Awareness for Groupware Design

Luis A. Guerrero, César A. Collazos, Rosa Alarcón, José A. Pino{luguerre, ccollazo, ralarcon, jpino}@dcc.uchile.cl,

Departament of Computer ScienceUniversidad de Chile

AbstractFor effective cooperative work, participants need to be updated on the events and informed about what other users and their activities in their workspace. This kind of information is called awareness and it is an important research aspect in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) area. To create and define awareness mechanisms in collaborative environments supported by computers is a complex process that includes several steps that need to be considered. This paper presents a review of awareness models proposed in the literature from a Software Engineering perspective, es decir, focalizando los aspectos que deben ser tomados en cuenta para diseñar e implementar mecanismos de awareness en las herramientas de groupware.

Keywords: Awareness, CSCW, Groupware design and implementation.

1. Introduction

The evolution of information and communication technologies as well as the increased availability of computer networks in the recent decades has created new scenarios for interaction between people. The impact of this evolution has affected organizations success not only by automating their processes and increasing their quality, but also by supporting complex communication among their members beyond restrictions of time and space. Conversely, this evolution has also influenced the creation of new business models and complex environments where organizations can be spread around the globe or include contingent work teams composed by experts, telecommuters and mobile work forces. The area of research that studies the impact of technology on group interaction in order to facilitate group work is known as groupware [Elli91]. Groupware systems create a virtual shared space where group members share artifacts, objects and self-representations. Group members interact with each other either through the manipulation of those artifacts or through direct communication channels [Schl98].

In order to support a collaborative activity, group members need to keep updated about the state and changes of the virtual shared-space and the actions that other group members are doing. This kind of information is roughly called “Awareness1 information”. Although not fully understood, awareness is a complex cognitive process that allows human beings to perceive and understand their environment or immediate context and adapt to it [Gagn93]. In groupware, Awareness is a mechanism that provides contextual information2 about past activities, present state, and future options of their virtual environment, triggering the cognitive process described before [Shol99], so that group members can perceive the state and changes of their virtual shared space.

By being aware, individuals can plan their own actions and acquire new information [Neis76]. In particular, awareness allows increasing the opportunities of mutual communication and thus, eases the coordination and cooperation tasks [Dour92]. Hence, Awareness has become an important factor in the design of distributed computer-supported cooperative systems as a way to reduce the workers’ meta-cognitive efforts [Palf96], ease the transition from individual work to group work [Gave91], make work more natural and fluid [Gutw98], reduce the additional workload of coordination [Dour92], and reduce effort duplicity and work integration [Fars01].

1 From now on “Awareness” with capital “A”.2 Who, where, how, why, when and what [Gut99], [Abo00].

Despite its perceived benefits, Awareness is often addressed in an ad-hoc manner or neglected at all in many groupware systems [Acke95]. This situation is one of the aspects that may have contributed to the less than optimal acceptance of groupware system in actual working environments [Grud88]. Schmidt [Schm02] provides us a plausible explanation: the initial aim of Awareness was to emulate the apparent seamless alignment of group members’ actions when working in face-to-face settings. Then, Awareness was defined according to the different strategies used by researches to obtain such result. As a consequence, there is not a consensual definition of Awareness, nor a systematic body of principles, guidelines for design or frameworks for evaluation.

However, across the more than 10 years of research, we can find some useful differences and similarities: some research is related to identify what kind of information is useful to provide [Prin99], others are interested in the mechanism to provide such information [Fuch95], while others are interested in the final representation of such information [Gutw96]. This paper presents a review of the state of the art of awareness for collaborative systems from a Software Engineering perspective. El objetivo de nuestro paper es que un desarrollador de aplicaciones colaborativas comprenda qué es awareness, qué tipos de awareness hay, cómo se implementan mecanismos de awareness en una aplicación de groupware, y cuáles tipos de awareness pueden ser más útiles según cada tipo de herramienta.

Falta indicar acá la (nueva) estructura del paper.

2. Awareness in groupware systems

The word awareness (noun) corresponds to the subject aware, which comes from the conjunction of two english words “ge” (associative prefix) and “wær” (wary). Aware means “to having or showing realization, perception or knowledge” and is associated with the “vigilance in observing or alertness in drawing inferences from what one experiences”3. Although not fully understood, an interesting insight from neuroscience could explain the underlying process: awareness can be understood as the ability to direct one’s attention to specific aspects of the environment, selecting among a range of perceived stimuli and storing the selected stimuli into working memory (WM) [Char00]. Because this process have a longer duration than any other cognitive process (probably hundreds or thousands of milliseconds), the stimuli stored there remain active and has the chance to be integrated together (forming “cognitive representations”) causing the arise of complex thought.

Human awareness is strongly related to the WM, but also to “attention”, by changing their focus of attention, human beings are able to understand different aspects of the reality. Finally, representations in WM are stored in long-term memory and recalled through a conscious or automatic re-evocation process. This way, human beings interpret perceptual information based on their experience (perception) and give them meaning [Gagn93]. Awareness in human beings allows them to perceive, understand and adapt to their environment or immediate context [Smit95]. Studies from social science arrive to a similar concept; awareness is understood from the cues of human behavior but is also related to an understanding of different social aspects of their immediate context [Shel93, Tott98].

Groupware systems create a virtual environment that, to some extent, escapes from the natural restrictions of time and space. Here, Awareness can be understood as the mechanism that provide, to group members, contextual information about past activities, present state and future options of the shared virtual environment in order to trigger the cognitive process described before, so that users can perceive and understand what’s going on in their shared environment and adapt their behavior according to it [Sohl99, Dour92]. Naturally, Awareness will mirror reality with different degrees of accuracy [Gils95, Adam95], and its effects on group members will depend on the type of information provided and how the information is actually provided (that is, if it is effectively provided).

The Awareness mechanism involves at least three stages (Fig.1). First, recollecting awareness information, this requires determining what type of contextual information needs to be captured (e.g. project related, users’ availability, etc). It is important to consider how to model such information (i.e. as events, actions, discourse items, etc.) and how to capture the information (i.e. echoing events to a separate awareness mechanism, putting events in a dispatch queue, etc.). Second, determining the distribution strategy; it requires specifying propagation policies (e.g.

3 Excerpt from Merriam Webster On Line.

broadcast, unicast, etc.) and privacy issues. Finally, the information needs to be rendered in user interfaces so that the user can perceive it and become aware of it, at this point it is necessary to take into account issues such as cognitive overload, interruption, preferences, etc. [Sohl99, Stei99].

Fig. 1 Three stages of Awareness mechanism

In Fig. 1, a virtual shared space (the central ellipse) is composed of shared objects (O 1, O2, O3, O4, O5). A user action over an object (O3) generates one or multiple events (i.e. a new object, O5, is created). Events are propagated to the other group members and adapted according their characteristics (i.e. different devices, different interest).

