Coordination Theory
James Howison2006, … -computer Interaction and …
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
AI
AI
This retrospective analysis of Coordination Theory (CT), first introduced by Malone and Crowston in 1994, explores its evolution and applications within Management Information Systems (MIS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) over the past decade. The paper discusses key dependencies identified in group work, such as resource sharing and task relationships, emphasizing the significance of CT in understanding these dependencies and improving group coordination. Despite its impact, the analysis highlights critical limitations and areas for ongoing research.
Figures (4)
Related papers
An Interaction-based Approach for Structuring Coordination Activities
Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Informatics (ICCI’02),, 2002
In this contribution we present a theoretical approach which has been utilized to inform the coordination of the development of complex systems. Coordination is regarded as a form of human activity in which individual and social aspects as well as technical ones need to be considered. We analyze human activity from an interaction point of view in which various types of signs mediate the relation between individual cognition and phenomena in the environment. The sign-mediated interaction is apprehended as having a connectional, conceptual and linguistic facet. From a cognitive and semiotic analysis of these facets, we conjecture that the following constituents are fundamental for human activity: intersubjectivity, experiential learning, contextuality, spatiality, temporality, stabilizing core and tool usage. These constituents are employed in structuring human activity from a coordination point of view as activity domains. A framework for articulating activity domains is described. This framework, which includes information system support, is currently used to coordinate the software integration of the 3:rd generation mobile systems at the Ericsson company. We report on some result from this usage. The results indicate that the theoretical approach is relevant for practical purposes.
Theoretical Frameworks for Human Computer Interaction
2011
This paper is concerned about the state of theory in HCI and discusses the adequacy of current theoretical frameworks that have been proposed for HCI. These findings are based on our study of these frameworks and their application on various systems under study. Approaches such as activity theory, cognitive ergonomics and distributed cognition are three theoretical frameworks explaining co-operative work. Each of them is applied on multiple case studies describing different work settings. But those work settings usually refer to different work realities, so it is difficult to properly compare those viewpoints. So we analyzed the same work setting, with the three different frame- works mentioned above. The report does not pretend to give detailed case studies but aims to underline how approaches which explain co- operative work can be used to analysed a same work situation. This will allow us to compare the relevant questions each theory is asking and should answer when studying a co...
Task-related principles for user interface design
Schaerding workshop on Task …, 1998
HCI research and design practice has long recognized that interactive systems are useless if they do not support users in performing their work tasks. To this end, the representation and modeling of users' task knowledge is a major concern. In particular, a key concern is how ...
Task Models and System Models as A Bridge Between Hci and Software Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction Series, 2009
This chapter claims that task models per se do not contain sufficient and necessary information to permit automatic generation of interactive systems. Beyond this, we claim that they must not contain sufficient and necessary information otherwise they could no longer be considered as task models. On the opposite we propose a way of exploiting in a synergistic way task models with other models to be built during the development process. This chapter presents a set of tools supporting the development of interactive system using two different notations. One of these notations called Concur Task Tree (CTT) is used for task modelling. The other notation called Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICO) is used for system modelling. Even though these two kinds of models represent two different views of the same world (a user interacting with an interactive system) they are built by different people (human factors specialist for the task models and software engineer for the system models) and are used independently. The aim of this chapter is to propose the use of scenarios as a bridge between these two views. On the task modelling side scenarios are seen as a possible trace of user's activity. On the system side, scenarios are seen as a trace of user's actions. This generic approach is presented on a case study in the domain of Air Traffic Control. As both CTT and ICO notations are tool supported (environments are respectively CTTE and PetShop) an integration tool based on this notion of scenarios is presented. Its use on the selected case study is also presented in details.
Coordinated Roles: Promoting Re-usability of Coordinated
… Languages and Models, 1999
Nowadays, the need for developing more and more complex applications with distributed capabilities has promoted the development of coordination models. The goal of these models is to express the synchronized interaction among the different components of a distributed application. Whilst the Concurrent Object Oriented Programming (COOP) paradigm has revealed special adaptation to the modeling of distributed applications, the integration of this paradigm with current coordination models results in a reduction of the potential re-usability of classes that negates the capital benefit of object orientation. The main contributions of this paper are twofold. Firstly, the Event Notification Protocols, a mechanism that permits the transparent monitoring of active objects, are presented. Secondly, Coordinated Roles, a general-purpose coordination model based on the event notification protocols is proposed. Coordinated Roles is integrated with the COOP paradigm in such a way that the reduction of re-usability is avoided. In addition, it provides flexibility, composability, polymorphism, distribution, and dynamic change of coordination patterns.
