Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are online digital places and spaces where we can be in touch, play together and work together, even when we are, geographically speaking, worlds apart. We can hang out, present alternative selves, interact with realistic and fantastic objects and carry out impossible manoeuvres. In CVEs we can share the experience of worlds beyond the physical. This book offers an introduction to up-to-date research in the area of CVE design and development. A reader might feel that, collectively, the chapters in this book beg the questions "What is a CVE?." And, for...

There is a rapidly-growing commercial awareness of the need for evaluation in CSCW as major producers push to get cooperative technology taken up in commercial organisations. CSCW Requirements and Evaluation looks at ways of evaluating how well computer systems meet the requirements of organisations and their workforces, and establishing how effective, efficient and satisfactory they are for the actual users. It provides an integrated framework for assessment which reflects both practical and academic perspectives. Descriptions of various methods are given, along with examples...

Computer supported work is increasingly being done out of the traditional office environment, for example whilst travelling or at home and there is a growing need to support the cooperative aspects of such work. Remote Cooperation looks at ways of improving the available communications, through the use of packet radio and compression techniques, in order to reduce the imbalance between office-based and mobile workers. It also assesses how the effectiveness of the existing communications infrastructure can be improved, by providing cooperative applications which fit within its...

In the light of the challenges that face today's organizations, there is a grow- ing recognition that future market success and long term' survival of enter- prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious...

An examination of the interaction of different workflow management systems (WFMS) in geographically distributed and legally separate organizations. The author examines the technical and managerial aspects of workflow management and discusses viable solutions.

Linguistic Concepts and Methods in CSCW is the first book devoted to the innovative new area of research in CSCW. It concentrates on the use of language in context - the area most widely researched in conjunction with CSCW - but also examines grammatical construction, semantics and the significance of the spoken, written and graphic mediums. A variety of other related topics, such as sociolinguistics, stylistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and applied linguistics are also covered.
This book will be of interest to researchers in CSCW, linguistics and computational...

Exploring Digital Design takes a multi-disciplinary look at digital design research where digital design is embedded in a larger socio-cultural context. Working from socio-technical research areas such as Participatory Design (PD), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the book explores how humanities offer new insights into digital design, and discusses a variety of digital design research practices, methods, and theoretical approaches spanning established disciplinary borders. The aim of the book is to explore the diversity of contemporary digital...

Modern society has been transformed by the digital convergence towards a future where technologies embed themselves into the fabric of everyday life. This ongoing merging of social and technological infrastructures provides and necessitates new possibilities to renovate past notions, models and methods of information systems development that accommodates humans as actors within the infrastructure. This shift introduces new possibilities for information systems designers to fulfil more and more everyday functions, and to enhance their value and worth to the user. Reframing Humans in...

Information technology has been used in organisational settings and for organisational purposes such as accounting, for a half century, but IT is now increasingly being used for the purposes of mediating and regulating complex activities in which multiple professional users are involved, such as in factories, hospitals, architectural offices, and so on. The economic importance of such coordination systems is enormous but their design often inadequate. The problem is that our understanding of the coordinative practices for which these systems are developed is deficient, leaving systems...