On the other hand, as Schmidt [Schm02] reminds us, the purpose of providing awareness information to group members is to facilitate the seamlessly alignment of their actions. However, up today there is not a full understanding of which are the key aspects when creating such seamlessly alignment. Some argues that social factors, timeliness in presenting changes, serendipitous encounters or a full designed and controlled environment could help in achieving this objective. In any case, the design of the Awareness mechanism must incorporate such hypothesis along the three phases early described. This approach would facilitate the hypothesis evaluation and would help us to find general and practical design guidelines for reuse.

2.1. Awareness in CSCW

The growth of computational environments, makes the “awareness” topic important, not only in the area of the CSCW but in single environments as well. In single user environments, it is also important to understand the reasons why a system changes. Since all these changes are, in general, caused by the own users, awareness of such changes depends on the capability of the user interface for providing feedback, a very well understood topic in the area of HCI: the operations that are not completed immediately would have to provide some feedback about the activities of the system (e.g. a sand clock to show that the system is still working). In CSCW, a big difference is made: the activities of other group members change the state of the system, such changes may be unexpected or its rationale may be ignored.

Awareness has been a topic in the CSCW area (see [Lauw90, Beau92, Pank94]). In the CSCW literature it has been emphasized for a long time that an effective and efficient cooperation requires that the individuals have information about others presence, availability, actions and shared artifacts among other things [Eric00, Dani01].

2.2. Awareness en CSCL

A diferencia de CSCW, donde lo más importante es el resultado final del trabajo grupal (el producto), en Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) lo más importante es el aprendizaje de cada miembro del grupo (el proceso). Esta diferencia es de crucial importancia a la hora de diseñar e implementar aplicaciones de groupware en cada una de estas áreas.

In CSCL, awareness is also very important for the effective learning, and plays a major role in the way that learning environments create natural and efficient collaboration opportunities [Ogat00]. Goldman identified three types of students' awareness: social, task and conceptual awareness [Gold92]. Gutwin et al., proposes also awareness of the work space [Gutd95]. Yamagami & Seki have proposed knowledge awareness [Yama93] that provides background

to the cooperative activities with increased emphasis on sharing an organization know-how. Ogata & Yano have defined awareness of the knowledge [Ogat96], while Collazos et al. have defined a scheme of awareness of knowledge construction [Coll02].

There is ample empirical evidence that cognitive processes necessary for deep learning and information retention occurr in dialogues. Field observations of group learning, however, show that asynchronous Distributed Learning Groups utilizing CSCL environments often lack the needed social interaction [Hall97]. Consequently, the implementation of new eduactional paradigms such as Collaborative Learning, Social Construction of Knowledge and Competence-Based Learning often fails here.

Kreijns et al. suggest two major pitfalls that impede achieving the desired social interaction in CSCL environments [Krei02a]. These two pitfalls are:

Social interaction in the groups is taken for granted simply because CSCL environments allow it. Many instructors and educators think that because socila interaction is easy to achieve in contiguous learning groups, this will also occur in Distributed Learning Groups as well.

Social interaction in Distributed Learning Groups is often restricted to cognitive aspects of learning, ignoring/forgetting that social interaction is equally important for developing a learning community in a social space characterized by trust and belonging, characteristics necessary for open dialogues and reinforcement of social interaction. Wegerif [Wege98] noted that forming a sense of community, where people feel they will be treated sympathetically by their fellows, seems to be anecessary first step for collaborative learning. Without a feeling of community people are on their own, likely to be anxious, defensive and unwilling to take the risks involved in learning.

Motivated by recognizing these pitfalls, Kreijns et al., study how to foster and enhance social interaction in Distributed Learning Groups and the social (psychological) dimension [Krei02b]. There are mny articles dedicated to knowledge representation and ways to make it explicit in design environments [Nuna01].

The rest of the paper refers to this definition of Awareness and attempts to analyze the considerations that arises when designing such mechanism: what information should be provided (awareness taxonomy), where can we obtain such information (contextual sources), how to provide it (distribution and rendering), and how to give users control of their information as well as issues like reciprocity, privacy and interruption.

3. Awareness information sources

Awareness is related with the provision of contextual information. In broader terms context can be defined as “ the interrelated conditions in which an event, action, etc. takes place”4. Because this definition is too general, researches have tried to determine which is the situation at hand and then, which conditions must be considered as part of the context. Brézillon et al. [Brez04], proposes that context can be described at different levels or grains of specificity: it could describe the project (i.e.: awareness of documents, projects, and processes), the group (i.e.: location and status of the members) or the individual (i.e.: availability). Regarding group contexts, Haake [Haak00] suggests that at a high level of abstraction a virtual shared space is composed by three main components that are: content, team, and process structure. By been aware of them, group members could align their future actions properly.

Considering these approaches as a framework of analysis we have defined a taxonomy for context information sources (Table 1), and reviewed and classified xx different research papers on awareness taking into account our taxonomy. We found that many researches provide some structure to these groupware elements (people, tasks and resources). The structure would capture work context and by becoming aware of such structure, group members may develop interaction strategies such as coordination, cooperation, communication and collaboration in such a way that the final interaction will be non obtrusive. Others focus on the possible states of groupware elements. Generally, a state describes a condition the element holds (i.e., a user is busy), a stage (i.e., a document is under revision) or an

4 Excerpt from Merriam Webster On Line at http: // www.m-w.com

emotion (i.e., a user is angry). By becoming aware of such states, users can determine the appropriate action to follow-up under the current circumstances or context.

Table 1. Taxonomy of contextual information sources

Level Component Attribute Supports Research

1. Group

1. People

1.Structure

Social norms,Conventions,Roles.

Organizational awareness [Gutw96], social awareness [Ogat97], social networks [Well97], group structural awareness [Cock99], conventions [Mark02].

2.State

Availability,Activity,Emotions.

Informal awareness [Gree95, Dour92, Fish93, Gree96], emotional awareness [Garc99], presence [Bego02].

3.Location

Presence,Distance,Visibility,Space-Place.

Workspace-location [Gutw99], casual encounters [Gree96], informal awareness [Fish93], presence [Dour92], co-presence [Ijss03].

4.Actions

Events,Distortion (aggregation, animation, etc.)

Workspace-actions [Gutw99], active knowledge awareness [Ogat00], real-time distributed widgets (distortion) [Gutw96], action awareness [Carr03].

5.Activity

Activity, Goals.

Activity awareness [Carr03], situation awareness, contextual awareness [Ends04], workspace-activity [Gutw22].

2. Task orproject

1.Structure

Process planning

Workflow [Work04], contextual awareness [Fuch95], process awareness [Stei99]

2.State

State-based workflow

Workflow [Work04], interaction-states [Jerm01], process awareness [Stei99]

3. Resources

1.Structure

Spatial,Semantic

Workspace-objects [Gutw99], Common Information Spaces [Bann00, Ostw96, Redd01, Suth95].

