HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
second edition
Dix, Finlay, Abowd and Beale
Chapter 14 - CSCW and social issues
Overview
All computer systems, single user or multi-user, interact with the work-groups and organizations in which they are used.
- We need to understand normal human-human communication:
- face-to-face communication involves eyes, face and body
- conversation can be analyzed to establish its detailed structure.
- This can then be applied to text-based conversation, which has
- reduced feedback for confirmation
- less context to disambiguate utterances
- slower pace of interaction
- but is more easily reviewed.
- Group working is more complex than that of a single person:
- it is influenced by the physical environment
- experiments are more difficult to control and record
- field studies must take into account the social situation.
- Organizational factors can make or break groupware (or single-user) systems:
- those who benefit may not do the work
- not everyone may use systems
- systems may not take into account conflict and power relationships
- it is difficult to measure the benefits of groupware to the organization.
Detailed table of contents