everyday work life. For example, in some recent examples of awareness systems [166,190,235] awareness is supported through indications of the presence of colleagues, availability of their biography, their project descriptions, information about their daily schedules and office calendars.…”