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So what specifically are the problems solved by this
research?
Let us look at some of the problems have driven the research in collaborative
systems.
We will first look at some specific areas and them some
general tasks that could benefit from collaborative systems.
Areas
- Writing:
Documents of all kinds - papers, proposals, brochures, etc -
are often coauthored,
and manually managing a coauthoring process, specially when the
coauthors are distributed,
is generally difficult.
Collaborative applications can
allow distributed co-authors to easily observe and
comment on each others' activities
and help ensure the consistency of the document.
- Business Management:
As mentioned before,
businesses require teamwork to be successful
and are often distributed.
Collaborative applications can enable managers in distributed businesses
to make better
group decisions [],
follow business processes [],
and monitor
the status of ongoing projects.
- Software Engineering:
Every phase of software engineering -
requirements analysis,
design,
coding,
testing,
and maintenance,
requires collaboration,
and software development is rapidly getting distributed.
Collaborative applications can
help distributed software engineers share the results of
software development tools such as debugging and
testing tools []
and to follow software processes [].
- General Engineering:
The benefits of collaborative software engineering extend to the general
area of computer-aided engineering design/manufacturing,
thereby allowing what is known as ''just-in-time'' engineering.
Of particular interest here are distributed collaborative VR interfaces for
simulating real-world
objects being engineered such as ships/automobiles [].
- Collaboratories:
The National Science Foundation has developed the vision of
distributed collaboratories,
allowing geographically-dispersed scientists working together on
national/international projects
to exchange results in a timely
fashion and monitor and discuss data gathered from remote
instruments [,,].
- Education:
There is increasing interest in distance education,
especially in sparsely populated areas.
Collaborative applications can enable distance
education by allowing teachers to lecture to
students in remote sites,
lab assistants to consult with remote students.
and
distributed students to collaborate with each others.
- Medicine:
Collaborative applications can enable telemedicine,
and possibly even telesurgery [],
improve the communication among medical personnel and
ensure that proper medical processes are followed.
- Air Traffic Control:
One of the trickiest coordination problems is air-traffic control.
Collaborative applications can allow air-traffic controllers
and pilots to view upto date status information regarding the positions
of aircrafts.
- Command and Control:
Similar problems arise in military command and control operations,
and collaborative applications can support planning and monitoring
of these operations.
- Games/Social Interaction:
As mentioned earlier,
CSCW is not only about supporting work - it includes other
forms of interaction such as playing games and,
perhaps more importantly,
interacting in informal meeting places [,,].
Tasks
As we shall see later,
the nature of a collaborative application often depends on the task
it is supporting.
Therefore,
it is important to identify some of the important collaborative tasks that
could benefit from computer support.
- Design:
One of the most collaboration-intensive phases in the building
of a product is its design,
be it the design of an assignment,
a software module,
or an aircraft.
Collaborative applications can help in this task by allowing users to
brainstorm,
make decisions,
and create outlines of final products.
- Implementation:
In comparison to design,
the implementation of a product, in general,
requires less communication among the
developers of the product,
as each developer,
typically,
works individually on a piece of the product.
However,
in this phase,
it becomes more important to provide computer support to
prevent/cure inconsistent concurrent
interaction.
- Inspection/Review:
Research in software engineering has shown that collaborative
inspections
of design, code,
and other software documents is an effective mechanism for finding faults.
Collaborative applications can,
therefore,
help distributed users browse and annotate documents,
categorize faults, and follow appropriate
inspection processes.
They can be used not only for inspecting software documents but other kinds
of important documents such as legal documents.
- Consulting:
In the course of solving a problem,
the problem solver often requires the help of a remote expert.
For instance,
a medical examiner trying to identify the cause of an injury might
need the help of a remote pathologist who is the word expert on that
particular kind of injury [].
Similarly,
a student might need the help of a remote lab assistant,
a general practitioner might need the help of a remote specialist,
and a person debugging a software module might need the help of a
remote author of the module.
Collaborative applications can help facilitate such remote consultation,
allowing the problem solver to demonstrate the problem to the expert
and receive advice.
This is a brief and superficial discussion of the CSCW problem space,
which is still a matter of research.
Later,
we will discuss in more detail parts of this space when we look at
various collaboration taxonomies, applications, and experience.
At this point,
what is important to observe is that there are a large variety of
areas/tasks can benefit from
the ability of collaborative applications to both allow distributed collaborators
to feel they are colocated and to automatically provide facilities such as
consistency control, categorization of faults, and decision making.
Next: Systems
Up: Views of Collaboration
Previous: Views of Collaboration
Prasun Dewan
Wed Aug 25 15:24:31 EDT 2004