Asynchronous Collaboration Awareness: Expectation Fulfillment Notification

Asynchronous Collaboration Awareness: Expectation Fulfillment NotificationMaster Thesis

23/02/2007 WS 2006/2007 RWTH Aachen University 1/33

Asynchronous Collaboration Awareness: Expectation Fulfillment Notification

WS 2006/2007 RWTH Aachen University

Irina KireyevSupervisors: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Prinz, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Lakemeyer

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo

4. Concept description

5. Implementation description

6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



CSCW

• History– CSCW exists since 1980s– Main focus - synchronous collaboration

• Today– Outsourcing practices – different time zones– Collaborators concentrate better in an isolated mode – Need from time to time coordinate activities

• Solution– Asynchronous collaboration– Supporting both asynchronous and synchronous modes

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Awareness

• Key issue– Providing awareness :

“understanding of the activities of others, that provide a context for your own activity”

• In asynchronous system:– Providing change awareness:“the ability to track the changes made to a collaborative

artifact by other participants overtime”

• Current awareness support types:– Informational– Subscription-based– Peripheral

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Research Question

• Problem identified – providing negative awareness– Awareness only of events that occur– No awareness of what was supposed to occur, but did not

• Our solution– A mechanism to specify an expectation

• a mental picture of what events should take place in a workspace within certain time limits

– Notification of fulfilment or non-fulfilment

• Objectives– Development of a concept for expectation awareness– Implementation in broadly used groupware system

• BSCW – Basic Support for Collaborative Work

– Evaluation of practicability

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Use Case Example

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• James Tam and Saul Greenberg

– Where ? – location of a change

– Who ? – author of a change

– What? – content of a change

– When? – time of a change

– How? – actions that lead to a change

– Why? – reason for the change

6 Info Elements of Change

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Asynch. Awareness Mechanisms

• A. J. Bernheim-Brush, D. Bargeron, J. Grudin, A.Gupta

– Informational• activities shown, can be queried from the workspace

• e.g. highlighting, annotations and markups, playback, storing and retrieving versions

– Subscription-based • to receive notifications on events in a workspace

– Peripheral • alerts on changes when user was offline as soon as online

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



In BSCW

• Informational – Event icons – Object history– Event history

• Subscription-based– Daily workspace activity report– Direct email event notification after each event– RSS news feeds

• Peripheral– JMonitor user and event views

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Summary

• Existing tools - cognitive support for past or present events

• No tool– Specify expected future actions

– Automatically verify – Summarized notify also when the action did not occur

• Six information elements for change awareness

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Demo

• Creating expectationhttp://www.foldr.org/~irina/master_thesis/demo/#create

• Checking statushttp://www.foldr.org/~irina/master_thesis/#status

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Scope Definitions

• Asynchronous collaborative software (groupware)– sharing of objects– non simultaneous work mode

• Workspace– user working area– collection of objects user has access to

• Object (artifact)– the data structures upon which the users operate– attributes with values

• Participate (member) w.r.t. an object– user who has access to this object

• Activity (action, operation)– transformation that act on an object– parameters with values

• Operational semantics of an object for a participant– possible operations on the object for the participant

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Expectation Model

• Mental picture of future events

• Components (attributes of Expectation object)– Creator– Artifact

• Single artifact• Set of artifacts

– Expected Activity• Operational semantics of an object

– Participants• Single member• Set of members

– Start time– End time

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Activity based on Artifact

• Document– Read– Edit– Rate– Create Note with type: Note, Pro, Con, Angry, Important, Idea

• Folder– all activities of single artifacts– Create with type: Document, Discussion, URL, Poll

• Note– Read– Create Reply Note with type: Note, Pro, Con, Angry, Important, Idea

• URL– Rate

• Poll– Vote

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Actions (operations)– Create

• Member with access rights to modify

– View• Creator, Participants?

– Edit• Creator

– Destroy• Creator

– View Result• Creator, Participants?

– Fulfillment Check between exp. start time and end time• After each action• Each time result is viewed • Periodically • Automatically at exp. end time

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

Expectation Model (cont.)



• Status of expectation fulfillment w.r.t. end date

– Basic• Initial

• Fulfilled

• Not fulfilled

– Optional states• Ongoing: not fulfilled, partly fulfilled, fully fulfilled

• Final: not fulfilled, partly fulfilled, fully fulfilled

• Fulfilled after deadline

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

States



• Optional components and actions

– Send notification at end time

– Show expectation to participants

– Restart

– Extend end date

– Contact participants that fulfilled / did not fulfill

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

Expectation Model (cont.)



