So much technology works, not by good design or by being a good fit to purpose, but because people make it work because they have to for some reason. We humans are incredibly creative and resourceful when it comes to getting something done. There are numerous stories we could all tell of the ingenious work-arounds we've developed to make something do what we want it to; or the enormous amount of time we've spent trying to find out how to make some technology work as we want, e.g., trying to find out how to turn off auto-editing commands in a word processing package when all we want is for it...
So much technology works, not by good design or by being a good fit to purpose, but because people make it work because they have to for some reason. ...
Software design is becoming increasingly complex and difficult as we move to applications that support people interacting with information and with each other over networks. Computer supported cooperative work applications are a typical example of this. The problems to be solved are no longer just technical, they are also social: how do we build systems that meet the real needs of the people who are asked to use them and that fit into their contexts of use. We can characterise these as wicked problems, where our traditional software engineering techniques for understanding requirements and...
Software design is becoming increasingly complex and difficult as we move to applications that support people interacting with information and with...
th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in Helsinki Finland. ECSCW is an international forum for multidisciplinary research covering the technical, empirical, and theoretical aspects of collaboration and computer systems. The 20 papers presented here have been selected via a rigorous reviewing process from 110 submissions. Both the number of submissions and the quality of the selected papers are testimony to the diversity and energy of the CSCW community. We trust that you will find the...
th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in He...