Tasks-in-interaction: paper and screen based documentation activity Paul Luff,
Christian
Heath and David
Cambridge EuroPARC 61, Regent Street Cambridge CB2 lAB United Kingdom (44) 223341528 luff.ettroparc@ rx.xerox .com
in collaborative
Greatbatch
Department of Sociology University of Surrey GuildfordGU25XH United Kingdom (44) 483300800
[email protected] .ac.uk
School of Social Sciences University of Nottingham Nottingham United Kingdom
ABSTRACT Drawing on field studies of three, real world, organisational environments, namely an architectural practice, a medical centre and the Control Rooms on London LJnderground, this paper explores the ways in which personnel use paper and screen based documentation to support synchronous and asynchronous collaborative activity. It discusses how collaboration involves a complex configuration of coparticipation by personnel in a range of activities, ranging from seemingly individual tasks to mutually focussed, real time cooperation. By addressing the ways in which personnel manage collaboration and interactionally organise a range of activities, we discuss the ways in which paper and screen based media provide rather distinctive support for cooperation. These observations form the basis for some suggestions concerning requirements for CSCW systems.
have not been primarily concerned with the ways in which their observations and findings might inform the design of tools and technologies to support co-present or physically distributed collaborative activity in the settings in question or the development of more generic requirements for cooperative work, 1 In this paper we wish to consider how findings generated through the naturalistic analysis of work, interaction and technology in a variety of ‘real world’ environments might provide some generic issues for the design of systems to support collaborative activities. We will draw on material gathered in three settings, namely, generai medical practice, architecture and the Line Control Rooms on London Underground.2 The analysis of work and interaction within these very different settings has begun to reveal how participants have developed a body of indigenous practices and procedures for utilising paper and screen-based documentation to support various forms of collaboration. These locai, ‘practical’ soiutions to the ‘intrinsic’ properties of particular media provide some interesting implications for the design of systems to support both co-present and physically distributed cooperative work.
INTRODUCTION In relation to the concern for uncovering the details of collaborative work there has recently been a growing interest in undertaking naturalistic studies of technologically mediated collaborative activity in ‘real world’ organisational environments. These studies have focussed on a variety of activities including ship navigation, piloting helicopters, airport ground control air traffic control, and traffic management in an urban railway network (i.e. Hutchins [14], Linde [16], Suchman [19], Goodwin and Goodwin [7], Harper et al. [10], Heath and Luff [12]). and they have begun to delineate a range of practices and reasoning utilised by organisational personnel in using a variety of tools and systems tcl coordinate reaitime tasks and activities. As yet however, these studies
THE USE OF PAPER DOCUMENTS A variety of paper documents are used in each of the settings. architects
1 But see Bentley concerning the system design.
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ACM 0-89791
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For example, in the architectural practice, use large paper plans; in the medical practice,
2
et al. [1] for a recent discussion of issues relationship of ethnographic studies to
Details of preliminary analyses found in Heath and Luff [12], Greatbatch et al. [8].
of these materials can be Luff and Heath [17] and
/0163 . ..$1 .50
CSCW 92 Proceedings
November
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1992
doctors consult handwritten cards containing their patients’ medical histories; and in the London Underground Control Rooms, personnel use paper timetables to manage traffic and passenger movement. Practices have been developed for using these documents to support both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration in these settings which appear to be informed by three factors: (1) the documents’ tailorability, (2) their ecological flexibility, and (3) resrnctions on the movement of personnel.
seated before him; or the doctor may read a record while facing the patient rather than turning away to read it on the desk. The ecological flexibility of the records contributes to their collaborative use within both the consultation and the practice more generally. Occasionally, doctors may want a patient to look at an item in their paper-based records. In such instances they can place the document between themselves and the patient or hold it up in front of the latter, so as to make it visible to them. They can also carry a document from one room to another in order to discuss aspects of it with colleagues. Similarly, in London Underground Control Rooms, pairs of controllers can jointly read a timetable by moving it between them.
In each of the settings the participants customise or tailor their documents in order to differentiate and highlight particular items. For example, staff in the line control rooms cover their timetables with cellophane sheets and mark temporary changes with a felt pen - the various arrows, figures and notes being wiped away when the events to which they refer are no longer relevant.3 Similarly, doctors use a range of markings to annotate their patients’ medical record cards; and architects sketch in and ring changes to their plans.
