Coordination infrastructure in collaborative systems
Keith Edwards · 1996
Research into collaborative software systems has recognized the importance of coordination in promoting effective interactions among collaborators. Coordination is the process of bringing groups of users together into a common action. More specifically, in the computer-supported cooperative work realm, coordination refers to the real world issues of collaborator location, awareness, rendezvous, and policy that must be addressed if collaborative software is to approach the fluidity of physical human interactions. My research has focused on the development of software infrastructure to support the coordination needs of collaborative applications. In essence, my research examines how to bring contextual information about users and their activities into the mediated computer world, and the implications of having such information available to applications and other users. Three specific areas of concern are user awareness, session management, and policy control. These areas are interrelated and share a commonality of implementation. This dissertation presents a taxonomy of information sharing in collaborative applications, and examines the three specific topics in detail. I also present an underlying model that can be used to implement the coordination goals provided by my infrastructure.