Expectation Activity Diagram

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Level of necessity and authority– Task: duty– Expectation: looking forward to a certain action

• might be fulfilled or not fulfilled

• Intention• Task: specifies sequence of instructions for a work unit • Expectation: providies better awareness

• automatic summary of events that should have taken place • currently can be only manually obtained

• Agreement– Task: collaborator must agree – Expectation : collaborator might not even know

• showing expectation is up to expectation creator

Expectation versus Task

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• In workspace for sharing objects and asynch. work mode• Mental picture• Object in workspace

– Basic components• Creator, Artifact, Activity, Participants, Start time, End time

– Basic actions• Create, View, Edit, Destroy, View Result, Fulfillment Check

– State: initial, fulfilled, not fulfilled• Ongoing:

– not fulfilled, partly fulfilled, fully fulfilled• Final:

– not fulfilled, partly fulfilled, fully fulfilled

Summary

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Python CGI extension of web server• Clients are unmodified browsers• 3 layers:

– Request handling– Operation handling– Persistent storage

• Interplay between layers– Action in UI by user

– http request to BSCW server by browser

– Identific. of op. handler and request obj. by request handl. layer

– Communic. with persistent storage and response obj. using xhtml templates by operation handl. layer

– http response by request handl. layer

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

BSCW



• X-BSCW API– Java– No changes in BSCW kernel itself => modularity– API provides access to all the necessary information ?– Standalone program => locate, download, install effort

• Package – our choice– Python– Connected to baseline objects– No changes to kernel itself– Part of BSCW user interface – Can be turned on/off– User level configurable: beginner, medium, advanced

X-BSCW API versus Package

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Package Structure

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Status Indication

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Classes– cl_exp.py

• Expectation class definitions

– cl_action.py• Mappings between actions in UI and operation handlers

• Operation handlers– op_editexp.py

• Adding or editing an expectation

– op_listexp.py• Allows also to delete an expectation from the list

– op_expstatus.py

• Configuration files– bs_config.py, bs_event_details.py, bs_explog.py,

bs_iconconfig.py, bs_menuconfig.py, config_html_ui.py

Classes and Operation Handlers

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



Class Diagram

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• 10 participants– From target group – BSCW users– Research Participants Request document in BSCW– Separately one at a time and facilitator of the test

• Briefing– Simple example task– Different from the test tasks

• 12 test tasks– Real life situation– More and more evolved with time– Covered all functionality– Included

• Creation of expectation according to given scenario• Understanding exp. result: fulfilled, partly fulfilled, not fulfilled• Fulfilling a given expectation

• Semi structured interview– Expressing opinion on UI, usefulness, improvements, solutions

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

Set Up



Set Up (cont.)

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Difficulties during tasks– Understood the task text, solved incorrectly

– Could not proceed with a task without a question

– Was uncomfortable with some part of UI – made remark

• Our observations

• Answers to questions in semi structured interviews– Usefulness

– Usability

– Possible uses

• Suggestions of improvements

• Solutions to difficulties

Results

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Members selection at exp. creation– 8 out 10: at least one member/ for all members ?– 6: selected members one by one instead using a role– 2: how to switch to groups/roles in selection ? – 2: forgot to press on “Select Members”– 1: showing expectation to involved members ?

• Navigation to expectation actions– 4: did not like to click twice to get to result page– 4: why no “Expectation” in Action menu ?– 2: did not find expectation on a folder inside the folder– 2: set expectation on a wrong artifact

• Icons– 2: did not change the date at expectation end time– 1: could not distinguish between red and yellow icons

• No difficulties with reading expectation result

Difficulties

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Icon– Separate icons for

• Partly fulfilled icon• Exp. set on me and by me• Blinking when new relevant events or short before / after end time

– On folder – icon also inside the folder

• Expectation creation form– exp. end time – hour is blank by default, date is enough– listing in result what is missing for fulfillment

• More intuitive navigation– Result page directly after icon click– In “Action menu” list of exp. and available actions for each exp.– Tool tip with exp. details

• Email notification– long email with result details / short email with result page link

Suggestions

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work



• Benefits of expectations

– More flexible, user controllable and non-obtrusive awareness (only one notification per expectation)

– Concept and implementation for negative awareness – A reminder of a certain deadline– Showing to involved collaborators what is expected

• All test participants stated

– Useful concept especially for large workspaces– Easy to understand– Result simple to read– Responsive– Consistent with BSCW user interface

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

Conclusions



• Improving the user interface based on suggestions– Members selection– Navigation to expectation actions– Icon carrying more information

• Raising responsiveness after exp. fulfillment– Exp. fulfillment test from operation event

• Increasing efficiency– Not checking the entire history of events between start and end time

• Expectation on multiple artifacts

• Testing expectation in other domains: – Management of software development– Collaborative architectural design

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

Future Work



Thank you for your attention Are there any questions ?

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Demo



6. Evaluation

7. Conclusions

8. Future work

The End

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Asynchronous Collaboration Awareness: Expectation Fulfillment Notification

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