This paper surveys and evaluates some techniques for eliciting requirements of computer-based systems, paying particular attention to how they deal with social issues. The methods surveyed include introspection, interviews, questionnaires, and protocol, conversation, interaction, and discourse analyses. Although they are relatively untried in Requirements Engineering, we believe there is much promise in the last three techniques, which grew out of ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics. In particular, they can elicit tacit knowledge by observing actual interactions in the workplace, and can also be applied to the system development process itself.

This paper re-assesses the role of real-time video as a technology to support interpersonal communications at distance. We review three distinct hypotheses about the role of video in the co-ordination of conversational content and process. For each hypothesis, we identify design implications and outstanding research questions derived from current findings. We first evaluate the non-verbal communication hypothesis, namely the prevailing assumption that the role of video is to supplement speech, and embodied in applications such as videoconferencing and videophone. We conclude that previous work has overestimated the importance of video at the expense of audio. This finding has strong implications for the implementation of such systems, and we make recommendations about both synchronisation and bandwidth allocation. Furthermore our own recent studies of workplace interactions point to other communicative functions of video. Current systems have neglected another potentially vital role of...

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Common information spaces are often, implicitly or explicitly, viewed as something that can be accessed in toto from one (of many) location. Our studies of wastewater treatment plants show how such massively distributed spaces challenge many of the ways that CSCW view common information spaces. The studies fundamentally challenge the idea that common information spaces are about access to everything, everywhere. Participation in optimisation is introduced as an important feature of work tied to the moving around in physical space. In the CSCW literature, peripheral awareness and at a glance overview are mostly connected with the coordination of activities within a control room or in similar co-located circumstances. It is concluded that this focus on shoulder to shoulder cooperation has to be supplemented with studies of cooperation through massively distributed information spaces.

CSCW researchers have increasingly come to realize that the material work settings and the artifacts that populate them play a crucial role in the seamless and effective coordination and alignment of cooperative work. However, while the central role of artifacts in cooperative work has been recognized and applauded, the concept of artifact as used in CSCW is highly problematic as it often presumes mentalist notions of artifacts as simple vehicles of `information'. This paper is an attempt to depart from these notions. Based upon ethnographic studies of architectural work, we attempt to develop an understanding of the coordinative roles of artifacts which accounts for the multiplicity of artifacts and the complex interplay of particular practices and the specific material forms of artifacts.

Real-time desktop conferencing systems are multi-user computer applications that allow physically distant people to work together in a shared virtual space at the same time. These systems do not yet provide the rich communication and awareness that are possible in a face-toface interaction. One of the elements lacking in desktop conferencing is group awareness - the up-to-the-minute knowledge of other people's activities that is required for an individual to coordinate and complete their part of a group task. This paper describes our initial investigations into computer support for group awareness. We present a framework for thinking about the concept that divides awareness into physical, task, and social environments, and then uses a proximity space to categorise group situations in terms of group awareness. From the framework, we have designed and built several awareness widgets for use in a groupware toolkit. These widgets assist conference participants in staying aware of others' l...

Current personal systems aim to support personal information mangement (PIM) on the move. In this paper I argue that future personal systems should support interpersonal information management (IPIM) involving verbal and written messaging, interactive document use and work-related conversation. Requirements for such support are identified from a video based study of mobile professional work.

CSCW at large seems to be pursuing two diverging strategies: on one hand a strategy aiming at coordination technologies that reduce the complexity of coordinating cooperative activities by regulating the coordinative interactions, and on the other hand a strategy that aims at radically flexible means of interaction which do not regulate interaction but rather leave it to the users to cope with the complexity of coordinating their activities. As both strategies reflect genuine requirements, we need to address the issue of how the gap can be bridged, that is, how the two strategies can be integrated conceptually. In addressing this problem, the paper discusses two general modalities of articulation work --- ad hoc alignment and improvisation on the basis of mutual awareness versus coordination in terms of a predefined flow of work --- and argues that these modalities are seamlessly meshed and blended in the course of real world cooperative activities. On the basis of this discussion the paper outlines an approach which may help CSCW research to bridge the gap.

INTRODUCTION The use of information technology is penetrating a still wider part of human life, linking areas of human life and making different media and technologies converge and dissolve into new ones, broadening the scope of interest for ISD research accordingly. Various academic disciplines deal with issues related to the use and development of information technology: information systems re- search, human-computer interaction, computer supported collaborative work, theoretical compu- ter science etc. As these disciplines are getting more and more intertwined and interdependent the need for an integrating conceptual basis is becoming urgent. The hypothesis behind the present collection of papers is that activity theory is such a suitable theoretical basis. In their recent review of 10 Scandinavian approaches to information systems design, livari & Lyyti nen (1998) point at the strengths and weaknesses of activity theory. For the strengths, activity theory is a promising backgroun

When (re)designing a work environment, tasks or functions are allocated more or less explicitly among humans and between humans and machines. After a brief review and discussion of issues related to task allocation, we argue that an important aspect to be addressed when (re)designing socio-technical systems is the systematic evaluation of the impact of allocation decisions on the overall reliability of such systems. It is contended that the cooperative dimension of such systems is one of the main elements that contribute to this reliability. This claim leads us to present a conceptual framework for modelling the human contribution to the overall reliability of complex cooperative work systems. The framework is characterized here as a set of notions, mainly regulation and shared context, used to discuss and reason about this role of humans in the error tolerance properties of such systems. These notions are demonstrated with different examples derived from empirical studies of work practices in two complex cooperative work settings (air traffic and nuclear reactor control). We then show how this conceptual framework can be used for the evaluation of allocation decisions and more generally to inform design.