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Chapter 4

Designing for coIIa boration

and communication

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Social mechanisms in communication and collaboration
4.2.1 Conversational mechanisms
4.2.2 Designing collaborative technologies to support conversation
4.2.3 Coordination mechanisms
4.2.4 Designing collaborative technologies to support coordination
4.2.5 Awareness mechanisms
4.2.6 Designing collaborative technologies to support awareness
4.3 Ethnographic studies of collaboration and communication
4.4 Conceptual frameworks
4.4.1 The language/action framework
4.4.2 Distributed cognition

4.1 Introduction

Imagine going into school or work each day and sitting in a room all by yourself
with no distractions. At first, it might seem blissful. You'd be able to get on with
your work. But what if you discovered you had no access to email, phones, the In-
ternet and other people? On top of that there is nowhere to get coffee. How long
would you last? Probably not very long. Humans are inherently social: they live to-
gether, work together, learn together, play together, interact and talk with each
other, and socialize. It seems only natural, therefore, to develop interactive systems
that support and extend these different kinds of sociality.
There are many kinds of sociality and many ways of studying it. In this chapter
our focus is on how people communicate and collaborate in their working and
everyday lives. We examine how collaborative technologies (also called group-
ware) have been designed to support and extend communication and collabora-
tion. We also look at the social factors that influence the success or failure of user
adoption of such technologies. Finally, we examine the role played by ethnographic
studies and theoretical frameworks for informing system design.