Unterstützung kontinuierlicher Kollaboration in hybriden offline / online Settings
Bild- und Sprachverarbeitung, Computergraphik und Visualisierung, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous und Wearable Computing
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The aim of the project was to develop a socio-technical approach to sustain collaboration in hybrid settings where phases of collocated and distributed collaboration intertwine. To achieve this goal, the PI conducted four exploratory studies in different contexts in order to identify factors that can promote or hinder the continuation of collaboration. Based on insights gained during these studies, the PI aimed to design and develop a technological infrastructure and organizational guidelines that would support teams to sustain their collaboration over longer periods of time in hybrid (collocated and distributed) settings. The studies were conducted in the context of: (1) multiple workshop series that had the goal to analyze work processes in a university administration and identify means for their improvement; (2) student groups that organize multiple activities during the course of each year for their fellow students in two North American universities; (3) a project in another North American university during which students developed an augmented reality application to improve university tours for prospective students and their parents; and (4) a large scale hackathon that took place in a corporate context. These studies revealed that for collaboration to be sustained it is necessary to adapt the focus from time to time. However, while the original aim was to identify factors that promote or hinder the sustainability of collaboration, aforementioned studies quickly revealed that this approach would not be feasible. Such factors would either have to be domain specific in order to provide specific guidance – which would diminish their usefulness for any other context – or they would have to be generic – thus not providing specific enough guidance. The same can be stated for supporting technologies. The technologies used were not only different among settings but they differed even within the same setting (e.g. aforementioned student groups used a large variety of different tools for different purposes depending on the preferences of their members). Instead of developing a sophisticated technological framework based on a range of factors we opted for a solution based on the group messenger Slack. We additionally developed and applied a set of easy to use socio-technical guidelines that supported teams and team members to identify issues in the way they collaborate and provide guidance on how to fix them. These guidelines cover aspects such as the suitable distribution of tasks based on individual skills and interest, useful tools and procedures for effective and efficient information exchange, a match between ambitions and realistic goals, the social dynamics within a team, a balance between perceived effort and benefit and suitable means for feedback and awareness. They can be appropriated by each team in order to fit their specific needs. Studying one of the largest corporate hackathons in the world also revealed that sustaining collaboration is only one of many potential goals and outcomes of collocated collaboration. There are a number of potential individual gains such as effects on individual careers, skills, confidence and networks which could prove to be even more important than the continuation of collaboration. The PI plans to extend this line of research in the future by identifying ways to meaningfully integrate events such as hackathons into innovation and education processes.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- (2019) Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose: The Future of Software Development. IEEE Softw. (IEEE Software) 36 (1) 15–22
Pe-Than, Ei Pa Pa; Nolte, Alexander; Filippova, Anna; Bird, Christian; Scallen, Steve; Herbsleb, James D.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2018.290110547) - (2017). When to Say “Enough is Enough!”: A Study on the Evolution of Collaboratively Created Process Models. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., 1(CSCW), 33:1-33:21
Chounta, I.-A., Nolte, A., Hecking, T., Farzan, R., & Herrmann, T.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1145/3134668) - (2018). Exploring Potentials of Process Reflection to Support Communities of Small Volunteer Groups. In: 1st Workshop on Subject-oriented BPM for Community Support
Nolte, A.
- (2018). Supporting Collaboration in Small Volunteer Groups with Socio-Technical Guidelines. In: Proceedings of 16th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - Exploratory Papers, Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (ISSN 2510-2591)
Nolte, A., Jahnke, I., Chounta, I.-A., & Herrmann, T.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.18420/ecscw2018\_25)
