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In the previous section,
we saw a large variety of collaborative applications,
which correspond to different points in the design space of collaborative applications.
It is useful to develop taxonomies to classify these points, for several related reasons:
- Economic Expression:
Typically, there are fewer nodes in taxonomies than there are potential collaborative applications.
Thus, it is possible to develop an economic method for expressing the collaboration design space.
-
Compare/Contrast:
Taxonomies also provide a way to compare and contrast collaborative applications.
Two applications that are in the same class have common features described by the class
and two that are not differ in the properties described by their classes.
-
New Applications:
Taxonomies are often created by dividing the design space into orthogonal dimensions.
By combining points along the various dimensions,
it is possible to come up with new useful collaborative applications.
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Design/Evaluation of Collaboration Systems:
It is possible to design collaboration systems to cover specific classes
described by taxonomies.
In particular,
a taxonomy consisting of a hierarchy of application classes
can be used to identify the object classes in an object-oriented collaboration system.
Conversely,
taxonomies can be used to evaluate/describe collaboration systems by enumerating the
classes of applications they can support.
We have already seen one taxonomy - sess ....
In this section,
we will look at some of other taxonomies proposed in the literature.
These taxonomies are not detailed.
Prasun Dewan
Sun Mar 16 14:19:05 EST 1997