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Supporting Groupware with Awareness Information

By Annette Haeussler, SAP AG – September 12, 2002

German version

As interpersonal collaboration becomes ever more distant in terms of geography and time, the important role played by social interaction becomes more evident. In an electronic application designed to facilitate team collaboration (groupware), it is important that users be given a workspace that enables them to collaborate in a way that is as true to life as possible. It is simply not enough to give users access to the different objects on which they need to work. If, for example, different people need to work on the same document, it is crucial that each person knows whether or not another person is working on a new version of that document. One goal should be to generate awareness for the collaborative activities that take place in the group. In specialist literature, (group) awareness is the term used to denote concepts where information on collaborative activities in a group is made visible to the individual when he or she works with the system.

 

Definition of "Awareness"

The term "awareness" implies that something has been perceived and understood. Following on from this, Dourish and Belotti define awareness as "an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context of your own activity" [Dou92]. In other words, awareness enables an individual to perceive up-to-date information or occurrences that are triggered by the presence, activities, and availability of persons, or changes to objects, and it enables the individual to act accordingly on the basis of this perception.

 

Example: The Value of Supporting Group Awareness

In many groupware systems, however, it is difficult – indeed, it is often practically impossible – to determine which individuals are currently in the same workspace, where exactly in the workspace they are, and what they are doing there. This is partly due to the fact that the groupware systems in question can only provide a fraction of the awareness information that a face-to-face workspace provides. Another reason is that interaction in an electronic workspace inevitably generates much less information than a real-life, physical workspace. Furthermore, most groupware systems do not even present all of the awareness information that could be made available, even if this information is limited.

The following example illustrates the problem. A shared whiteboard system allows two people to work on the same image at the same time. The changes that one person makes are copied to the other person's computer so that both people's workspaces contain the same object. If both people are able to scroll up, down, and across, it can happen that each person has a different view of the object, and that there is actually only a small degree of overlap between the two views (as shown in figure 1). In this situation, one could hardly say that either person is truly aware of the other's activity.

Scrollbares Whiteboard

Figure 1: Scrollable Whiteboard

In such a case, even the smallest piece of additional information regarding the other person's actions would constitute an improvement in the collaboration between the two. Figure 2 illustrates how a mutual understanding of the overall context can be facilitated if each of the two people is aware of the other's activities, and can adjust his or her own activities accordingly.

Scrollbares Whiteboard mit minimaler Verbesserung der Wahrnehmungs-Funktion

Figure 2: Scrollable Whiteboard with a Slight Improvement of the Awareness Function

Awareness of the activities of others, then, is needed in order to coordinate joint activities, enable the effective use of shared company resources, and facilitate spontaneous communication.

 

Basic Elements of Awareness

Gutwin [Gut01] presents a set of basic elements that are central to awareness (see also figure 3).

Categorie Awareness Elements Relevant Questions
Who? Presence Is anyone in the workspace?
Identity Who is participating? Who is it?
Authorship Who does this?
What? Action What are the other doing?
Intention What is the goal of the action?
Object What object are the others working on?
Where? Location Where are the others working?
Line of vision What are the others looking at?
View What can the others see?
Sphere of influence What can they access?

Figure 3: Awareness Elements in Relation to the Present (adapted from Gutwin [Gut01])

Those involved in face-to-face activities are aware (be it consciously or unconsciously) of all these basic elements. This does not mean, though, that a developer should treat all elements in the same manner. Two factors influence the decision as to which elements should be addressed, and how this should be achieved. The first of these factors is the degree of interaction between participants that an activity generates, and how specific or general the information on the user interface needs to be. The second factor is the dynamics of the element (how often information changes), which is an indicator of how often the interface needs to be updated.

 

Filtering Awareness Information

If people were presented with all the awareness information available to them, they would be overloaded with a great deal that was irrelevant to them. For example, an employee does not need to be aware that 1,000 other employees are online at the same time when he or she is actually only interested if one particular colleague is online because he or she has a question for this colleague. That is why it is necessary to set up suitable functions for filtering awareness information.

Choosing Important Information Subjectively

The awareness information that an individual requires from a system to carry out his or her work is called the grade of coupling. Not everyone in a groupware system needs the same awareness information. Their requirements can be very different, not just regarding working methods but also according to personal preferences. There is a difference between coupled and uncoupled awareness. Coupled awareness is based on the current focus of the person's work. He or she receives information about the occurrences that are significant to his or her current task. Uncoupled awareness is when people receive awareness information regardless of their current place in the workspace or their tasks.

