Computer Supported Collaborative Work Systems Research Articles

A framework and prototype system in support of workflow collaboration and knowledge mining for manufacturing value chains

AbstractIn the field of industrial design and manufacture, computer‐supported collaborative work (CSCW) systems have been widely deployed for better teamwork. However, the traditional CSCW systems have a main drawback in effectively processing and utilising knowledge across different industrial workflows. To bridge this gap, we propose a framework for collaboration between members across the manufacturing value chains to increase efficiency and reduce duplication in team cooperation. The framework contains three parts, namely workflow, knowledge mining, and services. Specifically, the workflow part provides a collaborative environment for multiple users. The knowledge mining part, as the core of the framework, extracts in‐context knowledge from workflows. The part of services can interact with users with different users in each workflow, including information recommendation they need in the future or information retrieval they want to know from other workflows. Furthermore, we develop a prototype system for supporting multiple value chains collaboration to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the framework.

The influence of visual feedback and gender dynamics on performance, perception and communication strategies in CSCW

Abstract The effects of gender in human communication and human-computer interaction are well-known, yet little is understood about how it influences performance in the complex, collaborative tasks in computer-mediated settings – referred to as Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) – that are increasingly fundamental to the way in which people work. In such tasks, visual feedback about objects and events is particularly valuable because it facilitates joint reference and attention, and enables the monitoring of people's actions and task progress. As such, software to support CSCW frequently provides shared visual workspace. While numerous studies describe and explain the impact of visual feedback in CSCW, research has not considered whether there are differences in how females and males use it, are aided by it, or are affected by its absence. To address these knowledge gaps, this study explores the effect of gender – and its interactions within pairs – in CSCW, with and without visual feedback. An experimental study is reported in which mixed-gender and same-gender pairs communicate to complete a collaborative navigation task, with one of the participants being under the impression that s/he is interacting with a robot (to avoid gender-related social preconceptions). The study analyses performance, perceptions and communication strategies. As predicted, there was a significant benefit associated with visual feedback in terms of language economy and efficiency. However, it was also found that visual feedback may be disruptive to task performance, because it relaxes the users’ precision criteria and inflates their assumptions of shared perspective. While no actual performance difference was found between males and females in the navigation task, females rated their own performance less positively than did males. In terms of communication strategies, males had a strong tendency to introduce novel vocabulary when communication problems occurred, while females exhibited more conservative behaviour. When visual feedback was removed, females adapted their strategies drastically and effectively, increasing the quality and specificity of the verbal interaction, repeating and re-using vocabulary, while the behaviour of males remained consistent. These results are used to produce design recommendations for CSCW systems that will suit users of both genders and enable effective collaboration.

Using Technology to Facilitate Collaboration in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)

ABSTRACTThis study explores the use of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) technologies, by way of a computer-based system called iCohere. This system was used to facilitate collaboration conducting Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). Data was gathered from 13 members of a Community Collaborative Board (CCB). Analysis revealed that iCohere served the following functions: facilitating communication, providing a depository for information and resource sharing, and allowing for remote meeting attendance. Results indicated that while iCohere was useful in performing these functions, less expensive technologies had the potential to achieve similar goals if properly implemented. Implications for future research on CSCW systems and CBPR are discussed.

2313 CSCWにおけるパラレルコンピュテーション(OS23. 次世代CAD/CAM/CAE/CG/CSCW/CAT/C-Control(3),オーガナイズドセッション講演)

The parallel computation is a wildly used technology in many researches. As a system project, the Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) system also can adopts parallel computation to accelerate the system's performance and device usage. The Web cluster is chosen to realize the parallel computation which is the easiest and most available method to construct the parallel system. In order to improve the system's performance, a new scheduling algorithm named ASAS is involved: meanwhile the GPU is also used as another co-processor based on CUDA. Through the evaluation, we conclude that the web cluster binding CUDA is suitable and efficient in CSCW system.

ECollaboration: On the nature and emergence of communication and collaboration technologies

The past decades yielded fundamental changes to the ways in which value creation is being organized. Globalization and market deregulation motivate businesses to expand into new, often remote markets, which requires them to decentralize and distribute work and often to partner with local organizations, which in turn brings with it changes to the ways in which people need to organize their work (Bleecker 1994). Also, shorter product life-cycles and the pressure to constantly innovate have led many businesses to experiment with new organizational structures (Quinn 1992). This leads to a situation, in which businesses today need to manage numerous external collaborative relationships with other parties in the marketplace (Ebers 1999). Furthermore, traditional internal structures are being broken up in order to give way to more flexible and responsive work setups. The ramifications of these developments are that people increasingly work in dispersed setups and are involved in changing, multi-project setups with others from different organizational backgrounds and geographical sites (Belanger et al. 2003; Lipnack and Stamps 2000; Weinkauf et al. 2004). Hence, since people often do not share the same organizational and physical environments with their direct work associates, they have to rely on technology to create shared virtual work environments. In the above context, eCollaboration as a topic refers to all issues of ICT-based collaborations within and between organizations. More specifically, the term eCollaboration describes practices of communication, coordination and collaboration between people in distributed contexts, such as projects, (virtual) teams, or processes in and between organizations, which are enabled by Information and Collaboration Technology, in essence: eCollaboration systems. Alternative terms exist to describe this class of ICT, such as: Groupware system, CSCW system, Workgroup Computing, Collaborative Software or Cooperation systems. eCollaboration systems have come a long way since the first experimental systems were piloted and spearheaded by the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) research community (Greif 1988; Schmidt 1991; Teufel 1996; Wendel 1996). Today, fuelled by advances in software and in particular Internet technology (e.g. Web 2.0 interface techniques) many new systems and technologies have emerged. However, while technology vendors stress the new possibilities offered by their products for managing collaborations, the realities in distributed projects, virtual teams, and inter-organizational networks quite often paint a different picture. E-Collaboration is a complex, precarious, and too often rather ineffective undertaking. While the resulting (virtual) work environments present manifold managerial challenges, at the same time the respective eCollaboration technologies are still emerging at a fast pace. Computer software and telecommunications technology are increasingly converging to create new integrated eCollaboration platforms, while the K. Riemer (*) The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: k.riemer@econ.usyd.edu.au

