One of the most significant developments in computing over the last ten years has been the growth of interest in computer based support for people working together. Recognition that much work done in offices is essentially group work has led to the emergence of a distinct subfield of computer science under the title Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Since the term was first coined in 1984, there has been growing awareness of the relevance to the field of, and the valuable con tributions to be made by, non-computing disciplines such as sociology, management science, social psychology and anthro pology. This volume addresses design issues in CSCW, an- since this topic crucially involves human as well as technical considerations - brings together researchers from such a broad range of disciplines. Most of the chapters in this volume were originally presented as papers at the one-day seminar, "Design Issues in CSCW", held at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), London, on 17 March 1992, one in aseries of DTI-supported CSCW SIG seminars. We would like to express our gratitude to the series editors, Colston Sanger and Dan Diaper, for their useful comments on, and suggestions for revisions to, the final draft of the manuscript; to Linda Schofield, our editor at Springer, for her continued encouragement throughout the preparation of the manuscript; and, finally, to our respective families for their support and patience over so many months.

Dan, is this book going to provide a substantial, coherent and timely contribution to CSCW or is it just going to be a ragbag of papers from several meetings stuck together? The latter, of course, Colston. However, . . . . . . and the "However" was rather long and technical, but not substantially different in overall content from that of this pref ace. Most of the papers contained in this book were initially presented at meetings organized by the UK's Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Special Interest Group in 1991, but the book is not a proceedings, whatever the above quo tation suggests. Readers will immediately notice that, unlike typical proceedings, all the references are placed together at the end of the book and that there is a substantial index: the hall mark of all proper, technical books of quality. If you choose to delve further than this preface, you will find that each chapter is cross-referenced, thus you also gain a coherent structure across chapters - an advantage traditionally associated with high quali ty single-author books. Furthermore, turning apparent disadvantage to advantage, while single-author books must inevitably present the idiosyncratic perspective of their author, in this book, and appropriately for a young area such as CSCW, you will be presented with the views of a dozen CSCW experts who all have considerable, hard-won experience, gained over many years.

Information technology has been used in organisational settings and for organisational purposes such as accounting, for a half century, but IT is now increasingly being used for the purposes of mediating and regulating complex activities in which multiple professional users are involved, such as in factories, hospitals, architectural offices, and so on. The economic importance of such coordination systems is enormous but their design often inadequate. The problem is that our understanding of the coordinative practices for which these systems are developed is deficient, leaving systems developers and software engineers to base their designs on commonsensical requirements analyses. The research reflected in this book addresses these very problems. It is a collection of articles which establish a conceptual foundation for the research area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Esta enciclopedia presenta numerosas experiencias y discernimientos de profesionales de todo el mundo sobre discusiones y perspectivas de la la interacción hombre-computadoras

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Groupware, CRIWG 2003, held in Autrans, France in September 2003. The 30 revised full papers presented together with an invited keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 84 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on workspaces and groupware infrastructure, tailoring, groupware evaluation, flexible workflow, CSCL, awareness, supporting collaborative processes, workflow management systems, context in groupware, supporting communities.

The Second Edition of Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices is a collection of 78 articles that examine the social aspects of computerization from a variety of perspectives, many presenting important viewpoints not often discussed in the conventional literature. A number of paired articles comprise thought-provoking head-on debate. Fields represented include computer science, information systems, management, journalism, psychology, law, library science, and sociology. This volume introduces some of the major controversies surrounding the computerization of society and helps readers recognize the social processes that drive and shape computerization. Division into eight provocatively titled sections facilitates course planning for classroom or seminar use. A lead article for each section frames the major controversies, locates the selections within the debates, and points to other relevant literature. - A fully revised and updated version of the first anthological treatment of the subject - Organized to facilitate course planning for classroom or seminar use - Provides coverage of the influence of computers on a wide variety of fields including computer science, information systems, management, journalism, psychology, law, library science, and sociology

Designing for Networked Communications: Strategies and Development explains how to plan, use, and understand the products and the dynamic social processes and tasks some of the most vital innovations in the knowledge society depend upon? social as well as technological. Focusing on various forms of design, implementation and integration of computer mediated communication, this book bridges the academic fields of computer science and communication studies. Designing for Networked Communications: Strategies and Development uses an interdisciplinary approach, and presents results from recent and important research in a variety of forms for networked communications. A constructive and critical view of the interplay between the new electronic and the more conventional modes of communication are utilized, while studies of organizational work practices demonstrate that the use of new technologies and media is best understood and integrated into work practices. In this process of merging, both are remodelled and rearranged while being adapted to the practices and activities for which they were designed.

Making systems easier to use implies increasingly complex management of communication between users and applications. An increasing part of the application program is devoted to the user interface. In order to manage this complexity, it is very important to have tools, notations, and methodologies that support the designer's work during the refinement process from specification to implementation. The purpose of this proceedings of the first (1994) Eurographics workshop on this area is to review the state of the art. It compares the different existing approaches in order to identify the principal requirements and the most suitable notations and methods, and indicates the relevant results.

The main assumption behind the COOP conferences is that co-operative systems design requires a deep understanding of the co-operative work of dyads, groups and organizations, involving both artefacts and social conventions. The key topic of COOP'2000 was The Use of Theories and Models in Designing Cooperative Systems. Two opposite methodological approaches to co-operative system design can be clearly identified - a pragmatic approach or an approach based on theories and models. Objectives of the COOP'2000 Conference included: clarifying the reasons why one needs or does not need to use a theory or a model for design, comparing the pragmatic and the theory/model-based approaches, and identifying possible joint points between them, discussing the relevance of the theories/models with respect to the design of co-operative systems, to better delimit the respective application fields of the various theories/models, and to identify their possible joint points.