Mechanisms for collaboration

TLDR

Multi‑user interfaces are claimed to provide natural interaction for collaboration, unlike individual or non‑colocated technologies. The study aims to identify and characterize three mechanisms—awareness of others’ actions and intentions, control over the interface, and availability of background information—that underpin successful multi‑user interface collaboration, drawing on social developmental psychology. The authors develop a framework of these mechanisms, applying it to explain design successes and failures and to generate design questions through three case studies. They find that constraints on awareness, control, and background information, rather than naturalness, enable smoother collaboration in multi‑user interfaces.

Abstract

Multi-user interfaces are said to provide “natural” interaction in supporting collaboration, compared to individual and noncolocated technologies. We identify three mechanisms accounting for the success of such interfaces: high awareness of others' actions and intentions, high control over the interface, and high availability of background information . We challenge the idea that interaction over such interfaces is necessarily “natural” and argue that everyday interaction involves constraints on awareness, control, and availability. These constraints help people interact more smoothly. We draw from social developmental psychology to characterize the design of multi-user interfaces in terms of how constraints on these mechanisms can be best used to promote collaboration. We use this framework of mechanisms and constraints to explain the successes and failures of existing designs, then apply it to three case studies of design, and finally derive from them a set of questions to consider when designing and analysing multi-user interfaces for collaboration.