CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Interactive Posters
Criteria for Effective Groupware 2
Mioko Ambe
Human Interface Laboratory, SONY Corporation
134, Goudo-cho, Hodogaya-ku
Yokohama-shi, 240 Japan
+81 45 338 5216
ambe@ptl.sony.co.jp
Andrew Monk
Department of Psychology
University of York
York YO1 5DD UK
+44 1904 433148
am1@york.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The audience of a panel at CHI'96 in Vancouver submitted 61 forms suggesting
criteria for the design of effective groupware. The suggestions made were
analysed for common themes that are summarised here. The poster also presents
an opportunity for participants at CHI'97 to contribute to this discussion.
Keywords
Groupware, criteria, design.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
INTRODUCTION
Criteria for effective groupware have been suggested by many CSCW researchers.
Grudin's influential papers [2, 3] focus on the work that groupware is designed
to support. He suggested that groupware products may add to the work people
have to do, without any commensurate personal benefit to their other work
activities. The products may not respect the subtle social and organisational
constraints that govern the way the work is done or allow the flexibility
required due to differing perspectives on the work. This emphasis on the
work leads to criteria such as "personal benefit" and
"flexibility".
Cockburn and Jones [1] go on to suggest some techniques for minimising
individual
costs and adding benefits. In addition, they draw attention to the mutual
relationship between the effort required to adopt, perceived benefit and
the number of people who have already adopted, the so-called "critical
mass" problem.
These themes also emerged in the panel presentations held at CHI'96 in Vancouver
[4]. Many researchers, designers and users have their own criteria for effective
groupware and so the panel went on to ask the audience for their opinions.
The audience contributed by completing a form. This asked them for: (i)
a name for their criterion; (ii) an example of the problems that arise if
the problem is not met, and (iii) examples of the kinds of inventions, features
or strategies that can meet this criterion. 61 forms were received. We have
since gathered together and categorised the suggestions made in these forms
and they can be viewed at the web site referenced at the end of this paper.
This poster is to explain the categories identified and to invite further
suggested criteria. Forms will be provided and displayed as they are filled
in.
CRITERIA
First we divided the suggestions into three broad categories: a) critical
mass (3 forms); b) individual and group benefit (42 forms), and c) minimal
user effort (16 forms).
The three forms concerned with critical mass pointed out its importance.
One went on to suggest that facilities are required to cope with poor
connectivity
while critical mass is still being achieved. So, for example, a system should
indicate if a message is sitting in a mailbox unread because the recipient
does not access his email.
The bulk of the suggestions were in the other two categories, they are discussed
below.
Individual and group benefit
The first three topics, realism, task fit and awareness are all concerned
with facilitating smooth communication, i.e., benefit for communicating
individuals. The next has to do with benefit for individuals as individuals,
and the last with benefit for the group or organisation.
Realism - like "being there" (14 suggestions)
By mimicking well understood modes of communication one can tap skills people
already have. Realism can also reduce anxiety. To make this work, groupware
tools should be integrated, transparent, invisible and seamless. Using a
metaphor of real world communication, and offering some useful reference
which can be shared by each participant can also help to make it like
"being
there". One way that groupware products are not like being there is
that spontaneous communication is difficult.
The problem with realism as a design principle is that it is difficult to
achieve. When the metaphor breaks down the user will have problems i.e.,
realism may raise unrealistic expectations.
Task fit (6 suggestions)
Groupware should be developed from an analysis of the work to be supported.
For example, imagine a work situation where participants join and leave
a discussion at different points. In a text-based conference, the participants
may be able to see a record of the conversation, thus giving context to
current contributions. This is an example of a very artificial method of
conversation but one that has value because of a particular work situation.
An understanding of the work may make it possible to provide effective
conversational
props, additional visualisations or shared artefacts.
Awareness (7 suggestions)
Awareness is important for grounding in communication. You need to know
who has done what work, who is dealing with whose work now, what other
participants
can see (What You See Is What I Think You See), and so on.