2.State

Availability

3.Location

Resource discovery,Availability

Context-aware computing [Dix00], resource awareness [Espi00], knowledge awareness [Ogat00], semantic distance [Chen99], common interests [Sumi01]

2. Individual   (Not in our research focus)

Some researches focus on a simplified view of location. However, from a broader perspective a user or a resource can be located inside or outside the virtual shared space, but in both cases, there are some concepts strongly related with such “location”: presence or the psychological sense of “being there” [Ijss03]; co-presence or the psychological sense of “being together” [Ijss03]; distance among group members (e.g. physical, social, semantic, etc.); proximity, conceived as a small distance among group members and visibility [Nova04]. Other related concepts are space and place. A place differs from a space because it is “invested with understandings of behavioral appropriateness, cultural expectations, and so forth” [Harr96]; people context differs depending on whether they are in a theatre or in a park. While these perspectives (structure, status and location) are referred to more “static” attributes of groupware elements (people, task and resources), we can represent the dynamic aspects by means of actions and activities. An action is seen as an act performed by a purposeful agent, while an activity includes a series of actions that can be meaningful. An activity is seen as the minimal piece of contextual information [Carr03]. We discuss each attribute below; provide some examples and the names of the research areas where such topics are covered.

3.1. Levels 1 and 2: Awareness of Group and Individual contexts

It has been long recognized that requirements for individuals are different than those needed for groups (e.g. navigation, artifact manipulation, view representation [Gutw98]) and that people moves back and forth individual and group interaction modes [Gree98, Gutw98a, Dour92, Cock99, Bake01, Tang91]. But even when working in a group assigned task, group members self-organize their ideas, thoughts and criticisms in isolation; they need to keep private information and a personal agenda. However, they also need to become aware of some restrictions imposed by their shared environment (e.g., restrictions such as deadlines), that is, their group context affects group members’ individual context (e.g., users need to update their personal agenda). Conversely, when working together they create and shape their group context based on their individual context (i.e. a proposal, contributions, knowledge and personal experience) [Brez04] (See Figure 2).

Fig.2 Mutual influences between group and individual context (Adapted from [Brez04])

Once they decide to work together, they can do so in a loosely coupled fashion (e.g. asynchronously) or in a tightly coupled way [Sch98, Salvador96]. In every scenario the degree of relevance of group context depends on the coupling of their interaction: the more coupled the interaction, the more attention is directed to the task and the more relevant becomes the group context. We can see that individual and group work, are edges of a spectrum instead of two opposite working modes (See Figure 3).

Fig.3 Interaction modes spectrum

Naturally it would be incorrect to refer to “grupal awareness” because awareness is an individual’s cognitive process; what happens is that individuals are aware of their group context (i.e. project related information) or their individual context (i.e. the place where they are located), and as we can see both contexts interact and shape each other. We can understand the group context as the interconnected conditions related to group activities that are shared by the group members.

3.2. Component 1: People

People Structure: Control, Responsibility and Conventions. People organize themselves in different organizational structures (e.g. hierarquical, subgroups, communities, etc.). These arrangements are represented and generate roles,

responsibilities, social norms and protocols. Some researches had acknowledged the usefulness of such structure awareness: group members regulate their interaction facilitating the coordination, cooperation and collaboration by means of developing explicit or implicit conventions or protocols [Mark97, Mark02, Gru94, Pos93]. However, such structures change overtime (people are assigned to new roles), they can be formal and very detailed as in a workflow [Bot01], informal as communityware or social networks [Well] or created in an ad-hoc fashion as users act [Rode00]. The provision of this information has been researched under the terms of social awareness [Oga97], organizational awareness [Gut96] or group structural awareness [Cock99].

3.2.1. People State: Availability, activity and emotions.When referring to people state, most research focus on recognizing users’ availability and presence, through direct observation by means of always-on audio and/or video connections [Ad94, Bly93, Fish93, Soh94], or by users explicitly indicating their public status or availability through icons [Jang00, Green95]. Indirect strategies are less user demanding but exploit historical data in order to determine patterns of presence [Bego03, Bego02], attendance [Hor02, Mynn16] or activity [Bego03].

Another interesting state is the emotional state. Emotions have been described as complex organized states consisting of cognitive appraisals, action impulses, and patterned somatic reactions [Laza80]. Others describe them as physiological states of human body. The awareness of those states would allow humans to evaluate social information through analogies and become the basis of communication [Char00]. This way, by being aware of other’s emotional states, group members can adjust their interaction and develop social strategies [Char00], such as approaching a colleague, assess and tune his or her performance during exams [Gar99]. By being aware of their availability and presence, group members can engage in casual interaction or informal (not pre-arranged) interaction. Related research is also known as “emotional awareness” [Gar99] and informal awareness [Dour92b].

3.2.2. People Location: Closeness, presence, availabilityPeople location has been studied in CSCW with the aim of facilitating teammates to develop a sense of community and understanding of their situation, so that users can adapt their actions according to it. For instance, they can decide to approach a group member (casual interaction), or ask him for help is the user is close. They can decide how to contact him (e.g. by calling to the phone at the office where he actually is), etc. or postpone an interruption. Research in this area is known as “workspace location”, “casual encounters”, “social awareness”, “presence awareness”, “informal or presence awareness”, referred to inform about user’s location for facilitating informal encounters, “situation awareness” that provides unstructured information (e.g. video) so that remote colleagues can develop a sense of community and understand the user situation. Of course, issues related to privacy, security and social acceptance are particularly relevant in this approach [Pal03].

3.2.3. People actionsActions reflect the things done by a person, or the accomplishment of a thing usually over a period of time, in stages. Awareness of actions performed by other group members can allow a user to make informed decisions about his or her own work, can provide timely help to their teammates, avoid collisions or misunderstandings [Gutw96] and monitor the project progress and the involvement of his teammates in the global work. This last characteristic is particularly important for distributed groups because it facilitates group members to trust on each other [Jav99]. Research in this area is known mainly as awareness of workspace-actions [Gut96], and active knowledge awareness [Oga00].

3.2.4. People activity: The minimal contextual unitA shared activity can be decomposed into smaller inter-related tasks, assigned to collaborators, and later combined to achieve the higher-level goals. Users perform various actions corresponding to specific tasks. The problem is that actions do not convey enough information to be meaningful. Consequently, additional information must be provided for disambiguating actions and allow coordination. Conversely, an activity can be seen as a set of purposeful actions performed by individuals or collectivities, that have a goal or object, are mediated by tools, and are situated in a broader context (e.g., work practices, culture, organizational structures, interpersonal relations) [Kuu92]. Activities are considered as the minimal piece of contextual information. Activity awareness implies an awareness of other people’s plans and understandings. Activity awareness includes higher-level information on the goals, plans, and progress of a group of collaborators [Carr03]. Activity awareness depends on knowledge of what one’s collaborators are doing, rather than what a symbolic model says they should be doing. For instance, Begole

[Bego02] collects users’ actions (keyboard/mouse, reading/sending e-mail) in a workplace, for obtaining temporal, rhythmic patterns of users’ activity and presented such patterns to work teams visually. A glance to such curves is enough to determine if it is a good idea to interrupt a colleague or when could be a good day to fix an appointment.

By being aware of the activities that take place in the shared environment, users can get and maintain an overview of the ongoing interaction while working together [Carro03], face eventual breakdowns and contingencies. Research in this area is known as situation awareness, defined informally as ‘‘knowing what is going on around you’’ [End00], context awareness, awareness of others’ activity, activity awareness, workspace-activity awareness.