In the architectural practice, the plans are too large to be easily transported around the office. However, the architects are able to move around the office in order to look at the plans of their colleagues. As such, the documents can become the focus of discussion between groups of architects, who relocate themselves to facilitate shared reading and drawing. Here practices that have evolved for using documents to support collaboration have been shaped
Although the customisation of documents often seems to involve a distinct task undertaken by a particular individual for their own benefit, it may support various forms of collaborative work. For instance, in looking through plans produced by their colleagues, architects can quickly locate any changes by looking for areas that have been circled; at the start of their shifts, controllers can quickly get a sense of the current state of the service by using their predecessors’ markings to locate an y changes that have been made to the running times and order of the trains; and in general practice, doctors may pay sp=ial attention to items in a record that have been underlined, capitalised or placed in inverted commas by their colleagues. Participants may also make use of textual features which are not necessarily the result of customisation, such as handwriting, ink colour, spacing between entries etc. If, for example, a doctor wishes to determine when a patient last saw either themselves or a particular colleague they can quickly scan a record for the last entry involving the relevant persons handwriting. up’ Similarly architects can recognize who ‘marked particular plans from the handwriting of the annotations. Both the customisation and the unavoidable differentiation of contributions to the document provide personnel with a rich body of resources with which to draw various inferences concerning some matters at hand and the specific contributions of their colleagues.
by the need for personnel to relocate themselves.4 Consequently, in all three settings the collaborative use of paper documentation is facilitated by the ecological flexibility of the document and the participants’ ability to move around the environment. Even without making use of these features of paper documents it may be possible to distribute information around the environment. For example, in the medicat consultations doctors may point to items on the record or explicitly quote from it in order to refer to information on the document, thereby rendering that information public without having to move the card.
The ecological flexibility of paper may also be relevant to the character of the practices that have evolved to facilitate the use of documentation for collaboration in the three settings. The medicat records are small enough to be held in the hand and can readily be moved about. As such, their use can be adapted to a range of situations and contingencies. For example, a doctor may prop a medical record card on the comer of the desk so as to be able to glance at it while conducting an examination of a patient
Within the London Underground Control rooms there are severe limitations on the participants’ abilities to pass paper documents to each other or change their physical position to enable them to read the documents of colleagues. For instance, the London Underground runs according to a conventional timetable which specifies the order, destination and crewing of trains. When problems emerge such as a suicide or the discovery of a suspect package, the Line Controller rewrites or ‘reforms’ his timetable to reschedule the traffic covering the gaps within the service. As noted earlier, these changes are marked on the relevant pages of the paper timetable and then rubbed off when the event has passed. It is critical that changes to the timetable and the reasoning which lies behind them are communicated to the Controller’s colleagues within the Line Control room, since those colleagues are responsible for adjusting the signaling and providing information to passengers. Yet during a crisis the Controller rarely has the time nor the opportunist y 10 break from dealing with the emergency to tell colleagues or inform them of the reasons behind a particular action. In consequence, the Controllers have developed a simple, yet effective way of rendering their
3
4
Moreover, the customisation of the documents is tailored to the demands of particular occupational groups within the control rooms; while some changes are relevant to all the staff, others are of concern to some but not to others.
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An alternative means of collaboration, which trades on the flexibility of small paper documents, involves provisional changes to plans being relayed around the office through the use of Post-it stickers.
