Information Systems in the workplace:
Groupware, HCI, CSCW and CMC

This section of the course will examine some of the issues associated with the design of Information Systems for use in the workplace. In particular, it will examine Groupware and how it relates to three high level views that inform certain aspects of Information Systems design: HCI, CSCW and CMC. Some course notes from another course may also be of general interest to students studying this section.

Reading

Books

• See any of the books from the MIS books section

or

• Ehrlich, K., Designing Groupware Applications: A Work-Centered Design Approach, in Beaudouin-Lafon (Ed.), Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Wiley and Sons Ltd, pp. 3-27, 1999.
• Bowker G.C.. Star S.L.. Turner W. and Gasser L. Social Science Technical Systems and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997
• Khoshafian, S. and Buckiewicz, M. Introduction to Groupware, Workflow, and Workgroup Computing, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1995
• Coleman, D and Raman K, eds. Groupware: Technologies and Applications. Prentice Hall, 1995.

Articles

• West M. A., Garrod S. and Carletta J. (1997). Group Decision-Making and Effectiveness: Unexplored Boundaries. In Cooper C.L. and Jackson S.E. Tomorrow's Organizations Wiley pp 293-317
• Edelson D C, Pea R D, Gomez L M (1996), The Collaboratory Notebook, Communications of the ACM, April, 39(4)
• Grudin, J. (1993) 'Groupware and Cooperative Work: Problems and Prospects', in Baecker, R. M., Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, pp. 97-105.
• Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (1982). 'Groupware: the process and impacts of design choices', in Kerr and Hiltz (eds.), Computer-Mediated Communication Systems, Academic Press.

Links

• If you wish to search for additional sources of information, use the MIS links page

• Usability First
  This section provides a general overview of groupware, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and associated design and usability issues.
• Eight challenges for groupware developers.
  This article briefly outlines the origins of groupware, describes eight specific problem areas, and finally examines groupware successes in search of better approaches to supporting work in group settings..
• Groupware - The Changing Environment
  Groupware is an umbrella term describing the electronic technologies that support person-to-person collaboration. Discusses many of the issues fundamental to groupware strategy and success.
• Design Principles for Online Communities
  The key challenges the Internet community will face in the future are the challenges of social interaction and social organization. There is no algorithm for community. Building community is a fundamentally different activity than writing computer code.

• Workspace Awareness for Distributed Teams
  In this paper we will briefly present the research area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and the different basic mechanisms of computer support for workgroup computing.
• CSCW: History and Focus
  This article describes the participation in CSCW research and groupware development. It ties the emergence of CSCW in the 1980s to the growing interest of product developers in supporting networked groups and the discovery of common interests with those working management information systems, as well as with researchers in the social sciences and other disciplines. Differences in emphasis in Europe and Japan are discussed.
• From workplace to development: What have we learned so far and where do we go?
  The development of user and work-oriented system design methodologies has been a central concern for human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This paper surveys workplace studies and offers eight observations about collaborative work.
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work
  Supporting multiple individuals working together with computer systems - a list of web sites and documents compiled by University of Colorado at Denver
• Agent-supported portals and knowledge management in complex R and D projects
  This paper is concerned with organizing knowledge management in complex R and D projects where time is the prime factor. We argue that specific portals developed using groupware technology and products should be augmented by agents in order to increase the overall system reactivity and achieve the global objective, namely to save time.
• Collaboration and Collaborative Information Technology: What is the nature of their relationship?
  Collaborative information technologies have been claimed to enhance collaboration in organizations, under certain conditions. This claim was found to be problematic in several respects. A number of issues emerged in the review that could help in understanding the relationship of collaborative information technologies and changes in work and organization.