Calendars: Time coordination and overview in families and beyond

Abstract

This paper discusses how calendars and time coordination can be used across social and organizational borders, bridging between work and non-work, and between family coordination and external collaborators. The paper moves beyond family on-line calendars towards coordination and collaboration with professional caregivers and public authorities, and discusses how such shared calendars revitalize some of the very basic discussions of CSCW: The notion of shared goals in cooperative activities, the understanding of time and time-granularity in cooperation, common information spaces, and in particular boundary-crossing capacities and the holding back of information for fragmented exchange. Based on two cases, in which we have worked with sharing and coordination of time-resources in families on the one hand, and external parties such as external care-givers, employers and municipal authorities on the other, this paper will reopen these old CSCW debates. This paper questions if calendars, in particular family calendars should be designed based on shared goals and common interests. We argue that collaboration needs to be supported, even when families and their professional and amateur collaborators do not share the same goals, rhythms and routines.