potentially private paper-based activities pulblicly visible, at least within the immediate environment of the Control Room. As Controllers reform the service and rewrite the paper timetable they talk outloud to themselves, speaking about the changes they are making, On occasions these apparent mumblings simply consist of, for example, numbers, the replacement of one sequence of numbers with anothec ’213216, 240243, 257267’. More often than not these numbers are interdispersed with a self discussion explaining why one change is being made rather than another. Through this talk, the Controller not only communicates decisions whilst remaining primarily focussed on the tasks at hand, but reveals ‘potentially’ private features of the paper-based activity to colleagues within the Control Room, As the Controller talks, the Information Assistant and the Signalmen often mark the changes on their own copies of the-paper timetable; without necessarily abandoning other activities in which they are simultaneously engaged. There are therefore very different ways in which individuals can share, or collaborate through, a paper document. Clearly documents may be tailored and exchanged and thereby support the exchange of information, but they also support synchronous real time collaboration. The ecological flexibility of paper can allow participants to view collaboratively a document and discuss the various details it contains, whether it is the specifics of a particular treatment, the detailed design of a staircase or the running schedule of trains. The document facilitates a variety of cooperative orientations and lookings, which both support, and are engendered through, the particular actions and activities at hand. But as the materials from the Underground and the medical consultations powerfully demonstrate, individuals have ways of making aspects of a document public to support collaboration, even when it is physically unavailable to a co-participant. Nor is the collaborative use of a paper document limited to reading and looking, In the various settings we can witness the ways in which the activity of writing and rewriting can be made public to enable colleagues, who are co-present and yet engaged in potentially unrelated activities, aware of the real time reasoning in making changes to a paper document. Within the settings, personnel have developed a body of conventional and routine practices for dealing with the potential constraints of a particular media, so as to provide a necessary foundation for document-based collaboration. The ways in which participants use paper-based documentation within these various settings, also begins to reveal how difficult it is to differentiate whether an activity or task is individual or collaborative. SO, for example, reforming the train service or writing a medical record card would initially appear to constitute a distinct task undertaken by a particular individual. But as we hope to have shown even such apparently individual and localised tasks are frequently produced with respect to the ongoing interfactional demands within the immediate environment. The organisation of the task is shaped in the light of the conduct and sensibilities of co-present participants, and the contingencies which arise within its production. Collaborative activity is simply a gloss for a myriad of
ways in which co-present and physically dlstrlbutert individuals can shape actions and activities in the light of the synchronous and asynchronous contributions of others. Moreover, in the settings discussed here we find the various individuals simultaneously participating in multiple activities, so that even the most mundane and apparently individual task is interactionally organised. The task is constituted in and through the interaction and is perhaps inseparable from it. SCREEN-BASED DOCUMENTATION In each of the settings, paper documents are being used alongside recently introduced computer systems. These provide facilities for the performing tasks similar to those for which paper documents are being used the doctors have access to a computerized medical record system which is accessed through a screen and keyboard placed on their desks; the architects each have an Apple Macintosh on which they are able to draw their plans, sections and elevations; and, in one of the control rooms the staff have access to a screen-based timetable which is embedded in the semi-circular console at which they sit. Computer systems provide unprecedented support for collaborative work in organisational domains. The ability of the technology to store and coordinate substantial bodies of information gathered by multiple personnel, to facilitate the quick and easy transfer of data between physically distributed individuals, and to provide immediate access to documentation, has had an extraordinary impact on work and communication. In general medical practice, doctors now have immediate and legible access to each others’ notes, and can even elicit details of the relevant treatment for particular complaints. Moreover, systematic and accessible information concerning diagnostic decisions and treatment details can not only provide a useful data base to coordinate the various facilities that a particular practice might offer, but also allow the practice as a whole to monitor more closely the activities of its individual practitioners. In architecture, we can discern the ways in which new technology allows both for the re-use of particular components in and across designs and also for different architects and other related personnel to access and utilise the drawings of others. Within the Line Control Room, screen-based technologies can provide precise real time information concerning the movement of trains (perhaps even passengers), and also allow signalmen and others to communicate and coordinate changes to the service with colleagues working within other locales within the organisation. These facilities, however, seem to encompass a rather restricted view of collaboration in their design; a perspective that focuses on the asynchronous and distinct use of computer systems by individuals, Nevertheless, users of such systems do develop ways of supporting synchronous, real-time, co-present collaboration. For example, one of the doctors places the screen between himself and his patient so that it can be jointly used as a resource during the consultation. In our data, shared readings of the screen are normally initiated or invited by the doctors who, for example, may ask patients to identify which drug(s) they
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Utilising a person’s orientation towards a screen or diagram to draw certain inferences and coordinate actions and activities, may also facilitate collaboration even when the contents of the display are not accessible to the coparticipant, In the medical consultation we find patients systematically coordinating their talk with the doctors’ use of the computer, even though the patient may not be able to see the contents of the screen and may well be ignorant of the sorts of information that the doctor is entering or retrieving from the system. For example, patients attempt to coordinate the initiation and delivery of utterances with the keystrokes of the doctor, orienting to potential boundaries within the production of the activity with the computer. Moreover, the ways in which the doctor glances and looks at the screen and its contents, coupled with the movement of the hands and fingers across the keyboard, provide the patient with resources with which to draw various inferences concerning the organisation of the activity and thereby to attempt to coordinate their own contribution. Despite the relative inaccessibility of the activity, the patient makes sense of visible aspects of the doctor’s use of the computer, and coordinates his or her contributions with the co-participant. Mutatis mutandi, it is often found that the doctor, in entering or retrieving information from the system, produces the activity with respect to the concurrent contribution and participation of the patient, shaping the use of the system with the ongoing conduct of the patient. In consequence, the doctor’s use of the system, whilst not collaborative in the conventional sense of the term, is systematically and interactionally coordinated with the concurrent actions of the patient; the systems use in AU is unavoidably embedded in the interaction between the participants.
