Collaborative Design, Collaborative Technology: Enhancing Virtual Team Collaboration

摘要

In this paper we discuss a multi-disciplinary approach to design collaborative technology based on analyzing collaboration processes. Current social-technical design approaches are hard to apply mainly because of two reasons: on the one hand the gap between social observations and technical design is large, and on the other hand it is difficult to properly support group dynamics. By defining clear and feasible steps in our approach, we try to overcome the first difficulty. Our approach starts from analyzing the cooperation, devotes special attention on supporting group dynamics and leads to a collaborative technology design based on building blocks. By combining expertise on group dynamics and expertise on the design of collaborative systems we aim to provide cooperating people with technical support that properly matches their needs and even stimulates cooperation.