Identification of coordination requirements: implications for the Design of collaboration and awareness tools
2006
Abstract Task dependencies drive the need to coordinate work activities. We describe a technique for using automatically generated archi-val data to compute coordination requirements, ie, who must coordinate with whom to get the work done. Analysis of data from a large software development project revealed that coordina-tion requirements were highly volatile, and frequently extended beyond team boundaries.
Evaluation and analysis of users' activity organization
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '83, 1983
Our analyses of the activities performed by users of computer systems show complex patterns of interleaved activities. Current human -computer interfaces provide little support for the kinds of problems users encounter when attempting to accomplish several different tasks in a single session. In this paper we develop a framework for discussing the characteristics of activities, in terms of activity structures, and provide a number of conceptual guidelines for developing an interface which supports activity coordination.
Validation of a Framework for Enriching Human-Computer-Human Interaction with Awareness in a Seamless Way
Interacting with Computers, 2013
Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) environments enable users to interact with each other by using computers to conveniently share relevant data across the user interface. Awareness is an essential requirement in CSCW to convey precise information about the context in which the work in group is taking place, contributing thus to collaboration between users. In this kind of environments, we need to go beyond traditional human-computer interaction to embrace humancomputer-human interaction (HCHI). It is necessary to devise flexible mechanisms to support HCHI in dealing with the diversity of contexts and group concerns. Furthermore, these mechanisms should endeavor to provide a seamless integration with current development techniques. This work presents a multi-purpose framework to include group awareness in HCHI systems in a seamless way. Proposed framework is based on the Dichotomic View of Plasticity approach. An experiment was conducted with two different versions of a specific groupware platform: the original platform and a new version of it, extended by means of the proposed framework. The goal was twofold: (i) to verify the benefits of applying this framework and (ii) to validate, in terms of user satisfaction, the improvement regarding groupware features introduced in the extended version. The results of the experiment backed up our hypothesis by showing that proposed framework is able to add awareness support to existing human-computer-Human (HCH) interfaces in a seamless way. It is also showed that added awareness components effectively contributed to achieve a higher level of collaboration among users.
Related papers
The interdisciplinary study of coordination
ACM Computing Surveys, 1994
This survey characterizes an emerging research area, sometimes called coordination theory , that focuses on the interdisciplinary study of coordination. Research in this area uses and extends ideas about coordination from disciplines such as computer science, organization theory, operations research, economics, linguistics, and psychology. A key insight of the framework presented here is that coordination can be seen as the process of managing dependencies among activities. Further progress, therefore, should be possible by characterizing different kinds of dependencies and identifying the coordination processes that can be used to manage them. A variety of processes are analyzed from this perspective, and commonalities across disciplines are identified. Processes analyzed include those for managing shared resources, producer/consumer relationships, simultaneity constraints , and task/subtask dependencies . Section 3 summarizes ways of applying a coordination perspective in three di...
Towards a coordination model for interactive systems
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2007
When modelling complex interactive systems, traditional interactor-based approaches suffer from lack of expressiveness regarding the composition of the different interactors present in the user interface model into a coherent system. In this paper we investigate an alternative approach to the composition of interactors for the specification of complex interactive systems which is based on the coordination paradigm. We layout the fundations for the work and present an illustrative example. Lines for future work are identified.
Coordination of Collaborative Activities: A Framework for the Definition of Tasks Interdependencies
The coordination of interdependencies between tasks in collaborative environments is a very important and difficult endeavor. The separation between tasks and interdependencies allows for the use of different coordination policies in the same collaborative environment by changing only the coordination mechanisms that control the interdependencies. This paper presents a framework for the definition of interdependencies that frequently occur in collaborative activities. By means of a clear characterization of interdependencies, it is possible to identify coordination mechanisms to manage them, opening the way toward a powerful coordination tool capable of encompassing a wide range of collaborative applications. An implementation of the coordination model of a collaborative virtual environment based on the proposed framework is given as example.
