Online Collaboration Tools

Collaboration
• Trend: design teams
– Death of the ‘lone creator’ (myths: inspiration, illumination…)
• Complex projects, many stakeholders
• Asynchronous interaction
• Networking
– Common ground, design rationale, project management
• Potential advantages
– Build on ideas, people enjoy working in groups (?), combine abilities…
• Potential disadvantages
– Misunderstanding, no coordination, no shared goals, distraction, free-
riding…

Challenges
• Support systems
– Provide control and feedback
– Facilitate interaction
– Motivate participation
– Process contributions
– Enhance communication
– Combine media & sources
– Enrich shared knowledge
• The main challenge for web collaboration
– Organise and structure information and tasks into a
coherent system that improves collaboration

collaborate.com

Key Characteristics
• Topic or problem • Anonymity
• Participants’ • Trust
background • Mobility
• Goals and tasks • Recognition
• Group size • Etc…
• Time allocated
• Available media
• Infrastructure

brightidea.com

shouldexist.org

sliphead.com

groupsystems.com/page.php?pname=demos/screenshots
globalideasbank.org
birthdaypartyideas.com
halfbakery.com
idea-knowledge.gov.uk
idea-a-day.com
ideaexplore.org
yet2.com
ideacradle.com
premisespremises.com
brainhead.com
whynot.net

Design Collaboration Online
creativecommons.org
thinkcycle.org

Online tools
• • Navigation
Registration
• – By Category
Discussion forums
– By Author
• Rating
– By Time
• Comments – By Rating
• Forward articles • Chat
• Sorting tools • Customise web page
• Images upload • News (aggregator)
• FAQ • Statistics
• Bulletins & mailing lists • Polls
• Archives • Calendar of events
• External resources

“Brainstorming”
• A semi-structured approach for producing ideas
• Can be done individually or in a group (or mixed)
• Participants are encouraged to
– Generate as many ideas as possible (quantity over
quality)
– Share their ideas publicly
– Avoid evaluating / criticisms
– Build on others’ ideas
– Maximise divergent ideas

B’storming Guidelines
• Develop a clear statement of the problem
• Groups of six to twelve participants
• Select a diverse group (diff. backgrounds)
• Provide sample existing solutions
• Time sessions (~30 min.)
• Have an evaluation stage: rank ideas, then
continue with b’storming
• Compare to ideas from previous b’storming
groups

• Important:
– Dissent can be good (criticism by a minority)
– Potential production-blocking (people are
interrupted by others’ ideas)
– Anonymity is preferred, but recognition of
good ideas yields best results
– Groups naturally tend to converge (rapidly)
– Sessions need to be short
– Recording, archiving and retrieving ideas from
multiple sessions is preferred
– An initial individual stage followed by a later
group sessions may be the best strategy

facilitate.com
www.jpb.com

ams-inc.com

Collaboration Models
• Library
– A repository which provides access to common content or data
• Solicitation
– Requests from a small set of leaders and multiple respondents
• Team
– Members share a few common objectives and a stake in their
success
• Community
– Members have general common interests, are often self-
grouping (aggregate), and transparently share information
• Process Support
– Focus is on task, not people. Use of collaboration technologies
in workflow processes
• (Butler and Coleman: www.collaborate.com)

Synchronous / Async.
Individual Offline team Online teams / online individuals
ROLES:
Moderator(s) – participant(s)
Meta-moderator(s)
Registered users – guests
Contributors – visitors
Evaluators (experts)

Online Collaboration Tools
Assignment due 1st June

Review of an online collab web site
• Select an existing Online Collaboration web site
(from the list provided here or another one)
• Write a 3-page review (plus optional screenshots
or figures) analysing (not describing):
– Activities supported (tools)
– Possible extensions or improvements
• Provide URL, title, and description of web site
• Submit a pdf file (max 2MB) named: lastname.pdf. No
Word files, no zip files, no rar files, no html files…

Final Project: Design Brief
Preliminary view

A Design Collaboration Web Site
• Topic: “Online Collaboration in Design”
• Aim: To facilitate collaboration between people in shared
design projects (designers only, or designers and clients,
or designers and engineers, etc).
• Objective: To provide information and tools that enable
collaboration & participation
• You select:
– The design domain or task
– The collaboration model
– Target audience
– Web Site character
– Applications and resources
• May adopt tools from existing web sites or be original
(brainstorming support, etc).

Criteria
• Can be done by individuals or groups
• Can implement existing tools (JS, PHP,
SQL, etc) but originality is preferred
(adaptation, customisation)
• Can use existing design templates
(XHTML, CSS) but originality is preferred
(adaptation, customisation)
• Marking criteria will include visual aspect,
content, and functionality

Requirements
Required from groups of 2:
Required from all:
• Calendar of events
2. Project report
• Page customisation
3. Mockups
• Statistics
4. Home page
5. Article pages • Topic resources (pdf, other
media)
6. Site map
• Link repository
7. Gallery of images
8. Discussion section Required from groups of 3:
9. Contact form • Chat
• File upload
• News
• Polls
• Rating system
• (Surprise)