A User-Centred Consistency Model in Real-Time Collaborative Editing Systems

Consistency maintenance is an important issue in groupware systems. The existing consistency models are system-oriented and focus on objective and static aspects of consistency without sufficiently taking into account the involvement of human users. It is necessary to investigate how users perceive consistency and how systems can support the users in realising their expectation. This paper addresses consistency from the point of view of multi-user interaction and proposes a new user-centred consistency model. It argues that consistency is an agreement (or inter-subjectivity) among human users in groupware systems. Such a user-centred interpretation leads to the introduction and differentiation of externalised consistency and emergent consistency. The latter captures the fundamental characteristic of collaborative work, where human users' intentions and negotiation play a crucial role. The paper examines the constituent parts of the model in detail.

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