Computer-supported collaborative work systems and communication services in healthcare

This paper aims to present the next step of our research on empowering the IPOEE-MED collaborative environment. This is a learning environment developed to facilitate a professor's role while providing medical education to medical students through collaborative settings. Here, we extend its features in order that it can enrich the professor-to-student collaboration with real cases as they apply their knowledge in hospital departments. We call it 'IPOEE-MED plus' as it maintains the main features of our initial web-based tool, adding valuable modules and addressing it to a broader usage. It combines both educational and health-protective purposes in a cost-effective way. The estimated benefits concern all visible and invisible poles of collaboration as the empowered tool we propose can enrich the learning content as well as the in-time evaluation of the learning process. The latter advances a new practice for effective medical treatment by the graduate students while enhancing important theoretical issues of case-based learning.

Designing CSCW system for integrated, web-based, cotton cultivation services

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) systems have attracted the attention of many software implementers on the area of multimedia applications, however very few of them have been used in agriculture. The necessity for using the CSCW environment in agriculture arises from the utilization and the rapid development of modern strategies of plant cultivation. In this paper we present the design of an agricultural CSCW system, which aims to provide integrated, web-based, services for cotton cultivation. Designing and developing such a system is a complex task that requires dealing with a great number of challenges. We focused on a number of important interrelated issues of user profiles, providing an overview and an insight on the way we address them. The proposed framework is intended to contribute to a unified view of requirements of a knowledge management support system by identifying core components and functionalities.

Designing a GIS-Based CSCW System for Development Control with an Event-Driven Approach

Development control in urban planning is a collaborative decision-making process where a group of urban planners and land management staffs review or process the building application(s) submitted by a public agency and private citizen according to predefined regulations and workflow. This paper presents an event-driven approach for designing and developing a GIS-based Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) system for urban development control. This approach attempts to model both the structural and behavioral aspects of the development control process by integrated representation of agents, events, and states as well as their relations. These relations can be represented with UML (Unified Modeling Language), causal entity-relation diagram, and Event Pattern Language-based formal specifications. The integration of heterogeneous spatial and non-spatial data within such a GIS-based CSCW system for development control is also introduced in this paper. A method to link spatial objects and attributes in the multiscale, multitype dataset is proposed. Moreover, three kinds of specific functions are developed for handling routine works of development control, such as office automation functions, desktop spatial data handling and mapping tools, and generic queries.

Listening to users in a manufacturing organization: a context-based approach to the development of a computer-supported collaborative work system

This paper reports the findings of a field research effort to develop a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system in a power tool organization and provides an overview of the features of this system. It presents the customer-driven, context-based methodology that was used to capture the workflow and the critical issues that must be addressed by the CSCW system. It also describes the evaluation techniques and performance measures that were used to compare the resulting system with the existing product development system in the organization. It was found that a combination of ethnographic and human-centered design methodologies is a powerful approach for capturing information about stakeholder needs and using it to develop a CSCW system in such organizations. Through evaluative ethnography it was possible to determine tasks that were feasible and others that were inappropriate for integration into the CSCW system. This methodology also identified issues that hindered the adoption of the CSCW system, permitting strategies for adoption to be proposed that might serve as guidelines to designers of future CSCW systems. Lastly, this development, implementation, and evaluation of a CSCW system in an industrial environment demonstrate its effectiveness to other similar organizations that could benefit from the use of CSCW systems. Relevance to industry This paper describes the development of a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system in an actual manufacturing organization using a human-centered, context-based design methodology. The evaluation of the resulting CSCW system demonstrates the effectiveness of the methodology employed, as well as the potential CSCW systems have to address the needs of product development organizations.

