Editorial

The history of this special issue focusing on “awareness” actually began 1997 in San Franciscoat the InternationalConferenceonHuman–Computer Interaction.There, I had the pleasure of chairing the special session “Computer-Supported Communication and Cooperation.” Because of the relevance of this topic, we continued the discussion in 1999 at the International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction in Munich, Germany. This time we focused on the more specialized topic of “Computer-Supported Communication and Cooperation—Making Information Aware.” Also, here the presentations and discussions in the session made it obvious that computer-supported cooperative work in general and awareness as a special problem is highlyrelevantforcooperativeworkandforthedevelopmentofsupportsystems. Based on different definitions (Dourish & Bellotti, 1992; Greenberg, Gutwin, & Cockburn, 1996; Rauschenbach, 1996), the term awareness can be explained in the following way: Awareness describes the extent of cognitive consciousness a user should have of the work process he or she is involved in and how this consciousness can be supported by means of (or in spite of) the use of groupware. The objective of awareness is better coordination of activities, which can be achieved by information on these activities. Sohlenkamp (1998) considered not just information on activities but also information on the state of the system and future options as necessary for emergence of awareness: “awareness means an understanding of the state of the system, including past activities, present status and future options” (p. 29). There are two aspect of awareness that are important to understand: First of all, awareness refers to a person’s knowledge. This implies that reflections focus on the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 14(2), 135–138 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.