Rapid Research Prototyping in an Academic-Industrial Collaboration

ABSTRACT

Computer Supported Cooperative Work is the study of how computers can mediate, support, and improve the work we do in groups. Doctoral seminars are designed to expose students to current research and creative discussions. This is the story of one doctoral seminar where the class lived the research: cooperatively with the computer industry, multidisciplinary teams, and software design techniques. Many innovative ideas came out the experience including "Live Scenarios."

BACKGROUND

In the Fall semester of 2002 a doctoral seminar on Computer Supported Cooperative Work was approached by Microsoft. They asked us to do some scenario-based design and brain-storming on an existing product. We agreed. Danielle Busse from SharePoint Team Services was our contact at Microsoft. The class broke up into three groups with specific tasks.

The thee groups were made up of interdisciplinary teams from the disciplines of Library and Information Science, Speech Communication, Leisure Studies, and Regional Planning. Each group had 3 final deliverables,

1. a presentation to the class and Daniela,
2. a presentation to Microsoft in Redmond,
3. and a final written report.

Our tasks were:

1. Group 1: Browsing, navigation, and locating information
2. Group 2: Integration with personal communication and time management
3. Group 3: The collaborative space as user workspace (and not only a space for shared document storage, and asynchronous communication)

Don't feel like you have to read all the reports. Read the topic that most interests you and read that one. It'll be enough reading for one week.

Table 1:Breakdown of the assigned topic for each group and the resulting deliverables.

Group 1 : Browsing, navigation, and locating information Final Report

Group 2 : Integration with personal communication and time management Final Report

Group 3 The collaborative space as user workspace (and not only a space for shared document storage, and asynchronous communication) Final Report

Powerpoint presentation for Proseminar 3 March 2003.

The URL for our UIUC STS test site is http://opal.et.ncsa.edu