A first step to formally evaluate collaborative work
Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates, José A. Pino · 1997
We present an initial attempt to formally evaluate performance measures related to CSCW applications. In particular, we study the relations between the quality of the output, the number of people and time spent on the overall task and the total work done. We introduce a novel application to illustrate our ideas: collaborative retrieval. We propose a specific heuristic to the case when many people search for the same information, thereby increasing the recall and precision of the answer. We apply our evaluation methodology to this case. Keywords: CSCW, quantitative evaluation, collaborative retrieval. Introduction The introduction of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) tools within an organization can have a variety of positive outcomes [1]. Generally speaking, those benefits can be classified into three broad categories. The first type of benefits of CSCW introduction refers to an improved quality of the end product. Better documents, designs or decisions may be the result of...