A shift of focus within HCI came with the emergence of CSCW. Whereas traditional HCI has focused upon human-computer interaction, CSCW is about how computers facilitate human-to-human communication.
Groupware and CSCW represent a paradigm shift in computer use. Human-Human interaction, rather than human-machine interaction is the primary focus;
the computer facilitates human communication rather than acting as a purely computational device. (Baecker, 1993)
The shift from HCI to CSCW has been seen as a paradigm shift (Bannon, 1992). A paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962) is characterized by more than a shift in technology; it involves a shift in perspective as well. The influential phenomena that lead to the CSCW paradigm can be seen as follows:
x Pervasive networking that enables widespread computer-based interpersonal and data communications.
x The extension of personal computing technology to support small group productivity, sometimes known as work-group computing.
x The maturing of technology developed by information systems researchers to support executive and managerial group decision making.
x The merging of telecommunications and computing, as telecommunications companies seek new applications such as videoconferencing that exploit high bandwidth.
x The growing interest in telecommuting and working at a distance.
x The introduction of new technologies and standards, such as ISDN (the Integrated Standard Digital Network). (Baecker et al., 1995)
With groupware technologies, the computer was not only utilized for working asynchronously with, for example, documents and pictures, but synchronously as well with communication links between people and offices. According to Baecker et al, “With the convergence of telecommunications and computation, CSCW can incorporate teleconferencing, the use of audio and video links while conferencing over distance”
(Baecker et al., 1995).
The time/place matrix that distinguishes between asynchronous and synchronous communications has been central within the CSCW tradition for classifying various technologies for communication (Grudin, 1994; DeSanctis and Guallupe, 1987).
Electronic mail is an example of asynchronous communication, and this application has been an influential CSCW technology (Sproull, 1991). Since the early days, electronic mail has evolved into a variety of other related forms of exchange formats like instant messaging (Nardi et al., 2000), chat and social software utilities.
Groupware has been another central concept within the CSCW tradition. On the one hand, many authors consider that CSCW and groupware are synonymous. Ellis et al define groupware as “computer based systems that support groups of people engaged in a common task (or goal) and that provide an interface to a shared environment” (Ellis et al., 1991). On the other hand, different authors insist that while groupware refers to real computer-based systems, CSCW is about the study of tools and techniques of groupware as well as their psychological, social and organizational effects.
Within the field of CSCW, discussions have surfaced about what collaboration,
communication and coordination are – as well as what constitutes work. Dillenbourg and Baker (Dillenbourg et al., 1995), for example, draw a distinction between collaboration andcooperation:
Cooperation and collaboration do not differ in terms of whether or not the task is distributed, but by virtue of the way in which it is divided: in cooperation that task is split (hierarchically) into independent subtasks; in collaboration cognitive processes may be (heterarchically) divided into intertwined layers. In cooperation, coordination is only required when assembling partial results, while collaboration is a coordinated, synchrony activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem. (Dillenbourg et al., 1995)
The concept of cooperation has been applied by others in relation to the concept of coordination and communication. The term communication has been applied in order to discuss the interaction between humans and machines (Suchman, 1987), between machines (Mattelhart and Mattelhart, 1995), and between humans (Watzlawick et al., 1967).
Traditionally, services and applications facilitating communication between people have been supported from telecommunications vendors and operators, and this development started 100 years before the current tradition of HCI (Grimstveit and Myhre, 1995). There is limited attention toward the traditional services of telephones within the CSCW and HCI literature, and this can perhaps be because when considering technology we tend to anticipate the future, and forget about the past (Baecker et al., 1995). However, with the mobile telephone and VoIP services – the “plain old telecommunications services” has gained renewed attention in the field of HCI and CSCW.
Today, the computer is used both for computation and information management and for facilitating communication between people. The next section is about the computer in its role of facilitating communication between people.
2.3.1 The telephone and the computer
In an article from 1968, Licklider and Taylor describe a novel use of the computer: as devices for communication (Licklider and Taylor, 1999).
In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. This is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion. As if in confirmation of it, we participated a few weeks ago in a
technical meeting held through a computer. In two days, the group accomplished with the aid of a computer what normally might have taken a week. (ibid) What we see today with emerging technologies such as voice services on the net, Instant Messaging, and various forms of mobile phone use, the computer is used for facilitating communication between people as well as for information management. Also, much of the emerging social software utilities are using the computer and computer network in order to facilitate communication between people over distances.
The observation that the computer is applied in order to facilitate communication between people does not mean that it is no longer used as a tool for computation. It is today not a “battle” between the computers as medium or the computer as a tool – the computer is seen as both a tool and a medium enabling communication. “In domestic settings personal computers are used for entertainment, interpersonal communication self-expression, and access to information of many kinds. Most significantly, in each of these settings computers are used not as calculating machines, but as communication technologies. Computers are being used as media” (Mayer, 1999).
Within the CSCW tradition, there are also occasional references to the telephone, such as the research presented by Sproull: “The networked organization differs from the
conventional workplace both with respect to time and to space. Computer based communication is extremely fast in comparison with telephone or postal services, denigrated as “snail mail” by electronic mail.” (Sproull, 1991)
The view of the telephone service as something which is slower than “computer based communication” is not explained further by Sproull. Personal experience and the measurement of analog or digital telephone services indicate that the above suggestion is not accurate. Telephone services are experienced “in real time” – since natural
conversations are facilitated by telephone services. But this way of thinking about the telephone, as “slower” than the computer, reveals something about how the telephone is conceptualized: as “old” technology.
The social impact of the telephone has been studied extensively and reported in the seminal work “The social impact of the telephone” (Pool, 1977). The impact of the telephone in family life, business and other parts of society has been studied and interpreted within the sociological traditions. The modern use of mobile telephones has also been studied, for example in studying how micro coordination is conducted with mobile telephones in everyday life (Ling and Yttri, 2002).
Today, the telephone and the computer are still experienced and understood as different kinds of equipment. A telephone is a telephone, and a computer is a computer – but what are the differences? As we will see in later chapters, the term equipment is applied for both describing the computer and the telephone. To use the term “computer” or the term
“telephone” bring along pre-understandings of what the device is and what it is not. One way of transcending this is to apply a neutral term, equipment. Another effect with applying the term equipment is that the “computer” and the “telephone” are seen in the same light as other “equipment”, like clothes as equipment for keeping dry, or the bicycle as equipment for moving on top of two wheels.
With the miniaturization of the computer and the development in wireless connectivity, the disciplines of ubiquitous computing and wearable computing, among others, have evolved from the HCI field.