yam@cbnewsi.att.com (toshihiko.yamakami) (09/30/90)
I was just back from IFIP WG8.4 Multi-User Interfaces and Applications Conference(Sep 24-26), Crete, Greece. I attended also CHI'90 and COIS'90. So this is the third conference I attended this year in some groupware related conference. (I am biased to compuer communication, it shouldbe noted.) In CHI'90, I felt that user-interface issues became focusing on 'group interface' or 'human-to-human interface issue' from personal interface. Examples are 'The Computer Reaches Out'(J.Grudin pp.261-268) and 'VideoDraw: A Vido Interface for Collaborative Drawing'(J.C.Tang, S.L.Minneman: Xerox PARC). Also I felt incresing emphasis on user-participatory design and scandinavian approaches(readers may see papers from CHI90 pp.353-378, under the session "The Organizational Context of Desgin"). In addition, collaboration awareness was suggested, in 'Collaboration Awareness in Support of Collaboration Transparency: Requirements for the Next Generation of Shared Window Systems'(J.C.Lauwers and K.A.Lantz). It follows some previous suggestions about 'revisited WISIWYS' arguments. In COIS'90, I felt that there were increasing discussion on two fundamental directions on CSCW: design discussions on implementation of shared workspace, and some group processing in logical sense. The former examples were 'Commune: A Shared Drawing Surface'(S.A.Bly and S.L.Minneman pp.184-192) and 'Shared Views and Interactions with Single user Applications(S. Greenberg, pp.227-237). The latter example was some discussion on Coordination Theory including 'SACT: A Tool for Automating Semi-Structure Organizational Communication' (C.C.Woo pp.89-98). People agreed that multi-user multi-media era was coming, however, I felt that desgin paradigm is still in the middle of progress. And now in IFIP WG8.4 Multi-user Interfaces and Applications, we could see more specific results as it could be easily imagined with the conference focus on multi-user issues. I felt that I could see 'working prototypes' with particular significant design policies in this conference than any other conference before. (Of course, we can see more CSCW'90, it is guaranteed!). I would like to report three of examples. (Don't ask me everything! Of course, it is just a part of conference highlights, each participant might have his/her own different opinion.) There were three design policies which I was interested: (1) Multi-user hypertext design which is intended for multi-user application platform My most favorite paper in this conference is 'Platform and Application Issues in Multi-User Hypertext'(L.M.Berlin & Vicki L. O'Day; HP Lab; pp.293-304). They discussed 'Hoopertext', which has been developed in HP. The general platform for multi-user applications is what I wanted for long, especially hypertext features and consideration to application specific tailoring. 'Banyan', a graphic hypertext-like conferencing system(e-news viewer) was presented as an example of Hoopertext-based application, and it seemed to be quite powerful and interesting. I am also interested in their arguments that multi-user versioning may just move the problem from concurenty control to 'merge management'. I agree with the fact that it is easy to produce many versions, however, it is difficult to merge them to procude a single shared artifact. (interested readers may see a footnote in p.302) (2) Shared workspace in emphasis on 'fusing Desktop and Computer Screen' Three different approaches for realtime shared workspace designs (single user application, multi-user application, overlaid transparent workspace) were discussed in 'Design of TeamWorkStation: A Realtime Shared Workspace fusing Desktops and Computer Screen'(H.Ishii & M. Ohkubo; NTT; pp.131-142). The idea of allowing arbitary overlaying visual workspace, which has somehing in common with 'VideoDraw' study in Xerox, was presented in relation to three design choices. It may have some deadend in semantic features of final combination of workspaces, however, it seems quite powerful for the transition stage between traditaonal office to 'electronic office'. (3) Integration of 'synchronous' and 'asynchronous' modes in one applicion The one application which can support both of synchronous(realtime) and asynchronous(distributed, and individual) application modes was discussed in 'A Multi-User Document Review Tool'(J.L.Koszarek, T.L.Lindstrom, J.R.Ensor and S.R.Ahuja; AT&T Bell Labs; pp.207-214). <Temporary Conclusing remarks> In general, computer science is a process to find bottlenck and propose a solution from one point of view. There are two groups of people; those who find bottlenecks in media spacific shared workspace and those who find ones in logical shared information space. The former people discuss multi-media shared workspace, its design paradigm, its multi-user metaphor and implementation toolkits.(Readers should be noted that there are a ingreasing number of multi-media toolkits, maybe we will see more in CSCW'90). The later people discuss soft-locking, version control and cordination techniques. There are still quite a lot challenging open issues, and I wish I could summarize them. However, interested readers find some examples in above mentioned or other this year's hot conference proceedings. -- yam -- Toshihiko YAMAKAMI(NTT, Japan) Resident visitor in Bell Labs until Feb 1991 Room 4G634, AT&T Bell Labs, Crawfords Corner Rd. Holmdel, NJ 07733-1988 Tel:(908)949-5742 e-mail: yam@vax135.att.com (was: yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp)