A Technology for Pattern-Based Process Design and its Application to Collaboration Engineering - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 6

Figure 1. Community based pattern development & sharing

adapt the process.
We start our cycle with envisioning a goal, set-
ting requirements, analyzing the current system,
designing change, trying this change in the field
and evaluating its effects to set new goals. Using
a cyclic design approach connects the user and
designer community, and creates a cycle of mutual
learning. In this cycle the designer community
analyses the system and based on design patterns
derived from their expertise and experience, they
propose changes. These changes are implemented
and evaluated by the user community who identify
best practices in their ways of working, reinforcing
the design patterns. The design patterns based on
best practices create a short-cut in this learning
cycle in which both the user community and the
designer community learns from the evaluation
of changes to improve design and system perfor-
mance (see Figure 1).

ongoing support from professional facilitators
(Briggs et al., 2006; Briggs et al., 2003; Vreede
& Briggs, 2005). In this approach an expert in
collaboration support or facilitation designs a
repeatable collaborative work practice based on
design patterns, and transfers this work practice
to practitioners in the organization who will use
it to support their groups in the collaborative
work practice.
For Collaboration Engineering it is critical that
the design of the collaborative work practice is
robust, that it creates predictable outcomes, that
it is reusable in different instance of the task, that
it is efficacious to the collaborative goal, that it
is acceptable for the participating stakeholders,
and that it is transferable to practitioners. For this
purpose, thinkLets are developed. ThinkLets are
named, scripted, reusable, and transferable collab-
orative activities that give rise to specific known
patterns of collaboration among people working
together toward a goal with predictable results
(Briggs et al., 2006). For instance a LeafHopper
thinkLet (Kolfschoten, Briggs et al., 2006) is used
to let participants brainstorm ideas in multiple
categories. This gives rise to the collaboration
pattern “generate” where the group moves from
having fewer to having more concepts in the pool
of concepts shared by the group (Briggs et al.,

3. bACkground:
CollAborAtion engineering

Collaboration Engineering is an approach to
designing collaborative work practices for high-
value recurring tasks, and deploying those designs
for practitioners to execute for themselves without