FROM AWARENESS TO TEAMROOMS, GROUPWEB AND TURBOTURTLE: EIGHT SNAPSHOTS OF RECENT WORK IN THE GROUPLAB PROJECT

Abstract

This report contains eight short papers that serve as snapshots of recent work by members and collaborators of the GroupLab team. All papers are concerned with groupware, and all but one of the systems described were implemented using GroupKit, our groupware toolkit. The first five papers are a suite of articles that considers how awareness of others can be supported in groupware systems. The papers cover theoretical considerations of awareness (#2), practical efforts in building systems and widgets to support awareness (#1,3,4) and evaluation of widgets to determine their effectiveness and usability (#5). Suite Overview: Supporting Awareness of Others in Groupware 1. Peepholes: Low Cost Awareness of One's community 2. Workspace Awareness for Groupware 3. Workspace Awareness Support With Radar Views 4. A Fisheye Text Editor for Relaxed-WYSIWIS Groupware 5. A Usability Study of Workspace Awareness Widgets The next three papers cover individual projects. TeamRooms (#6) is a groupware equivalent of a physical team room. Group members can stock the room with applications, and can enter the room at any time to continue their work individually or collectively. GroupWeb (#7) is a World Wide Web browser that is group-aware. People can share their views of pages in real time, can gesture around it with telepointers, and can add group annotations to a page with a groupware editor. TurboTurtle (#8) is a microworld for Newtonian physics designed for children. Children were observed using TurboTurtle, and their collaboration styles are analyzed. 6. TeamRooms: Groupware for Shared Electronic Spaces 7. GroupWeb: A WWW Browser as Real Time Groupware 8. Children's Collaboration Styles in a Newtonian MicroWorld