want prescribing from a screen-based list.5 Computer hardware may be similarly deployed and used to support shared readings in other settings; travel agents, for example, use computer screens that swivel so that they can turn the screen towards customers while discussing various options. Screen-based systems, even those primarily designed to support tasks by single users, can also be used for less focussed collaboration. In both the Bakerloo Line and Docklands Light Railway Control Rooms, each individual is provided with a configuration of monitors which displays interrelated information concerning the movement of traffic and passengers. For each member of the Control Room however, it is only possible to display a certain configuration of information on their own monitors, which at times can handicap their management of particular problems. These difficulties however, are in part dealt with by using monitors ‘belonging’ to a colleague which maybe configured to provide alternative information. Indeed, it is not unusual for Control Room personnel to be sensitive to concurrent information demands of the activities of their colleagues and maintain particular displays on their monitors in order to allow others peripherally to monitor, for example, changes in traffic movements in a different locations. In both the Bakerloo Line and the Docklands Light Railway Control Room a number of monitors and information displays are designed to be used by various personnel. For example, in the Docklands Control Room there are a bank of CCTV monitors which provide successive views of the various platforms utilised by all staff within the Control Room, and are regularly used to point out, discuss and manage a particular problem (such as a passenger attempting to avoid payment). The use of these publicly available displays to support various forms of collaboration is far more subtle and complex than merely providing a common information source for focussed discussion. For the Bakerloo Line a large fixed line diagram runs the whole length of the room, say thirty feet or so, and displays in real time through illuminated sections of the track where trains are located on the North and Southbound service, The diagram provides for focussed discussion concerning problems such as gaps in the service, but more importantly perhaps, allows personnel within the Control Room to be able peripherally to monitor their colleagues’ orientation to the diagram. So for example, a Signal Assistant may notice a colleague ‘looking at’ the diagram, and thereby scan the display to discern what may be demanding his or her attention. The very size and position of the diagram, provides personnel with the ability not only to monitor each others’ 100kings, but to use those ‘lookings’ as a way of gaining access to the actions and activities in which they may be engaged.
5
To a large extent the systems found within the various settings discussed here, have been primarily designed to support individual tasks and to provide ways in which distinct asynchronous contributions may be interrelated. It is clear however, that in each of the settings the various tasks and activities which the systems are designed to support are undertaken within a ‘public’ and cooperative domain; a domain in which each individual whilst responsible for a distinct realm of activity, undertakes tasks which are thoroughly dependent upon and interrelated to real time contributions of colleagues or clients. Not surprisingly, despite the shape of the systems, participants within each of the settings have developed various practices and procedures in and through which they can use these rather crude technologies to support various forms of real time, synchronous, collaboration and cooperation. Even the most apparently individual tasks, such as entering specialised and ‘private’ information into the medical computer system, is found to be systematically coordinated with the concurrent contributions of the patient. Actual focussed collaboration, however on a single task or activity, the form of collaboration most favoured by CSCW systems, is just one amongst a myriad of ways in which individuals, in real time, coordinate their actions and participate in the various tasks at hand. Indeed, it may the case that in attempting to support collaborative activity, we consider mutually focussed collaborative activity on a single task, as perhaps one of the rarer forms of real world
However, on occasion patients may unilaterally point to items on the screen, using their presence to warrant the introduction of a topic into the talk, In one instance a patient enquires about the results of a test displayed on the screen.
