Abstract not found

this paper, I review the history of HCI as steps toward a science of design. My touchstone is Simon's (1969) provocative book he Sciences of the Artificial. The book pre-dates HCI, and many of its specific characterizations and claims about design are no longer authoritative (see Ehn, 1988). Nevertheless, two of Simon's themes echo through the history of HCI, and still provide guidance for charting its continuing development

This essay compares activity theory (AT) with distributed cognition theory (DCOG), asking what each can do for CSCW. It approaches this task by proposing that theories – when viewed as conceptual tools for making sense of a domain – have four important attributes: descriptive power; rhetorical power; inferential power; and application power. It observes that AT and DCOG are not so different: both emphasize cognition; both include the social and cultural context of cognition; both share a commitment to ethnographically collected data. Starting with a description of the distributed cognition approach, it uses an example of a DCOG analysis to ground a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of AT and DCOG as an approach to issues in CSCW. Finally, the essay considers what theoretical work is being done by the attributes of the respective theories, and whether AT, DCOG, or any theory developed outside the context of group work, will work for CSCW.

Context appears in Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a challenge for the coming years as shown by the various scientific events focusing on context held since 1995. However, context is already considered in other domains, such as Natural Language Processing, although through few aspects of context. We present in this paper a survey of the literature dealing directly and explicitly with context whatever the domain is. This permits us to have a clear view of the context in AI. One of the conclusions of this survey is to point out the existence of different types of context along knowledge representation, the mechanisms of reasoning on the knowledge, and the interaction of the computer system with humans.

Studies of video as a support for collaborative work have provided little hard evidence of its utility for either task performance or fostering telepresence, i.e. the conveyance of a faceto-face like sociat presence for remotely located participants. To date, most research on the value of video has concentrated on “taLking heads ” video in which the video images are of remote participants conferring or performing some task together. In contrast to talking heads video, we studied video-as-data in which video images of the workspace and work objects are the focus of interest, and convey criticat information about the work. The use of video-as-data is intended to enhance task performance, rather than to provide telepresence. We studied the use of video during neurosurgery within the operating room and at remote locations away from the operating room. The workspace shown in the video is the surgical field (brain or spine) that the surgeon is operating on. We discuss our findings on the use of live and recorded video, and suggest extensions to video-as-data including its integration with computerized timebased information sources to educate and co-ordinate complex actions among distributed workgroups.

Abstract. Activity theory is based on the concept of tools mediating between subjects and objects. In this theory, an individual’s creative interaction with his or her surroundings can result in the production of tools. When an individual’s mental processes are exteriorized in the form of tools – termed objectification – they become more accessible to other people and are therefore useful for social interaction. This paper shows how our understanding of activity theory has shaped our design philosophy for groupware and how we have applied it. Our design philosophy and practice is exemplified by a description of the BUILD-IT system. This is an Augmented Reality system we developed to enhance group work; it is a kind of graspable groupware which supports cooperative planning. The system allows a group of people, co-located around a table, to interact, by means of physical bricks, with models in a virtual three-dimensional (3D) setting. Guided by task analysis, a set of specific tools for different 3D planning and configuration tasks was implemented as part of this system. We investigate both physical and virtual tools. These tools allow users to adjust model height, viewpoint, and scale of the virtual setting. Finally, our design practice is summarized in a set of design guidelines. Based on these guidelines, we reflect on our own design practice and the

This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding how intercultural communication, mediated by cultural artifacts (i.e., Internet communication tools), creates compelling, problematic, and surprising conditions for additional language learning. Three case studies of computer-mediated intercultural engagement draw together correlations between discursive orientation, communicative modality, communicative activity, and emergent interpersonal dynamics. These factors contribute to varying qualities and quantities of participation in the intercultural partnerships. Case one, "Clashing Frames of Expectation--Differing Cultures-of-Use, " suggests that the cultures-of-use of Internet communication tools, their perceived existence and on-going construction as distinctive cultural artifacts, differs interculturally just as communicative genre, pragmatics, and institutional context would be expected to differ interculturally. Case two, "Intercultural Communication as Hyperpersonal Engagement, " illustrates pragmatic and linguistic development as an outcome of intercultural relationship building. The final case study, "The Wrong Tool for the Right Job?, " describes a recent generational shift in communication tool preference wherein an ostensibly ubiquitous tool,

this paper, we propose Anselm Strauss' (1993) Theory of Action as a candidate from which to evolve a framework to ground an understanding of work for the following reasons: (1) it already exists as a coherent, related set of abstractions - a big picture - which makes the social more accessible, and provides a background against which other concepts from CSCW can be mapped or be seen to complement; and (2) it provides analytical leverage for systems developers who do not have a social science background nor the services of a social science team member. In the second section, we propose that insights from Strauss' work on the importance of structural conditions for social world (cooperative ensemble) interactions can help us to view support systems in a new role as setting/ locale for cooperative work interaction, thus providing a bridge between the social and the technical. We then provide a brief overview of WORLDS, a locales-based environment we are building concurrent with our theoretical exploration. Action, Social Worlds and CSCW

Although PDAs typically run applications in a "standalone " mode, they are increasingly equipped with wireless communications, which makes them useful in new domains. This capability for more powerful information exchange with larger information systems presents a new situated context for PDA applications, and provides new design and usability evaluation challenges.

Collective behaviour is often characterised by the so-called "coordination paradox": Looking at individual ants, for example, they do not seem to cooperate or communicate explicitly, but nevertheless at the social level cooperative behaviour, such as nest building, emerges, apparently without any central coordination. In the case of social insects such emergent coordination has been explained by the theory of stigmergy, which describes how individuals can effect the behaviour of others (and their own) through artefacts, i.e. the product of their own activity (e.g., building material in the ants' case). Artefacts clearly also play a strong role in human collective behaviour, which has been emphasised, for example, by proponents of activity theory and distributed cognition. However, the relation between theories of situated/social cognition and theories of social insect behaviour has so far received relatively little attention in the cognitive science literature. This paper aims to take a step in this direction by comparing three theoretical frameworks for the study of cognition in the context of agent-environment interaction (activity theory, situated action, and distributed cognition) to each other and to the theory of stigmergy as a possible minimal common ground. The comparison focuses on what each of the four theories has to say about the role/nature of (a) the agents involved in collective behaviour, (b) their environment, (c) the collective activities addressed, and (d) the role that artefacts play in the interaction between agents and their environments, and in particular in the coordination of cooperation.