3.3. Component 2: Task or project

3.3.1. Task structure: Process planningWorkflow is a very active area of research dealing with task structuring, although they also recognize that tasks are strongly related to the people that performs it, workflow main concern is the automation of procedures where documents, information or tasks are passed between participants according to a defined set of rules to achieve, or contribute to, an overall business goal [WfMC]. By being aware of task structure, group members can regulate their interaction by means of understanding how their contributions fit into the whole picture [Fuss98], which actions could take accordingly or who will be affected by performing it. The problem is that because it requires an anticipated well-defined process, exceptions, dynamic reconfiguration and unstructured processes (i.e. the process that happens when performing a problem solving task) become major difficulties. Awareness of this information is also known as process awareness [Ste99].

3.3.2. Task or project state: State-based diagramsGroup interaction can be also described as a set of valid trajectories in a finite state space. This approach is mostly used in business process modeling were a transaction or activity is represented as a set of states allowing to handle desired and undesired conditions (see state-based patterns in workflow systems [Van03]). In CSCL, the desirable and undesirable interaction states that can occur in a learning scenario can be also modeled [Jer01]. By being aware of tasks, activities or processes status, group members can adjust their actions in order to achieve another state or can understand better their situation in order to determine contingent actions. Related research is mostly developed in the area of workflow and is regarded as “process awareness” [Ste99].

3.4. Component 3: Resources

3.4.1. Resource structure: Spatial and semantic arrangementsResources can be spatially arranged or belong to more abstract structures. For instance, Espinosa [Espi00] refers to resource awareness as “the shared knowledge of who is an expert on what”. The shared resource is “concept”, but group members share also information (i.e. documents), software artifacts (i.e. a web portal), work artifacts (i.e. a report templates), and representations of physical objects (a shared printer URL or a user ID). They are stored in a common repository, have a particular meaning and keep some semantic relationships among them. The point is that group members agree on a mutual interpretation of such semantics creating a “web of significance”.

By being aware of such structure (a web of significance), group members regulate their interaction by means of creating a community of practice. For instance, in [Red01] a “patient record” allows physicians, nurses and pharmacists to coordinate their actions through a collaborative dialogue. In [Ost96] annotations are assigned to sketches and interfaces mockups during prototype design making restrictions and design choices persistent. In [Suth95] students engage in a discussion to create a concept map with a meaning that they agree on. This strategy is also known as common information spaces [Ban00], and knowledge awareness [Oga97].

3.4.2. Resources state: AvailabilityAgain, as workflow systems modeling include the resources needed for an activity or process, some interesting resources status are also modeled (e.g. if a machine is available or not). As well, the status of products created by the group is also reported. For instance, comments in a discussion are marked as “new”, “answered”, etc. or documents posted in a software engineering Web portal can be marked as “draft” or “final” version. By being aware of resource status, group member can make informed choices and plan contingent actions. This is an interesting research issue, but we did not find any research work addressing it.

3.4.3. Resources Location: Availability and resource discoveryIn groupware, a shared environment can be seen as a common spatial frame inhabited by objects, which might represent people, information, artifacts, etc. (e.g. resources) [Rodd96]. For instance, Virtual Rooms [Hen85], allow users access to a set of predefined tools and information contained in a room. Rooms can be connected to other rooms creating a virtual world [Ben93]. The shared environment can be represented as two-dimensional or three-dimensional (VRML system) interfaces.

Space can be also a geometric representation of the real world, modeled with location sensors (i.e. the printer is at coordinates x, y). Then, the shared space would include virtual representations of physical objects, making possible informing about the co-presence of resources (i.e. the printer is across the hall). For instance, CampusSpace [Fers01] collects and interprets position information of mobiles (devices, equipments or people) within a campus, from the signal to noise ratio of IEEE 802.11 radios, and cartographically mapped RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Information collected is presented in a Web based three-dimensional abstraction of the virtual shared space. This approach is widely studied in context-aware computing, where users can discover available nearby resources such as printers, restaurants, etc. [Dix00].

Other researchers model space as graphs of interconnected objects, holding semantic relationship among them, making possible definitions such as “semantic distance” [Chen99]. Finally, some researchers consider users’ knowledge or expertise as a resource, and then their main interest is to locate who is the person that possesses the desired knowledge [Ogat01].

3.5. Distribution mechanisms: how to deliver awareness information?

Various strategies had been proposed for delivering awareness information. In the previous section we have presented a classification of such information, however, when designing an awareness mechanism is important to define the data representation (e.g. are they information or events?).

Delivering strategies follows two main approaches:

a) Awareness information is produced by a source and propagated to the group members. It may be broadcasted (sent to each group member) [], or unicasted (sent to specific group members) [].

b) In this approach, the awareness information is centralized and calculated for each group member under his or her present circumstances. The most representative research in this direction corresponds to the Bedford’s spatial model [Benf93a]. In this model, awareness information is calculated based on the objects proximity (aura), user interests (focus) and objects influence (nimbus). The spatial model was designed considering a virtual environment (a geometrical space) and hence, the aura, focus and nimbus are areas or spatial scopes within the virtual world. A further work reinterprets the spatial model for a semantic network [Sand97].

3.6. Awareness representation: how to inform?

Without good representations for awareness information, application developers are left to develop ad hoc and limites schemes for storing and manipulating this key information [Abow02]. The evolution of more sophisticated representations will enable a wider range of capabilities and a true separation of sensing context from the programmable reaction to that context. The Kimura System augments and integrates independent tools into a pervasive computing system that monitors a user’s interactions with the computer, an electronic whiteboard, and a variety of networked peropheral devices and data sources [Void02]. McCarthy et al. have developed Talking in Circles, a multimodal audioconferencing environment whose novel design emphasizes spatial grounding with the aim of supporting naturalistic group interaction behaviors. Participants communicate primarily by speech and are represented as colored circles in a two-dimensional space. Behaviors such as subgroup conversations and social navigation are supported through circle mobility as mediated by the environment and the crowd and distance-based attenuation of the audio. The circles serve as platforms for the display of identity, presence and activity: graphics are synchronized to participants' speech to aid in speech-source identification and participants can sketch in their circle,

allowing a pictorial and gestural channel to complement the audio. They note user experiences through informal studies as well as design challenges we have faced in the creation of a rich environment for computer-mediated communication [Rode00].

Telepointers, office snapshots, video glances, document/project tracking, and background noise are some of the various forms of providing awareness which have been used to date. Greenberg, Gutwin & Roseman (1996) and Gutwin & Greenberg (1998a) describe a variety of awareness “widgets" which use different elements in Table 1 to provide awareness. The radar view widget, for example, provides a miniaturized rendering of the overall workspace with each user's location of activity superimposed. A qualitative evaluation of these widgets (Gutwin, Roseman & Greenberg 1996) provided few observations of their effectiveness (or otherwise), despite the subjects' reported enthusiasm. A subsequent study (Gutwin & Greenberg 1998b) provides preliminary statistical evidence that workspace awareness can improve usability.

