Suitable notification intensity: the dynamic awareness system

ABSTRACT

Being aware of others' activities has played a vital role in the success of online collaboration. This resulted in the emergence of many groupware systems that provide users with information about the activities of their collaborators in various manners. In virtually all current groupware systems, users are often overburdened by large amounts of unnecessary activity information. This happens because users are most of the time only interested in certain pieces of information for limited durations, while presently there exist no efficient mechanisms for automatically following a user's focus and adjusting the information flow directed at her/him. In this paper we present as a practical solution to this critical problem the dynamic awareness system, which extends the functionality of the BSCW shared workspace system. Key element of the dynamic awareness system is its rule-based inference mechanism to adjust the notification intensity, which reduces the information overload and indirectly allows users to better keep track of relevant events, as well as to manage more efficiently large amounts of shared information. We tested the effectiveness of the dynamic awareness system under real-life circumstances and describe the evaluation results.

REFERENCES

• 1: Wolfgang Appelt, WWW Based Collaboration with the BSCW System, Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Informatics on Theory and Practice of Informatics, p.66-78, November 27-December 04, 1999
• 2: James Bo Begole , John C. Tang , Randall B. Smith , Nicole Yankelovich, Work rhythms: analyzing visualizations of awareness histories of distributed groups, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587125]
• 3: J. J. Cadiz , Gina Venolia , Gavin Jancke , Anoop Gupta, Designing and deploying an information awareness interface, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587122]
• 4: David, J. M. N. and Borges, M. R. S. Improving the Selectivity of Awareness Information in Groupware Applictions. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, 2001. 41--46.
• 5: Paul Dourish , Victoria Bellotti, Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.107-114, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.143468]
• 6: Erickson, T., Smith, D. N., Kellogg, A. W., Laff, M., Richards, J. and Brander, E. Awareness and Coordination in Shared Workspaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI 1999). ACM Press, New York, NY, 1999, 72--79.
• 7: Tom Gross , Wolfgang Prinz, Modelling Shared Contexts in Cooperative Environments: Concept, Implementation, and Evaluation, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, v.13 n.3-4, p.283-303, August 2004 [doi>10.1007/s10606-004-2804-6]
• 8: Carl Gutwin , Saul Greenberg, A Descriptive Framework of Workspace Awareness for Real-Time Groupware, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, v.11 n.3, p.411-446, 2002 [doi>10.1023/A:1021271517844]
• 9: Lotus (2005). The History of Notes and Domino available at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-NDHistory/ (verified 5/23/07).
• 10: W. E. Mackay , T. W. Malone , K. Crowston , R. Rao , D. Rosenblitt , S. K. Card, How do experienced information lens users use rules?, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Wings for the mind, p.211-216, March 1989
• 11: Wolfgang Prinz, NESSIE: an awareness environment for cooperative settings, Proceedings of the Sixth European conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.391-410, August 1999, Copenghagen, Denmark
• 12: Schümmer, T. and Lukosch, Patterns for Computer-Mediated Interaction. Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2007, Chapter 6, 504--525.
• 13: Shilad Sen , Werner Geyer , Michael Muller , Marty Moore , Beth Brownholtz , Eric Wilcox , David R. Millen, FeedMe: a collaborative alert filtering system, Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 04-08, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/1180875.1180890]
• 14: Michelle Potts Steves , Emile Morse , Carl Gutwin , Saul Greenberg, A comparison of usage evaluation and inspection methods for assessing groupware usability, Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, September 30-October 03, 2001, Boulder, Colorado, USA [doi>10.1145/500286.500306]
• 15: Markus Sohlenkamp , Wolfgang Prinz , Ludwin Fuchs, POLIAwaC: Design and evaluation of an awareness-enhanced groupware client, AI & Society, v.14 n.1, p.31-47, 2000 [doi>10.1007/BF01206127]
• 16: Fernanda B. Viégas , Martin Wattenberg , Kushal Dave, Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.575-582, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985765]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Groupware

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work; Collaborative computing

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
dynamic notification, shared workspace, task awareness