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cooperation, and that by beginning to delineate the wide range of ways that individuals participate in each others actions and activities in the work place, ‘we can begin to build more sensitive and relevant technologies. THE RESILIENCE OF PAPER Despite computer systems being introduced to perform similar tasks, paper documents are still being used in all the settings we have been considering. The doctors continue to rely largely on their medical record cards during diagnosis; architects, despite having more up-to-date versions of the drawings on their own machines, discuss changes to their plans on versions printed out on pape~ and the use of the paper timetable is still critical to work in the Bakerloo Line Control Room. l%ere appear to be several reasons for the resilience of paper in the face of computerized alternatives. While some of these are due to the ecological flexibility of paper and the ‘reactivity’ of the screen, perhaps the most significant issues relate to the differing ]properties of the two media for documenting and retrieving information. Although screen based text is often more legible than handwriting, it can be easier to write with pen or pencil on paper than type using a keyboard, particularly when interacting with colleagues or clients, or engaged in concurrent activities. Whereas, writing on a medicat record card, marking a paper plan and altering a train timetable can be interleaved into the interaction, users of a computer system tend to have to ‘break off’ from the interaction in order to type into the machine. Therefore, in medical consultations doctors usually make additions to their paper records during the diagnostic phase and only later will they type the information into the system. As the range of marks that can be entered into them is often restricted, systems offer less possibilities for tailoring documents. This may mean that they do not support criticat work practices. Architects cannot ‘mark up’ screenbased plans, both because on an individual screen the plans are not publicly visible and because the range of marks and jottings which they make on the paper cannot be easily achieved on the CAD system. Doctors cannot flexibly annotate a screen-based medical history nor can their colleagues scan these histories by identifying the handwriting of the originators of particular entries.6 Moreover, screen-based timetables do not support the practices that control room staff use in nnaking temporary changes to their paper timetables. As mentioned above, marking up changes to a design, keeping a record of the medical consultation and noting changes to the running order of trains are all crucial to the tasks in which participants in the relevant domains are engaged. However, by not providing a range of the resources upon which the doctors, architects and control room staff have come to rely, 6
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A related problem with documenting information on computer systems is that they can structure the ordering in which various activities are performed. Thus, the VAMP system used in the general practice requires doctors to enter data in a particular sequence and places constraints on the ways in which they can move around the screen-based medical record. There are similar difficulties in retrieving information from documents. For example, the CAD system used by the architects inevitably has to restrict the ways in which they can move around and between plans on the screens. Therefore locating, changes to a design may well be easier on the large, paper plans. Furthermore, information may not be available in the electronic form. In the Control Rooms relevant and up-to-date information may be distributed between several documents and artifacts, and in the medical consultation historical records written before computerisation results of tests are only kept on paper. Screen-based systems also offer fewer ways of differentiating a document than paper. Thus, it is easy for architects to locate annotations on a plan consisting of circles, their colleagues’ handwriting and other marks. Similarly, doctors can utilise those features of a medical record card that are due to the paper document’s tailorability (e.g. handwriting, spacing) to find !relevant entries, However, when operating the computer system they are confronted with large blocks of undifferentiated text on the screen. As mentioned above, computer systems can localise particular activities, their immobility restricting the degree of ecological flexibility they have within the work environment. Whereas medical record cards can be moved around the environment in ways which are sensitive to a range of situations and contingencies, the screen-based medical record is in a fixed position. The immobility of the screen-based record means that it is incompatible with a range of work practices that have been based around the ecological flexibility of the paper document, for example, those related to conducting examinations and carrying out tests, The architects are faced with paper as well as screenbased plans being in fixed positions. However, they rarely discuss plans on the screen, either talking over the paper plans or utilising the mobility of smaller pieces of paper, such as Post-it stickers, to inform colleagues of changes to the design. One additional problem faced by architects using CAD systems is pacing their talk with the operation of the computer. As the drawings tend to be complex, the time it takes to move around the building while the image is being displayed and redisplayed on the screen may be substantial and irregular, Thus, coordinating their talk with a changing and reactive display can be problematic, and
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167
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general orientation which informs the design of computing systems. Whilst perhaps recognizing the importance of cooperation and asynchronous interaction, the systems are primarily designed with respect to facilitating tasks performed by a single user. The individual, plan based conception of task which one suspects informs the design of the various systems, is insensitive to the ways in which the tasks are accomplished in situ and in concert with others in the practical circumstances of the day to day work, In each of the settings we can see the ways in which personnel rely upon their abilities to manoeuvre and improvise with paper and screen based documentation to support a rich and diverse body of practices for accomplishing certain tasks in interaction with others. So for example, in producing an apparently individual task such as entering information into the medical record, the task will be produced with respect to the concurrent participation of the patient in that self-same activity. It is not simply that specific individual tasks and technologies are adapted to the practical circumstances, but that the very tasks themselves are of a different characten they are thoroughly embedded in and dependant upon the indigenous constraints and local interfactional organisations. The very nature of the task is embedded within the situation of its accomplishment.
