An empirical study of how people establish interaction: implications for CSCW session management models

In this paper, we report the results of an empirical study ofhow people, as part of their daily work activities, go about toestablish collaboration. We examine the empirical findings andrelate them to existing research on CSCW session management models,i.e., the mechanisms in CSCW systems that define the way in whichpeople can join together in collaboration. Existing models leave alot to be desired, in particular because they tend to assume thatindexical elements of interaction management are substitutable byobjective representation of artifacts. Based on the empiricalfindings, we derive three principles to consider in the design ofCSCW session management models.