Box 5.6 Groupware as Collaboration Tool
Why Bother?
Why is groupware design worth paying attention to in the first place?
Groupware offers significant advantages over single-user systems. These
are some of the most common reasons people want to use groupware:
• to facilitate communication: make it faster, clearer, more persuasive
• to enable communication where it wouldn’t otherwise be possible
• to enable telecommuting
• to cut down on travel costs
• to bring together multiple perspectives and expertise
• to form groups with common interests where it wouldn’t be
possible to gather a sufficient number of people face-to-face
• to save time and cost in coordinating group work
• to facilitate group problem-solving
• to enable new modes of communication, such as anonymous
interchanges or structured interactions
In addition to the benefits of groupware, another good reason to study
usability and design issues in groupware is to avoid a failed design.
Groupware is significantly more difficult to get right than traditional
software. Typically, a groupware system can’t succeed unless most
or all of the target group is willing to adopt the system. In contrast, a
single-user system can be successful even if only a fraction of the target
market adopts it.
Applications
There are several types of groupware applications. Comparing those
design options across applications yields interesting new perspectives
on well-known applications. Also, in many cases, these systems can
be used together, and in fact, are intended to be used in conjunction.
For example, group calendars are used to schedule videoconferencing
meetings, multi-player games use live video and chat to communicate,
and newsgroup discussions spawn more highly-involved interactions
in any of the other systems.