restarts, pauses and the like.8
In sum, each of the settings is in a state of transition and it maybe that work practices may develop around the computer systems. However, as yet in our studies, we have not witnessed screen-based systems being utilised with the flexibility of paper documents. Paper is customizable for documenting and retrieving information, ecologically mobile and can be deployed around the work environment, tailorable for individual and shared tasks and it provides a range of ways for individuals to orient to their collaborative activities, supporting this work without having to become a focus for it. Despite computer systems being designed to support various forms of collaboration and users developing ways of utilising them for co-present work, screen-based systems localise the user’s activities to the screen, constrain the user’s ability to differentiate the documents at hand and are interactionally inflexible. Moreover, unlike paper documentation, they are active in the local environment and place demands upon users. Faced with these constraints, it is not surprising that paper is used alongside the screenbased technology, resilient in the work environment. RECONSIDERING TASK It is increasingly recognised in CSCW that the term “cooperation” serves as a gloss for a disparate collection of working practices and communicative arrangements, ranging from asynchronous interaction with a distant colleague, through to real time, mutually focussed activities within the same physical location. Despite the recognition that many real world tasks necessitate cooperation, it is possible that the emergence of CSCW allows more traditional work in human-computer interaction and even cognitive science to preserve a clear demarcation between individual and collaborative activities. As Grudin [9] suggests, whilst we might welcome a growing concern in designing for the ‘user’, research and design continues to be primarily focussed on supporting a single individual entering or retrieving information from a workstation. And yet, even by briefly examining the use of computing technology in settings ranging from medical consultations through to Line Control Rooms, we can see the ways in which a system can appear to undermine the performance of indigenous tasks that it was designed to support.
The resilience of paper within these various settings emerges from the ways in which the medium can be flexibly used to support the wide diversity of ways in which apparently individual tasks are accomplished in situ.. In each of the settings, we can observe how the production of tasks demands that personnel are able to move freely between the individual and collaborative accomplishment of activities, ranging from entering information without apparent regard to the presence of another, through to a mutually focusscd discussion of the contents of a file or the arrangement of a document. In general, however, the production of paper or technological supported activities within these settings, demands a complex array of techniques and interfactional arrangements somewhere between these polar extremes, and necessitates fluid artd flexible participation within the activities at hand. The production format of the task and the ways in which it requires, or engenders, co-participation is continually accomplished, in and through the interaction between those within ‘perceptual range of the event’ (cf Goffman [6]). The ‘interaction’ may be no more than simply remaining sensitive to a colleague’s physical orientation towards a screen, or keeping an ear to the chit-chat in the office, it may involve quietly listing items as they are entered into the patient’s record, or it may include pointing to and explaining some change in a document. In each case however, the production of specialised and technologically supported tasks is embedded in the individual’s orientation and sensitivity to actions and activities of others within the local milieu; the accomplishment of a task is inseparable from interaction with others.
The resilience of paper in these various environments does not simply derive from problems with the design of the systems which have been introduced into these settings. Rather, one suspects that the problems result from a more 8
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168
research and development in computing ttxhnology, we can begin to see ways in which issues within CSCW are highly relevant to more conventional applications, and perhaps avoid oversimplifying the concepts of cooperation and collaboration. By recognizing that almctst every task in whatever setting is dependent upon an indigenous body of work and communicative practices, it becc)mes increasingly relevant to consider the ways in which new technologies need to support both the individual and the collaborative, the private and the public, and the muh,ifarious ways in which personnel coordinate their activities with colleagues and clients.
customizable documents.