3.6.1. TelepointerTelepointer are commonly added to workspaces of type WYSIWIS5. They consist of a cursor other than the owned by a user, that is moved through the screen according to the actions of another person. It may be one per user, and serves to recognize the others’ location whithin a shared space, or helps to focus the attention on some object. Telepointers are an aid in situations where group members are dispersed and share a common space in [Enge94].

Nevertheless, they can be distractive or anoying, mainly if there are several of them in the screen, or if some participants navigate on different areas of a big workspace (bigger than the regular screen). In the last case, users do not see each other or forces the GUI to “move” to another region. In any case, it is recommended to allow a disabling option on users demand.

3.6.2. Fisheye ViewsInformation visualization tools offer the potential of seeing the relationships and differences within and between collections of information. However, as the size of these collections grow, it is increasingly difficult to represent all of the information in the limited space of a display, and to navigate within the representation at different levels of detail. These problems are even more challenging for small displays, such as in handheld devices. Furthermore, a particular visual representation is most effective for a specific set of tasks, but is often ineffective when the information needs and tasks of the user change [Casn91].

Fisheye (also called “focus + context”) views are interactive visualization techniques that address these problems by directly relating the visual emphasis of information to a measure of the user’s current interest. These techniques reveal hidden relationships in a representation by visually emphasizing the most relevant objects and deemphasizing less relevant objects. These techniques also create compact displays of information by showing only the most relevant objects. For example, graphical distortion techniques may be used to increase the detail of objects near the focus and progressively reduce the detail of more distant objects. In a general sense, fisheye views are constructed by pairing a function to measure interest with one or more emphasis techniques [Jane02].

3.6.3. FingersSynchronous collaboration via a network of distributed workstations requires concurrency awareness within a relaxed WYSIWIS model. Many applications let users navigate within highly structured object spaces, such as documents, multimedia courses, graphs, or nested tables, which can be distributed asynchronously. To support their manipulation through distributed teams, Krämer et al. provide a novel interaction paradigm, called finger. A finger serves to highlight objects of interest within the shared object space [Kram99]. Locations of fingers, their movements, and changes inflicted on objects can be signaled by means of operation broadcasting to other collaborators who need to be aware of it. Other than telepointers, fingers do not require window-sharing and are independent of the actual object presentation. Its collaboration principles apply to many other CSCW areas, like shared authoring, trading, scheduling, crisis management, and distance maintenance.

3.6.4. Radar views

5 Siglas de “What You See Is What I See”

Radar views are context windows that show a miniaturized version of the whole workspace [Gutw96]. Objects can be represented as colored rectangles that differentiates text, graphs and other kind of objects. Objects movements or changes are immediately reflected in these windows. Radar views make possible to incorporate information about others’ location by adding a miniature telepointer and a shaded rectangle, that represents the workspace are observed by the other person at that moment. These windows provide a general context about the changes made, and the others’ location. Gutwin et al., has demonstrated the importance of this type of windows in some of its studies.

3.6.5. Wysiwid Windows (What you see is what I do)WYSIWID windows are also known as graphical indicators of users activity. They provide a detailed record of what another person is doing. When another person moves the mouse, the canvas of the WYSIWID window moves in order to show the main window portion around the cursor. This component present in detail others actions. One of the disadvantages, however, is that it can be annoying or distractive if several windows are open at the same time.

3.6.6. Multiuser scroll barsThey show the relative position of all the participants in the workspace, by means of colored bars located next to the regular scroll bar area. With these bars, it is possible to align the own window, with the window of another users, in order to determine the other’s workspace or visual area. These bars can be vertical and horizontal, depending on the size of workspace. In general, this component is not very used, since it does not provide a familiar perception but something, rather abstract, that many users can not understand very well.

3.6.7. VersionsWhen users are distributed geographically and working asynchronously, a group memory is necessary. This memory, must store all the interactions of the group, hence it becomes the only way in which a group member can be updated about the interactions of the rest of the group. Many systems use database administrators for this purpose. One of the main requirements of such Data Base Administrator Systems is the capacity to handle multiple versions. This property allows to have a history of the important components of the groupwork, its changes and the reasons that caused the new version. Versions are necessary for maintaining asynchronous awareness.

3.6.8. Participameter and Contribution MeterThey are mechanisms developed for providing information about the level of participation in a work group. A cooperative work presumes that people participate in other member’s activities. It is not desiderable that members perform their tasks with little or no concern about what is going on in other activities. Therefore, some level of snooping is encouraged. For instance, during a group discussion the coordinator and the facilitators receive some feedback about the discussion evolution. The participation level of group members and the evolution of ideas are examples of feedback that can be provided to coordinators. The “participameter” and the “contribution meter” are examples of such artifacts [Borg99b].

3.6.9. AgentsWhen more and more people are working in a distributed cooperative environment, especially from home, the requirement of staying aware of co-workers’ status and activities will become increasingly important. Parallel with the advances made in CSCW in recent years, there have been interesting developments in the fields of intelligent agents and distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), notably in the concepts, theories, and agents deployment as a means of distributing computer-based problem solving expertise [Brad97].

Agents have given rise to an exciting new technology of wide potential applicability. In particular, the paradigm of multiagent systems forms a good basis for the design of CSCW architectures, and the support of CSCW operations. Agents that can undertake sophisticated processes on behalf of the user and dynamically and intelligently adjust the “distances” among co-workers will be a necessary part of any organization’s virtual structure. The digital multiagent organization will capture the dynamics of teamwork, adjust the awareness level among co-workers, and reshape the form and characteristics of collaborative work [Yimi01, Alar02, Alar04].

3.6.10 PhidgetsIn the last years researchers have developed groupware designs that include physical user interfaces augmented by computing power. These typically involve displays for showing awareness information [Gree03]. Greenberg et al. have began to develop some phidgets, that are physical user intefaces, similar to widgets, that abstract and package

input and output devices. building blocks that help a developer easily construct physical user interfaces. The idea behind phidgets is: “…just as widgets make graphical user interfaces easy to develop, so could phidgets make the new generation of physical user interfaces easy to develop” [Gree01]. Phidgets are simple to program—they are controlled through a simple API, or by dropping a graphical counterpart of the device onto a standard interface builder such as Visual Basic. With these phidgets, the authors have illustrated how devices can serve as digital but physical surrogates of remote people: they can present the remote person’s status, serve as a communication channel, and react appropriately to people’s implicit and explicit actions.