Enhancing CSCW with advanced decision making tools for an agile manufacturing system design application

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) can provide an efficient decision-making environment for multi-disciplinary teams faced with the challenge of evaluating agile manufacturing systems. In this paper, the development and evaluation of CSCW prototypes to aid the systematic evaluation of agile manufacturing systems are described. An industrial case study involving the evaluation of alternative design configurations of a cellular manufacturing system (CMS) for agile manufacturing was used for testing with twelve multi-disciplinary teams. The results obtained suggest that engineering design teams can obtain productivity improvements through the use of CSCW tools. The results indicate that CSCW systems can assist decision-makers in reaching consensus especially when advanced decision making tools are incorporated into the problem-solving framework. In this study, we also found that an enhanced CSCW with a neural network module for preference aggregation outperformed a basic CSCW in: (1) decision quality, (2) users' satisfaction and agreement, (3) consensus. These results also have far reaching implications for distributed product development teams that face the problem of reaching consensus on a range of alternative designs with stringent pressures to reduce development time.

A CSCW system for building reviewing by integrating GIS with OA

The process of urban building reviewing is a collaborative work by a group of urban planning staffs and land managers who are working with different departments of a organization. There are three ingredients for improving the work efficiency, i.e., agile communication and interactive mechanisms, good information, effective processing and visualizing tools. In order to build a computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) system in Urban Planning and Land Administration Bureau in Changzhou Municapality, GIS was integrated with office automation (OA). The workflow and organizational structure had been re-engineered to meet the requirement of application of the new technology. Federated databases were constructed by assembling disparate sources of heterogeneous spatial and attribute data. Easy access to the data by contents was developed for promoting information sharing within the organization. Specific desktop spatial data handling tools were provided for delineating land lots or building layouts on large-scale digital maps. Office automation functions, including applications registering, reasonableness checking, opinions giving and exchanging, were developed and they permit printing and documents filing. The work efficiency in the organization has been improved by introducing the computer-based collaborative building reviewing system.

An integrated CSCW architecture for integrated product/process design and development

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) is increasingly being used by engineering design teams to reach a consensus on a range of design issues. CSCW systems are designed to increase the effectiveness of decision-makers by facilitating information exchange, retrieval, sharing and use. They encourage interactive information exchange and have the potential to reduce diseconomies associated with design activities, member dominance, social pressure, inhibition of expression, and other difficulties encountered by project teams. The use of CSCW is expected to have a favorable impact on the group decision-making process and the quality of the resulting decision. In this paper, a general CSCW architecture has been developed to support integrated product/process design and development will be presented. The architecture has been tested extensively on a representative industrial problem. The case study and evaluation of the architecture will also be discussed in this paper. The integrated architecture will facilitate information access, sharing, and analysis among design teams members using the open World Wide Web platforms and resources to make product/process decisions.

A Context-Based Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of a Computer-Supported Product Development System

This paper deals with the design and development of a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system to support product development, and its evaluation using a quasi-experimental approach in an industrial environment. The evaluation compared the performance of eight different subgroups using the CSCW system with their performance using the existing product development system. Task completion time, non-value added (NVA) time, and certain subjective measures were recorded for each of the two systems tested. Despite their minimal experience with the CSCW system, the subgroups took less time to perform five of the eight tasks with the CSCW system than with the existing system. These time savings were primarily a consequence of a substantial reduction in NVA activities. The mean percentage of total task time devoted to NVA activities dropped from 44% with the existing system to 6% with the CSCW system. Users also rated the CSCW system more favorably than the existing system in terms of the subjective measures.

An Ethnographic Evaluation of a Computer-Supported Product Development System

This paper addresses the evaluation of a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system, designed using a context-based participatory approach, to support product development. The evaluation focused on the effectiveness and acceptance of the CSCW system in its intended use environment. Users were asked to use the system for a period of 60 business days to perform actual product development tasks. The frequency of use of the system and several subjective measures were recorded at fixed intervals during the evaluation. The highest usage was during the fourth (final) period of the evaluation and the lowest usage was during the second. Users tended to agree that the development capability and the potential benefits to the organization of the CSCW system exceeded those of the existing system. The results support the use of a context-based participatory approach to developing features of a CSCW system that meet not only functional needs, but also socio-technical ones. Through the evaluation, it was possible to determine tasks that were appropriate and others that were inappropriate for future integration into the CSCW system. The evaluation methodology also identified issues that hindered the adoption of the CSCW system. Strategies for adoption that deal with these issues are proposed.

The Role of a Group-Centered Approach in the Development of Computer-Supported Collaborative Design Technologies

Collaborative groups, by their very nature, involve the interactions of many participants which can vary in time, place, culture, knowledge, and ability. The design of collaborative technology for work groups must occur in conjunction with the users while avoiding the dangers of technology-centered product development. This paper focuses on applying a group-centered approach to the development of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) products. This approach emphasizes the importance of team members” participation in the design process such that the resulting technology is centered around the users” needs and capabilities. By allowing collaborative groups to elaborate on real issues related to their actual work context, and to suggest specific ways to improve their work, a group-centered approach to the design of CSCW systems can be realized. The utilization of the Advanced Knowledge And Design Acquisition Methodology (AKADAM), consisting of concept mapping and design storyboarding techniques, was suggested as a basis for achieving this level of team participation. The concept mapping technique elicited insights into the collaboration process, identified problem areas, and generated suggestions for improving group work. With the aid of the design storyboarding technique, these suggestions for improvement can be directly translated into CSCW tools.