For example, it may be possible to enhance certain aspects of the private work on a conventional co)mputer system to provide public resources for other individuals in the In systems to support service enquiries, environment. sounds could be implemented that reflect patterns in the human-computer interaction. As the user types on the keyboard, sounds could make boundaries in the interaction
To address the issue of tailorability, reeent developments in computer technology could be utilised. For example, gestural interfaces could enable individuals to write on the screen. The studies outlined above reveal that in some domains and on some occasions it may be preferable not for the computer to ‘recognise’ and transform the writing of participants into type. Furthermore, as such facilities are being offered on small notepad computers, these systems have the capability of providing a similar ecological flexibility to paper. Alternative systems could dispense with the screen-based documents entirely. Utilising scanners and facsimile technologies, systems could be devised that store and retrieve paper documents (cf. the PaperWorksTM system developed at PARC). In addition, where possible and useful, some processing of documents could be performed. Obviously, such systems would support both the for
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These technological developments can be seen as a move away from a dependency on screen-based systems to support computational activities, towards a state where systems are less visible and intrusive, a state that has been characterised as ‘ubiquitous computing’ (Weiser [22]), Many of the issues that developers of such systems are addressing will have to be explored by designers of distributed technologies. The relationships between shared and individual screen objem and workspaces have been a longstanding concern of CSCW system designers; recurrent problems with groupware are how users can determine common references to screen objects, how they can establish ownership over screen objects and how these references and ownerships can of work in realbe displayed to others. The examination world environments suggests that the nature of communication and collaboration may be more complex The simple than these current technologies imply. distinction between shared and individual tasks may not be sufficient to capture aspects of the nature of collaborative work, designers of CSCW systems may have to take into account the ways individuals participate in the workplace. Recent developments in audio-visual environments maybe beginning to adopt such an orientation. Ralher than attempting to simulate face-to-face collaboration and adding facilities for distributed representations of their shared work (e.g. Gale [3], Olson et al. [181), it may be possible to provide participants with a sense of the orientation of their co-participants to the artifacts they are using (Tang and Minneman [21], Condon [2]). These developments may overcome some of the apparent deficiencies of videomediated communication (Heath and Luff [13]), as well as beginning to tackle fundamental concerns for supporting collaborative work.
between user and machine available to a co-participant.9 Obviously, such sounds would require subtle design to avoid further intrusiveness of the computer system into the interaction.
Suggestions
flexible
It may be that larger screens laid flat may provide for objects on the screen to be more publicly accessible. However, such screens would still not provide for the mobility and tailorability of paper mentioned above. A more radical development may be possible. Rather than trying to replace the use of paper, systems could allow users to manipulate both screen objects and paper Already prototype documents on their work surfaces. systems like VideoDesk (Tang and Minneman [20]), TeamWorkStation (Ishii [15]) and DigitalDesk (Wellner [23]) are attempting to achieve this by utilising video projections of screen displays, camera views of desks and locational information generated by digital tablets. DigitalDesk, for example, enables users to place paper documents on a desk from which a camera can ‘read’ items. Meanwhile a projector displays a screen image back onto the table. On such a system it is possible to engage in work on documents and screen objects, preserving the advantages of each. It may also be possible to support the way individuals orient to activities on paper and to offer a smooth and versatile means of moving between these orientations.
CONCLUSION AND DESIGN IMPLICATIONS With these issues in mind, it may be worth considering possibilities for novel developments in CSCW system design. One path may be to explore supplements and alternatives to screen-based systems and 10 design systems for supporting co-present, rather than distributed, work. New technologies and methods being developed by colleagues at EuroPARC, PARC and elsewhere can be viewed as steps in this direction.
9
and ecologically
the
computer
a disk.
In studying observation
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three workplaces we made the recurrent that paper documents were being used to
perform certain tasks even though a computer system had just been introduced to carry out those tasks, By focussing on the activities that surround both paper and screen-based documents we have suggested why the use of paper persists. This is not only due to the intrinsic properties of paper or the intrinsic constraints of screens, it is also because paper affords an interfactional flexibility that allows individuals a range of ways of participating in tasks-in-interaction. Such a reconception of task may be essential for developing systems that provide the sensitivity to the activities of others inherent in collaborative work.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The issues discussed in the paper have benefited considerably from discussions with colleagues at EuroPARC, the Universities of Oxford, Lancaster and Paris who participated in several meetings concerning work, interaction and technology and systems design.
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