WOAD: A Framework to Enable the End-User Development of Coordination-Oriented Functionalities
Journal of Organizational and End User …, 2010
In this paper, we present WOAD, a framework that was inspired and partly validated within a two-year observational case study at a major teaching hospital. We present the WOAD framework by stating its main and motivating rationales, outlining its high-level architecture and then introducing its denotational language, LWOAD. We propose LWOAD to support users of an electronic document system in declaratively expressing, specifying and implementing content-and event-based mechanisms that fulfil coordinative requirements and make users aware of relevant conditions. Our focus addresses (a) the user-friendly and yet formal expression of local coordinative practices based on the work con-text; (b) the promotion of awareness of both these conventions and the context to enable actors to quickly respond; (c) the full deployment of coordination-oriented and context-aware functionalities into legacy electronic document systems. We give examples of LWOAD mechanisms taken from the case study and discuss their impact from the EUD perspective.
Review of HCI Research
This paper investigates the scientific work within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with focus on cognitive aspects. We discuss the overall structure of the field, research methods and some influencing theories and concepts related to cognition. Moreover, we survey the research methods used in HCI literature dealing with cognition related concepts. The results indicate that empirical and non-empirical work is almost evenly emphasized and that most of the empirical research has been experimental.
The handbook of task analysis for human-computer interaction
2004
The editor, authors, and the publisher have made every effort to provide accurate and complete information in this handbook but the handbook is not intended to serve as a replacement for professional advice. Any use of this information is at the reader's discretion. The editor, ...
On the effective use and reuse of HCI knowledge
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2000
The article argues that new approaches for delivering HCI knowledge from theory to designers will be necessary in the new millennium. First the role of theory in HCI design to date is reviewed, including the progress made in cognitive theories of interaction and their impact on the design pr ocess. The role of bridging models that build on models of interaction is described, but it is argued that direct application of cognitive theory to design is limited by scalability problems. The alternative of representing HCI knowledge as claims and the role of the task-artefact approach to theory-based design are introduced. Claims are proposed as a possible bridging representation that may enable theories to frame appropriate recommendations for designers and, vice versa, enable designers to ask appropriate questions for theoretical research. However, claims provide design advice grounded in specific scenarios and examples, which limits their generality. The prospects for reuse becoming an i...
An Approach to Task Modeling for User Interface Design
2005
The model-based approach to user interface design relies on developing separate models capturing various aspects about users, tasks, application domain, presentation and dialog structures. This paper presents a task modeling approach for user interface design and aims at exploring mappings between task, domain and presentation models. The basic idea of our approach is to identify typical configurations in task and domain models and to investigate how they relate each other. A special emphasis is put on applicationspecific functions and mappings between domain objects and operational task structures. In this respect, we will address two layers in task decomposition: a functional (planning) layer and an operational layer.
The Role of HCI Research in the MIS Discipline
Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems, 2002
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is an interdisciplinary field that has attracted researchers, educators, and practitioners from many different disciplines. HCI has gained even more attention during recent years in which technology has developed at a fast pace. To better utilize this advanced technology, we need to better understand users, their tasks within different contexts, and the interplay among users, tasks, IT, and contexts/environments. Despite broad interest in HCI from a variety of disciplines, we believe that there are ...
Understanding Coordination in the Information Systems Domain: Conceptualization and Implications
JITTA : Journal of Information Technology Theory & Application,, 2016
In this paper, we suggest a new conceptualization of coordination in the information systems (IS) domain. The conceptualization builds on neurobiological predispositions for coordinating actions. We assume that human evolution has led to the development of a neurobiological substrate that enables individuals to coordinate everyday actions. At heart, we discuss six activity modalities: contextualization, objectivation, spatialization, temporalization, stabilization, and transition. Specifically, we discuss that these modalities need to collectively function for successful coordination. To illustrate as much, we apply our conceptualization to important IS research areas, including project management and interface design. Generally, our new conceptualization holds value for coordination research on all four levels of analysis that we identified based on reviewing the IS literature (i.e., group, intra-organization, inter-organization, and IT artifact). In this way, our new approach, grounded in neurobiological findings, provides a high-level theory to explain coordination success or coordination failure and, hence, is independent from a specific level of analysis. From a practitioner’s perspective, the conceptualization provides a guideline for designing organizational interventions and IT artifacts. Because social initiatives are essential in multiple IS domains (e.g., software development, implementation of enterprise systems) and because the design of collaborative software tools is an important IS topic, this paper contributes to a fundamental phenomenon in the IS domain and does so from a new conceptual perspective.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.