Computers, Cognition, and Work Series – serie

The potential of software applications to solve an array of office and administrative problems is increasing faster than the ability of users to exploit it. We need to make systems easier to learn and more comfortable to use. This book reports a major advance in the effort to accomplish both goals.Flexcel enables users to modify access and dialog dynamics to their specific requirements. Relying on a plan recognition feature, the system proposes adaptations or uses of adaptations. The ongoing conflict between the adaptive and the adaptable is resolved in an integration: user and system share the responsibility for the initiatives, decision-making and execution. A "critic" component of the system then analyzes the user's handling of the adaptation tools and suggests improvements. The system offers an environment in which users can explore as they learn.HyPlan implements the context-sensitive help that facilitates learning on demand. When the PLANET plan-recognition feature identifies the kinds of support for work that may possibly be required, HyPlan provides, on request, specific assistance in the form of hypermedia or animated displays and tutorials.Developmental research has shown that users take advantage of opportunities to adapt interfaces only in conjunction with help-functions -- which are accepted when they do not interrupt work. And studies by social scientists have shown that adaptations of technical systems have to be integrated into the overall process of organizational innovation and undertaken cooperatively.This book will stimulate all those concerned with software -- from computational, cognitive, ergonomic, or organizational standpoints -- to reconceive the relationship between design and user support.

Proposing a new paradigm for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), this ground-breaking book presents a research agenda for developing and testing that paradigm. It constitutes the first attempt to outline a comprehensive model of collaboration that integrates the cognitive/conceptual and social dynamics of groups. The challenge faced by all groups engaged in intellectual work is, on the one hand, to divide the task so that efforts of individual members may proceed in parallel and, on the other hand, to synthesize their separate contributions to form a coherent whole. Addressing this challenge, Smith examines the general form of a theory of computer-based collaboration that extends across different tasks and working situations. He uses the work of Newell, Simon, and Anderson as a base from which to consider a group as a form of distributed information processing system. Within groups, there are constructs analogous to human long-term and short-term memory, conceptual processes, and problem solving and knowledge-construction strategies. He discusses two metacognitive issues -- awareness and control -- as they occur in collaborative behavior. And he reviews a number of advanced computer systems that support collaboration, focusing on their impact on the thinking and behavior of groups. Smith's theoretical framework combines elements of Information Processing System theory -- and its detailed process models of cognitive behavior -- with the situated perspective of activity theory. The book suggests new and useful ways of conceiving problems and solutions to all those interested in the ways in which people interact with each other and with computers to achieve goals.