There are many examples of the use of these phidgtes. In the Messenger Frame, a contact’s photo is lit up and a sound cue generated as that contact appears online or changes their activity status. Appointment Assistant is an ambient appointment reminder display that interacts with a user’s on-line calendar to remind them of upcoming appointments. As an appointment approaches, the figure of the display moves and leds light up to further indicate the time remaining before the next appointment. MSN Slider gives a person a simple physical slider that lets them quickly set their on-line status on MSN Instant Messenger. Moving the slider changes the state from online, to busy, away, offline, and so on. A physical display made up of labeled LEDs reflects the person's on-line status [Gree03]

3.7. When to inform?

Several recent and current projects, including MessyBoard [Fass02], The Notification Collage [Gree01], and GroupCast [McCa01] use large shared displays as a means of promoting awareness and facilitating information exchange in different types of groups and spaces. Public displays have typically been used to promote awareness among larger groups, but the information they convey, such as live video and presence information, tends to trigger known problems of privacy, information relevance, audience targeting, and information scoping because group size [Janc01]. Small groups however, are likely to have common interests, and therefore lend themselves better to peripheral group displays for awareness [Huan03]. The Semi-Public Displays project aims to foster informal information awareness among members of co-located workgroups using public displays in shared spaces [Tyma03].

One of the primary goals of the displays is to provide a lightweight visualization of the group members’ presence in space over time to increase awareness of group activity. They have developed three prototype applications, each of which varied a graphical feature to represent an individual’s presence in the space, or the time lapsed since the individual had been present. Much of the previous research on awareness has dealt with the location of people in synchronous distributed collaboration. However, awareness mechanisms for asynchronous systems also are very important. An example of the awareness challenges for an asynchronous CSCW system is provided by SISCO [Borg99a]. This system supports discussions and requires participants’ awareness and also a coordinator’s awareness to do their work [Borg99b].

4. Awareness impact on collaborative interaction

4.1. Communication

To perceive, to recognize and to understand others’ activities are a basic requirement for the interaction and human communication in general. The development of a suitable human behavior requires awareness about the people and work objects. The initial groupware applications were inclined to be technical solutions that supported the explicit mechanisms of the human cooperation: the explicit communication with the others, the explicit coordination of the activities, or the explicit collaboration by means of allowing shared access to the work objects. [Sohl97].

When people use technology to communicate, various types of information are communicated through many channels, both implicitly and explicitly. Whitaker et al. categorize informal interaction as follows [Whit94]

Intended: Interaction sought out by one party. Opportunistic: Anticipated by one party but resulting from a chance encounter. Spontaneous: Unanticipated by either party.

Critical to supporting the occurrence of such encounters is awareness of when and where the sought after person may found. Researchers and developers of technology to support distributed work teams have focused on creating lightweight awareness tools that would provide such accessibility information to non-collocated team members. A variety of tools have been implemented including those that provide background awareness, some that require active glancing, and yet others that provide real 3-D environment which simulate “running into” others, as one might in a hallway or a cafeteria when people work in the same location.

4.2. Cooperation

Interest in awareness related topics results from the fact that awareness support is increasingly being identified as a crucial part of successful cooperation. It forms as essential and integral part of cooperative work. An example of the importance of awareness for collaborative work is provided by Gaver’s model of shared work. This model identifies three levels of increasingly focused cooperation: serendipitous communication, division of labor, and focused collaboration [Gave01]. Awareness is necessary at all three levels of collaboration, but the degree to which it is required varies with the focus: more focused collaboration requires more awareness.

Nevertheless, this approach ignores the implicit aspects of the human cooperation: the implicit communication based on nonverbal signals [Heat91, Robi93], the implicit coordination by means of a common control to a shared object [Roge93, Whit95], and the implicit establishment of conventions for the use of groupware tools [Mark97]. The difference between explicit and implicit communication [Watz67] is crucial: the explicit communication consists of all the forms of structured communication, either via verbal channels (face to face mediated by technology), written documents, or messages passing. However, a significant amount of information is performed implicitly, mediated by a variety of channels such as gestures, suggestives fragments, etc. The implicit communication is often mediated indirectly by the work tools. In this case, the state of the work objects provides implicit means for the communication between the group members. These keys provide the flexibility that is inherent and essential in most of the cooperation processes.

5. Technological Issues

Awareness is also necessary to facilitate transitions between different modes of work. The concept of awareness in CSCW literature has in large part evolved with reference to supporting spatially and temporally distributed work teams. A broadly accepted generalization that has emerged from this work is that awareness of the presence and activity of others plays an important role in enabling effective collaboration among distributed work groups members. Studies of tightly coupled collaborative activities, such as joint drawing or document layout, have demostrated that awareness of the activity of collaborators is important in many ways, including in the coordination of activities.,a nticipation of the actions of others, and the resolution of ambiguity in communication. Indication of what one or more collaborators are doing, where they are working and where their attention is directed, provides useful information [Ishi99, Minn91].

Value may also be derived from awareness of asynchronous activity, that is, from traces or historical records of people’s interactions with shared objects. Hill et al. have argued that recorded usage on computational objects (documents or images) can be used to mediate coordination of activities among collaborators and for efficient exchanges of knowledge and material among them [Hill92]. In more loosely coupled tasks, for example, a situation where collaborators share responsibility for a report, but do not author it synchronously, awareness of the presence of others has been shown to be useful. Presence information derives much of this importance from its role in facilitating informal interaction. It is well established that collaboration among knowledge workers is to a large extent dependent on informal interaction [Krau90, Xion99]. Typically short, informal interactions are useful for coordinating and managing interdepndences, exchanging information, problem solving and carrying out work-related tasks.

5.1. Awareness for Web applications

The World Wide Web development in the last years, has been impressive. The Web has pervade successfully many organizations, businesses and institutions, and has has rised interest in the development of colaborative applications,

since it offers an ampler platform for the development of this type of applications. Liechti, points out that there are two forms in which awareness is related to the Web. First, the Web can be considered a platform for the construction of awareness systems; and second, the Web can be considered an space activity, where the users have awareness of such space [Liec01].

Most of the developed colaborativas applications for the Web are asynchronous requiring basically awareness of data. However, it is foreseen that in the next years a great development of Web extensions for synchronous applications will occur. This will allow to share pages and provide direct communication. It will be necessary therefore, to implement mechanisms to know how many people are seeing a certain page and to obtain information about their identity [Palf96]. This could be implemented by means of messages, notifications, or windows that show the list of users currently presents in the system, similarly to the FreeTel conversation system [Free].

In general the web lacks the basic features to support human communication and consequently group work, because it originated as the delivery vehicle for content publishing. With the exponential growth of available information and the increasing numbers of web users, it started to provide more flexible mechanisms to deliver information and link users together. Web users browse web pages which are created independently of users’ physical locations, and interact asynchronously or semi-asynchronously on pages through the web server. However, it is impossible for an individual user to participate in a session on the web where people negotiate and share documents because the lack of awareness of the others and their actions. Thus it is not only technically complex actions, like pointing and talking, that cannot be supported. Even a simple representation of other users on the sam page cannot be easily done with web technologies. Lack of mutual user awareness is one of the main shortcomings of the current web-based interactive systems. “When you go to a web site, you are alone... When you go to places in real life, you expected people to be there” [Oake99].

Table 2, presents a summary of the types of awareness, more referenced in the Web.

Tabla 2: Awareness strategies most referenced in Web-based applications.

Awareness strategies Description ToolUsers Knowledge of whom is in line [Guti03]. It provides the basic

information needed to execute synchronous applications between people in-line.

Lotus Sametime [Lotu]

Documents Knowledge who are at the same time visiting a virtual space like a chat room, or a Web page.

Lotus Sametime [Lotu]

Colections Visual representation of the structure of a collection of pages.Generalization of awareness of users and documents.

Livemaps [Cohe01]

Presence Visualizing where are the people as if they were in a great computacional laboratory.

WebWho [Hard01]

Ambient Awareness A concept empowering users to dynamically link web events of interest to available ambient displays. Web site hosts may like to focus their awareness depending on their tasks, or changing properties.

Ambient Links [Gell99]

Peripheral Awareness Create awareness displays in the ambient environment as opposed to on the computer scree where such displays sould compete with other applications for real screen real state. To facilitate ambient views of web activity, this system provides a platform for integration of ambient media in web-based environments [Schm01].

Resources Presenting information referring whether a document is available or not for reading through or for reviewing, or whether the document has been modified from the last time that was visited.

Doc2U [Mora01]

People visit the Web to recover virtual documents. When people do not know a specific URL they generally lose too much time to explore all the resources offered by search engines. Nevertheless depending on their time, they can only recover part of the available information on the Web. Sometimes the subset of information recovered not necessarily fulfills the user's expectations. On the other hand if people could perceive a knowledge shared about the existing sources, awareness could be a relevant element to reach the user’s objectives.

Other aspect that is neccesary to consider in the web corresponds to the impact of awareness in virtual presence. It is shown that geographical distances in the long run reduce the amount of interactions among co-workers [Krau98]. According to Kraut and Egido, physical proximity increases the frequency and the quality of communication, and decreases the cost of initiating communication. As members of physically collocated groups, developers have the advantage of constantly being aware by simply using their social abilities. This advantage is not present for geographically distributed groups. There is a need for more generic tools for simulating physical proximity of the distributed members during the lifetime of the group, making it easy and less costly for the members to initiate collaboration whenever they need it. One essential step in doing this is to develop support systems that increase the amount of long–term awareness provided to the members about the activities of remote co–workers. For instance, it is shown that media rooms are useful in increasing the frequency of cooperation in distributed groups by providing permanent awareness, and therefore increasing the possibility of chance encounters [Bly93].

Normally people on the same (virtual) location like a web page or a shared document or people who are within the same cell (the geographical area covered by a phone transmitter) are unaware of each other. Imagine you are browsing on a web site presenting a tourist country. Maybe you would like to talk with others about that country because you want to get more or more detailed information about it.

Presence awareness provides information like the location, identity, activities and the Neighborhood of someone or something who or which is present somewhere [Chri02]. It makes it possible: A Service that implements Presence Awareness functionality knows the people that are currently on the same web site as you are. An user agent running along with your Browser can display these people. By e.g. double clicking one of them a chat session (or even a audio or video conferene) or maybe a live video can be launched.

The CoBrow System developed by University of Ulm [Cobrow] and other partners is an example for such kind of application. Currently a Java Applets based successor of the CoBrow Client is developed at Ulm University. Again imagine you run an e-commerce shop. A major difference to real world shops is that on the web you can not attend your customers as you used to do in a real world shop. You can not say: “hello, may I help you?” , you can not realize your regular customers and you can do nothing if an unhappy visitor leaves your shop and never returns. Presence Awareness notices that a visitor has entered your shop. A Virtual Presence Service provides the functionality to decide whether a visitor has entered the first time or is a regular customer because a visitor has properties associated. One (or a combination) of the properties can indicate the vicitor's category. You (or your employees) can talk to the visitors: “hello, can I help you” or “happy birthday” or “today we have a very special offer for you”. Virtual Presence can contribute that a visitor feels just as good in your virtual shop than he does on a real world shop. In the context of the ShopAware project University of Ulm helps to develop a framework for e-commerce shops with Virtual Presence functionality. Next we present the impact of awareness with PDAS.

5.2. Awareness for mobile applications

Wireless, peer-to-peer RF communication (e.g. Bluetooth [Blue]) is an increasingly accessible option when designing mobile devices and applications. A recent trend in both the commercial and research worlds has been to outfit pocket-sized devices with RF-based communications so that applications can continually broadcast the user’s presence, while simultaneously detecting others nearby. The proliferation of digital communication systems, infrastructures, and services will eventually lead to a Personal Communicating Digital Assistant (PCDA): a hybrid between mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants with ubiquitous computing capabilities. A PCDA possesses Ambient Awareness: the ability to acquire, process, and act upon application specific contextual information, taking the current user preferences and state of mind into account. A major issue of Ambient Awareness is positioning: the device must know where it is. For outdoor navigation DGPS is a good candidate to detect one's position. Indoors it is easier to set up a network of beacons. Radio beacons can realize good accuracies. An alternative is to use a camera and a model of the world. From features in the image a position can be calculated and tracked, in the cm range. Such

features (visual beacons) can be nameplates on doors, or dot patterns fixed at known positions in a building [Dunl02].

The term Augmented Reality (AR) is used to describe systems that blend computer generated virtual objects or environments with real environments [Azum97, Barf01]. A PCDA also employs Augmented Reality: a context aware application which merges virtual audio-visual information with the real world using a see-through display. Outdoor DGPS or indoor a beacon system captures the user's rough position. A camera captures the user's environment, which, combined with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compass, makes the PCDA fully aware of the user's absolute position and orientation with such an accuracy that virtual objects can be projected over the user's real world, without causing motion sickness. Camera images are sent to the backbone and matched to a 3D description of the environment derived from a GIS database of the environment, to determine the user's position [Jonk03].

Hummingbird is a handheld inter-personal awareness device (IPAD) [Holm99] that signals the arrival of a friend in the area and maintains a user-viewable list of which friends are closed by. The Lovegety [Blee] is a commercially-available device that acts as a romantic matchmaker by sounding and alarm when someone with similar interests of the opposite sex is detected. Other applications transform the portables devices into mobile personal agents. Work in Wearable communities has created agents that automatically optimize to-do lists by swapping and consolidating errands between people encountered [Kort99]. For example, if two people need items from the grocery store, the agents exchange errands when they meet so that only one person goes to the store, but obtains the items on both users’ lists.

Terry et al. have developed a Social Net: a novel interesting-matching application that uses patterns of collocation, over time, to infer shared interests between users [Terr02]. Social Net is an application that runs on a portable device carried with the person throughout the day. The first time a user starts Social Net, the application prompts him to enter her name, which is stores and associated with a unique ID representing the physical device. Also, maintains a friend list for each user. Periodically, examines the encounter records for unknown Ids, and applies a function to determine wheter there are patterns of physical proximity over time.

Liechti et al. have developed a CyberWindow prototype system, which allows people to maintain peripheral awareness about the activity on their web Site. The system integrates handheld computers wirelessly connected to the network. Natural sound and speech synthesis are used to sense Web visitors in the real worlds [Liec98]. Next section presents some of the most common mechanisms used to provide awareness in different collaborative scenarios.

6. Challenges for providing awareness

Until now we have present the beneficial effects of awareness within the colaborative work and its implementation requirements. These benefits, however, can carry some negative aspects.

