ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

24-28 September 2011, Aarhus University, Denmark

General Chair: Susanne Bødker, Aarhus University, Niels Olof Bouvin, Aarhus University
Programme Chairs: Wayne Lutters, UMBC, Volker Wulf, University of Siegen

This volume presents the proceedings of ECSCW 2011, the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Each conference offers an occasion to critically review our research field, which has been multidisciplinary and committed to high scientific standards, both theoretical and methodological, from its beginning. The papers this year focus on work and the enterprise as well as on the challenges of involving citizens, patients, etc. into collaborative settings. The papers embrace new theories, and discuss known ones. They contribute to the discussions on the blurring boundaries between home and work and on the ways we think about and study work. They introduce recent and emergent technologies, and study known social and collaborative technologies, such as wikis and video messages. Classical settings in computer supported cooperative work, e.g. meetings and standardization are also looked upon anew. With contributions from all over the world, the papers in interesting ways help focus on the European perspective in our community. The 22 papers selected for this conference deal with and reflect the lively debate currently ongoing in our field of research.

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  • Text Document
    Frontmatter
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011)
  • Text Document
    Characterizing Deixis over Surfaces to Improve Remote Embodiments
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Genest, Aaron; Gutwin, Carl
    Deictic gestures are ubiquitous when people work over tables and whiteboards, but when collaboration occurs across distributed surfaces, the embodiments used to represent other members of the group often fail to convey the details of these gestures. Although both gestures and embodiments have been well studied, there is still little information available to groupware designers about what components and characteristics of deictic gesture are most important for conveying meaning through remote embodiments. To provide this information, we conducted three observational studies in which we recorded and analysed more than 450 deictic gestures. We considered four issues that are important for the design of embodiments on surfaces: what parts of the body are used to produce a deictic gesture, what atomic movements make up deixis, where gestures occur in the space above the surface, and what other characteristics deictic gestures exhibit in addition to pointing. Our observations provide a new design understanding of deictic gestures. We use our results to identify the limitations of current embodiment techniques in supporting deixis, and to propose new hybrid designs that can better represent the range of behavior seen in real-world settings.
  • Text Document
    VideoPal: Exploring Asynchronous Video-Messaging to Enable Cross- Cultural Friendships
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Du, Honglu; Inkpen, Kori; Chorianopoulos, Konstantinos; Czerwinski, Mary; Johns, Paul; Hoff, Aaron; Roseway, Asta; Morlidge, Sarah; Tang, John; Gross, Tom
    Pen pal programs for connecting students from around the world through letter writing have been popular for generations. However, traditional technologies have several limitations in supporting pen pal activities. In this study, we explored the potential of video-based asynchronous messaging in supporting the development of children’s cross-cultural friendships. This paper presents the results of a 2-month study of 30 children from the USA and Greece, exploring their uses of, and experiences with, email and an asynchronous video-based messaging tool we developed called VideoPal. The results from this work highlight the important benefits video provides compared to its text counterpart - email. We conclude with a discussion of the key factors that video enables to benefit the development of children’s long-distance friendships.
  • Text Document
    Mixed-Initiative Friend-List Creation
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Bacon, Kelli; Dewan, Prasun
    Friend lists group contacts in a social networking site that are to be treated equally in some respect. We have developed a new approach for recommending friend lists, which can then be manually edited and merged by the user to create the final lists. Our approach finds both large networks of friends and smaller friend groups within this network by merging virtual friend cliques. We have identified new metrics for evaluating the user-effort required to process friend-list recommendations, and conducted user studies to evaluate our approach and determine if and how the recommended lists would be used. Our results show that (a) our approach identifies a large fraction of the friend lists of a user, and seeds these lists with hundreds of members, few of which are spurious, and (b) users say they would use the lists for access control, messaging, filling in friend details, and understanding the social structures to which they belong
  • Text Document
    The Hugging Team: The Role of Technology in Business Networking Practices
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Sørensen, Anne Thorsø; Shklovski, Irina
    Technological devices for social networking are produced in droves and networking through media seems to be the way of getting ahead in business. We examine what role technology plays in the creation, development and maintenance of business relationships among entrepreneurs in Copenhagen. We find that mediated communication is useful in all stages of relational maintenance but only in a supportive role in relational development where co-presence and shared personal experiences take center-stage, generating trust necessary for business relationships to work. These trust-developing experiences take effort and hard work and although they can be successfully supported and even facilitated through the use of communication technologies, they need not be replaced or made simpler. The difficulties of creating these experiences make working business relationships viable in the uncertain and risky world of entrepreneurship.