Benefit for the individual (6 suggestions)
To encourage people to use groupware products there needs to be enough benefit
for the individual. If people can produce the same quality of work using
a conventional way of communicating they will not use the groupware. For
example, a meeting scheduler might have a reminder function that makes it
valuable as a calendar regardless of whatever else it does.
It was also suggested that groupware should be "amazing" and
"inspirational".
Facilitation of social control (9 suggestions)
The radical development of information technology causes some antisocial
behaviour. In order to avoid such behaviour it is necessary to allow the
group to regulate itself. The alternative, enforcing particular policies,
often causes more problems than it solves.
Some constraints on what people can do may be necessary. Security of information
is often a problem. People generally do not want other people to be able
to monitor their personal work. Users need to be able to trust the system,
to be sure messages are going to the intended recipients and not to anyone
else. Sometimes one might want anonymous communication for brain storming
and exchange of opinion.
Minimal user effort
Many of the guidelines for ensuring usability in single user systems apply
also to groupware. Each of the four topics below has been suggested as a
criterion in that context. However, they have a special force when applied
to groupware because the user is not just communicating with the controls
for the software but also with some other person. This makes the users of
groupware less tolerant of usability problems than the users of single user
systems.
Easy to access or start up (2 suggestions)
If groupware products are to be widely used and to continue being used,
then they should be easy to access and start up. Because of the inherent
complexity of the technology, and the many individual components that have
to be linked up, this is often not the case. Users will not use the product
if they can communicate more easily some other way.
Easy to learn and operate (5 suggestions)
Groupware should be easy-to-use for all. This includes, novices, experts,
children and groups other than office workers. If it is perceived to be
difficult to operate it will not be used, particularly if the outcome of
the work is poor.
If users need a lot of time to learn how to operate the groupware, it will
not be widely adopted.
Easy to Customise (5 suggestions)
Groupware must be suitable for each user and group and should be tailorable
for each member of the group, by providing different views and controls.
This may mean that preferences have to be recognised independently of the
location the user is at. Also, each group will have its own demands and
way of working, and groupware must accommodate this. Of course, choice is
a cost and customising a system may be hard to do or hard to learn to do.
Every effort needs to be made to make this easy or else to design groupware
that copes with broad user demands.
Quality and Speed (4 suggestions)
Groupware technologies are still being developed. Also, many organisations
do not yet have the broad-band networks required for quality communications.
These two factors mean that quality is often an issue. If users want to
talk to somebody urgently, they need synchronous and speedy communication,
but often they get a slow reaction from a machine. Another problem is image
quality. Ideally "What You See Is What I See" but if network
communications
are poor, this will not be the case. Systems must scale up appropriately
as usage increases.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
This poster is to invite participants at CHI'97 to contribute to the discussion
started at CHI'96. The display board is divided into areas corresponding
to the topics described above, and an additional "other" category.
Each has a brief explanation and participants are invited to add an A5 form
suggesting a new criteria in one of these areas. Alternatively, participants
may add comments on the criteria already suggested by writing a post-it.
The framework described here, with the original suggestions made by the
audience at CHI'96 are available at
http://www.york.ac.uk/~am1/GrpwrCrit/Criteria.
The new criteria garnered at CHI'97 will be added to these pages.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the period of this work Mioko Ambe was a visiting researcher at York
University, UK and Andrew Monk was supported by the UK ESRC Cognitive
Engineering
Programme. We would also like to thank Jean Scholtz for her encouragement
and help with the web page.
REFERENCES
1. Cockburn, A. and Jones, S. Four principles of groupware design. Interacting
with Computers, 7 (1995), 195-210.
2. Grudin, J. Groupware and cooperative work: problems and prospects. In
The art of human computer interface design, Laurel, B., Ed., Addison-Wesley:
New York, 1990, 171-185.
3. Grudin, J. Groupware and social dynamics: eight challenges for developers.
Communications of the ACM, 37 (1994), 93-105.
4. Monk, A.F., Scholtz, J., Buxton, B., Frohlich, D., Bly, S. and Whittaker, S.
Criteria for effective groupware. In Human factors in computer systems,
CHI'96, Conference Companion, ACM, 1996, 157-8.
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Interactive Posters