6.1. Privacy violation

Privacy is very important in an environment designed to present the actions of a person to the rest of the group. Obviouslly, people do not wish that all their information are shown or revealed. The difficulty is to find a balance between the user's privacy, and the need to offer information that is useful to provide collaboration mechanisms [Clem94, Sohl97].

The detailed information regarding to the activities of the people is useful in order to obtain an increase in the colaborative activities within a group, but it can also become into a resource that can be used in an unintended way for other people. For this reason, it is important to establish social protocols and conventions similar to the used in real world collaboration [Dou93, Mark97]. The real world imposes physical restrictions, that cannot be violated, and social restrictions that people feel free to violate under the risk of social sanctions. The systems would have to do the same: physical restriciones are defined by the possible operations of the system, whereas the social restrictions, would have to be subject to social protocols like in the real life.

Uno puede pensar que entre mayor cantidad de información se le provea al usuario, mejor será el mecanismo, pero esto no es cierto en su totalidad. Cuando se le brinda al usuario mucha información, éste tiende a no hacerle caso u omitir dicha información [Furn95]. Para determinar la utilidad de los componentes utilizados, es necesario considerar algunos aspectos mencionados por Gutwin et. al. [Gutw96] :

1. ¿Presenta el sistema ampliado el tipo y cantidad adecuados de información de awareness que los usuarios esperan?

2. ¿Puede esta información ser fácilmente interpretada y aplicada?¿Entorpece la información adicional el trabajo individual, ya sea por ocupar espacio en la pantalla o porque distrae al usuario?

6.2. Sobrecarga de información

Information overload is a general problem in computacional environments. Great volumes of information, generate great problems in the interfaces [Furn95]. There is much to see, if much information appears, is very difficult to concentrate in the essential aspects of the work. The adition of awareness information in such environment can therefore increase the total of available information dramatically. Furthermore, the presentation of such information becomes an additional problem: there is not only much information, but it appears in an unexpected form and moment, forcing the users to switch their mental context in order to understand the arriving information [Alar02].

Hence, it is desirable that the information will be shown only when it is needed. Many mechanisms of awareness are offered to the users according to their needs and roles, but such needs and roles changes. Some authors propose to use of awareness filters [Davi01], while other attempt to infer the events relevance [Alar02] in order to provide the most appropriate information in a certain time. There are many frameworks taht provide filters in thier applications, for instance, the Big Watch framework executes a filtering of the available information, based on profiles.

6.3. Interrupciones

As personal computers have become connected to increasing numbers of information sources, users are challenged to manage higher rates of interruption by notifications. Today, many users handle alerts from a variety of sources, including newly arriving email, status changes in instant messenger “buddy lists,” stock and traffic alerts, online auction progress, sports game scores, news headlines, special sales, and so on. Even more notifications are on the horizon; new development efforts such as the Microsoft .NET platform [parth] promise to increase the types of services offered to users and thus provide even larger numbers of notifications. Users are now facing notification overload—the challenge of keeping up to date on incoming information alerts.

Users can be interrupted or disturbed from their work by receiving constant awareness information about others’ actions that may be uninteresting and unexpected. Finally users can be overloaded with awareness information when displaying everything that it is happening with the other participants. Interruptions can be detrimental to productivity, especially when the user is deeply focused on a task [McFa99]. Human attention has long been known to be a scarce resource [Broa58, Deut63]. Thus, providing awareness of relevant information or events with minimal strain on cognitive resources promises to be increasingly valuable to users.

The unexpected changes in the presentation of the information can easily distract the users of their work. This can be a wished effect, if for example a user needs to be alerted on a fact in individual. Nevertheless, a basic reason to support awareness is to allow a fluid cooperation. Any interruption has the opposite effect exactly: the cooperation is interrupted and slow. This interrupting effect is specially remarkable if there is no a clear connection between the change in the presentation and the object of work [Gutw96].

Bailey et al., have defined intrusion as the property of an information awareness technique that increases user annoyance, disrupts task performance, or both. An awareness technique with high intrusion would have a large negative effect on user annoyance or task performance, whereas a technique with low intrusion would have a small negative effect. An unwarranted popup ad appearing while a user is navigating the Web is an example of an intrusive awareness technique [Bail00].

To achieve high information awareness with low intrusion, there are some awareness techniques, such as Adjusting Windows and Scope. Adjusting Windows, is adapted from the shrinking window technique commonly used by television broadcasters. The technique allows information to be visible “at a glance” without supplanting the current task or forcing the user to switch between application windows [Bail00]. The Scope is an information visualization designed to unify notifications and minimize distractions. It allows users to remain aware of notifications from multiple sources of information, including e-mail, instant messaging, information alerts, and appointments. The design employs a circular radar-like screen divided into sectors that group different kinds of notifications. The more urgent a notification is, the more centrally it is placed [Dant02].

6.4. Evaluation and single-user interfaces

Groupware applications are hard to build and its difficulties go beyond technical restrictions [Gru94]. For instance, as users have expertise on the usage of their own tools, one approach (collaboration transparency [Ahu90], [Bego98], [Li99]) aims to extend arbitrary single-user applications so that a group can share resources and manipulate them through their favorite interface.

It is important to mention that, an increase in awareness of the activities of the others not always is beneficial. For example, Weiband [Weis94], discusses how the decisions of group supported by computer are influenced by awareness of the participants. An increase of awareness, benefits the leaders in the interactions face to face, whereas the anonymity undermines the dominant participants. Depending on the situation, this can be a wished effect or not.

7. Conclusions

Awareness can be defined as an understanding of the state of a system. It is necessary for all forms of cooperation: it is needed to coordinate and fine-tune cooperative work, to allow informal communciation, and to establish conventions on the usage of shared material. Despite all these facts, awareness support is often neglected in CSCW, CSCL, WWW systems, or its treated in an ad-hoc manner.

The increasing interest in topics related to awareness has made of this one an important element, and that it has been identified like crucial aspect in the success of colaborativos schemes. Awareness is a fundamental element so that a given user can perceive the sensation to work in group. The familiarity of the user with the awareness component, causes a better understanding of the information that the component offers. As criterion in the design and incorporation of components to the colaborativas applications, is necessary to consider the content of the information and the facility of interpretation on the part of the users. In this article we have presented a taxonomy of the different types from awareness in colaborative environments.

Information systems development, as many other activities, is making extensive use of networking, and a growing number of development teams are becoming distributed geographically. Developing a large system requires intensive long–term collaborating among its developers and other stakeholders. It therefore becomes increasingly important to consider more advanced support for group processes in the support environments.

Different ways of collaboration require different types of awareness. Creating or defining awareness in colaborative environments supported by computer is a complex process. It consists of several steps that have to be considered. To perceive the shared environment requires some cognitive processes from the users that have to be supported by the systems. The cooperation supported by computerhas a bottleneck in the interface between the man and the machine.

Providing awareness information is a complex problem involving technical, organizational, social and legal questions. The process of creating awareness involves several steps, and to become aware of others’ activities, it is necessary to collect information about: who, when, why, where and what questions regarding state changes.

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