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    What Are You Working On? Status Message Q&A in an Enterprise SNS
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Thom, Jennifer; Helsley, Sandra Yuen; Matthews, Tara L.; Daly, Elizabeth M.; Millen, David R.
    Social networking services (SNS) have been deployed within enterprises to encourage informal social interactions and information sharing. As such, users have turned to the status message functionality in a SNS for social information seeking by employing it as a medium for question asking. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study observing emergent question and answer (Q&A) behaviors in an enterprise SNS and then describe user motivations in employing this medium for social information seeking. We report data describing the types and topics of questions asked within the workplace and the prevalence of questions and responses within this system. Results suggest that users choose status message Q&A for non-urgent information seeking needs and perceive question asking as a way to elicit social support from their professional networks.
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    Group Crumb: Sharing Web Navigation by Visualizing Group Traces on the Web
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Wang, Qing; Zheng, Gaoqiang; Li, Ya; Chang, Huiyou; Chao, Hongyang
    Although the sharing of Web navigation experiences can be useful, it is not supported by contemporary browsers. The Web has been constructed along the lines of a spatial metaphor, but with a flaw of not being able to share navigation experiences, that is, group traces, as is possible in a physical space. This paper shows that from the viewpoint of Information Foraging Theory, sharing Web navigation experiences among group members can increase their information foraging performance. To verify this, a simple prototype, the Group Crumb Prototype (GCP), has been designed. The GCP visualizes group Web traces by altering the appearance of links on a Web page according to their Group Crumb Scents, which are calculated from the recentness and times of group navigations to corresponding links. A longitudinal user study has been conducted to compare user performance and experience when surfing the Web with and without the aid of the GCP. Results show that making group navigation traces available on Web pages to group members increases their Web information foraging performance, promotes group collaboration, and enhances their Web browsing user experience as well.
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    SCHO: An Ontology Based Model for Com- puting Divergence Awareness in Distributed Collaborative Systems
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Aslan, Khaled; Alhadad, Nagham; Skaf-Molli, Hala; Molli, Pascal
    Multi-synchronous collaboration allows people to work concurrently on copies of a shared document which generates divergence. Divergence awareness allows to localize where divergence is located and estimate how much divergence exists among the copies. Existing divergence awareness metrics are highly coupled to their original applications and can not be used outside their original scope. In this paper, we propose the SCHO ontology: a unified formal ontology for constructing and sharing the causal history in a distributed collaborative system. Then we define the existing divergence metrics in a declarative way based on this model. We validate our work using real data extracted from software engineering development projects.
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    Dynamic Self-moderation in a Corporate Wiki to Improve Participation and Contribution Quality
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Dencheva, Silviya; Prause, Christian R.; Prinz, Wolfgang
    Contribution to a corporate wiki for the purpose of knowledge transfer can be very low because of continuously pressing tasks, a chronic lack of spare time, and motivational reasons. This is a problem because the wiki fails to achieve its purpose of collecting valuable knowledge, and becomes less attractive through this over time. We present a reputation-based system that socially rewards employees for their contributions, and thereby increases their motivation to contribute to the wiki. In a four months trial of productive use with two work groups, we could show that our concept increases the quantity and quality of articles in the repository, leads to higher activity in general, and draws employees to the wiki who had not contributed before.
  • Text Document
    Dynamic Self-moderation in a Corporate Wiki to Improve Participation and Contribution Quality
    (ECSCW 2011: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2011) Dencheva, Silviya; Prause, Christian R.; Prinz, Wolfgang
    We present an initial investigation from a semi-experimental setting, in which an HMD-based AR-system has been used for real-time collaboration in a task-oriented scenario (design of a museum exhibition). Analysis points out the specific conditions of interacting in an AR environment and focuses on one particular practical problem for the participants in coordinating their interaction: how to establish joint attention towards the same object or referent. Analysis allows insights into how the pair of users begins to familarize with the environment, the limitations and opportunities of the setting and how they establish new routines for e.g. solving the ʻjoint attentionʼ-problem.