In an awareness model, Rodden explains the dependencies of users in a shared workspace using a spatial metaphor in the form of a virtual meeting place [Rod94, Rod96]. In this model, the term nimbus describes the place where a user is within the workspace (possibly several). Focus, however, describes the place the person is looking at. The nimbus and focus of a user in a workspace can be used to describe how and whether users are actually aware of each other. The intensity of awareness that person A has for person B can be described by the degree of coverage between nimbus A/focus A and nimbus B/focus B. Figure 4 shows the nimbus/focus model.

Nimbus/Focus-Modell

Figure 4: Nimbus/Focus Model

The type of occurrence, its effects on people's work, and the point in time when the occurrence takes place are critical factors for the useful notification of occurrences in groupware systems. If people are connected to too many or the wrong occurrences, there are unnecessary interruptions in the workflow and/or an overload of information. However, if the grade of coupling is too low, there may be misunderstandings. Consequently, a groupware system needs to not only provide information about occurrences but also give people control over the occurrence about which they want information. This means people need to be able to specify beforehand about the occurrences (which are subjectively important to them) that they want notification of to realize an ideal grade of coupling and awareness.

Choosing the Intensity of Communication

Depending on their subjective importance to individuals, they can receive notification of new occurrences in a variety of ways. Up-to-date information about important changes can, for example, be very obviously communicated in a pop-up message. Less important occurrences but that are still of interest to people can be less intrusively communicated, for example by a change in the color of an icon or by a short message in the status bar. A whole host of notification methods are feasible – they can be put to use where they are most effective.

In general, the likely degree of awareness increases with the intensity of the notification method. Sound cues, though, are a special case. Despite their rather low intensity, their likely degree of awareness is very high. The downside to sound cues is that they cannot be clearly assigned to a particular occurrence because various applications can all use sound cues. They also disturb other colleagues working in the same room. Moreover, people with hearing difficulties may not be aware of them at all. Sound cues are therefore often used in conjunction with other notification types and can usually be switched off.

 

Filtering Awareness Information

From a technical angle, the provision of awareness information comprises three separate yet codependent steps. First, the information is gathered, then distributed, and finally communicated. The entire process surrounding the provision of awareness information only works when all steps take place.

Each of these steps can act as an information filter by providing the information that resulted from the previous step - not all information that exists actually has to be gathered, distributed, or communicated as well.

One person can be an occurrence source and an occurrence recipient. If he or she makes changes in a system and these are shared with others, he or she is an occurrence source. If, on the other hand, he or she "consumes" occurrences triggered by others, he or she is an occurrence recipient.

If somebody wants to filter the occurrences that he or she triggers, the term to denote this is privacy. If a user only want to be notified of particular occurrences that others have triggered, the term used is individualization or personalization.

Filtering Status Information for the Occurrence Recipient (Individualization)

Usually, users do not want to be informed of every single occurrence (logging on to the system by each individual colleague, changes to every single document, and so on). Instead, they prefer to choose which information is useful to them at that point in time (for example, logging on to the system by a colleague who could be of help or the updating of a document that is important to them).

To make this possible, people need flexible methods of being informed of occurrences that are of personal interest to them. This also necessarily includes people choosing the type of occurrence communicated, the communication method, and the grade of coupling.

Filtering at the Occurrence Source (Privacy)

Without a filter at the occurrence source, all information concerning one user and his or actions would be available to anybody who wanted it. This of course offers the occurrence recipient the highest level of transparency possible but is not necessarily the intention of the person at the occurrence source, whose privacy is taken away. The conflict between wanting all relevant information to be available and preserving privacy often results in a balancing act. To offer the best possible protection, people at the occurrence source must have the option of providing personal data only to people or groups that they have personally selected. Furthermore, they need to be able to identify at all times who currently can see what aspects of their personal data and in what context.

 

Summary: Supporting Awareness Through Groupware

The unstructured presentation of all information without a decision about its subjective importance can, as already mentioned, lead to an information overload.

One of the main difficulties of deploying awareness mechanisms - protecting privacy - also requires flexible filter functions. After all, people do not readily let other people peer over their shoulder at what they are doing and do not like sharing all their personal information to the same extent with everyone.

It is important that users know and can specify what other people can see of what they are doing. That is why they need to be able to control what information other can get from them. In order to protect people, it is important that, even for the inexperienced, the setting of filters is easy and self-explanatory.

 

References

 

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