Before Getting There: Potential and Actual Collaboration

In this paper we introduce the concepts of Actual and Potential Collaboration Spaces. The former applies to the space where collaborative activities are performed, while the second relates to the initial space where opportunities for collaboration are identified and an initial interaction is established. We present a characterization for Potential Collaboration Spaces featuring awareness elements for the potential of collaboration and mechanisms to gather and present them, as well as mechanisms to establish an initial interaction and associated GUI elements. We argue that by making this distinction explicit, and characterizing Potential Collaboration Spaces, designers of groupware can better identify the technical requirements of their systems and thus provide solutions that more appropriately address their users concerns. We illustrate this concept with the design of an application that supports Potential Collaboration Spaces for the PINAS web-based coauthoring middleware.

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