Listening to users in a manufacturing organization: a context-based approach to the development of a computer-supported collaborative work system

Abstract This paper reports the findings of a field research effort to develop a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system in a power tool organization and provides an overview of the features of this system. It presents the customer-driven, context-based methodology that was used to capture the workflow and the critical issues that must be addressed by the CSCW system. It also describes the evaluation techniques and performance measures that were used to compare the resulting system with the existing product development system in the organization. It was found that a combination of ethnographic and human-centered design methodologies is a powerful approach for capturing information about stakeholder needs and using it to develop a CSCW system in such organizations. Through evaluative ethnography it was possible to determine tasks that were feasible and others that were inappropriate for integration into the CSCW system. This methodology also identified issues that hindered the adoption of the CSCW system, permitting strategies for adoption to be proposed that might serve as guidelines to designers of future CSCW systems. Lastly, this development, implementation, and evaluation of a CSCW system in an industrial environment demonstrate its effectiveness to other similar organizations that could benefit from the use of CSCW systems. Relevance to industry This paper describes the development of a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) system in an actual manufacturing organization using a human-centered, context-based design methodology. The evaluation of the resulting CSCW system demonstrates the effectiveness of the methodology employed, as well as the potential CSCW systems have to address the needs of product development organizations.