Pattern-Based Tool Design for Shared Knowledge Construction - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 29

versions in the version tree unless they ex-
plicitly branch the version tree.

Solution : Integrate a tool for quick synchronous
interaction into your cooperative applica-
tion. Let users send short text messages,
distribute these messages to all other group
members immediately, and display these
messages at each group member's site.

Users can browse different versions (3) to under-
stand their colleagues' changes (cf. t i m e l i in e ).

t i m e l i in e

Problem : Not all users participate in collabora-
tive sessions continuously. This makes it
hard to understand who is working with
whom on what topic. Without such an un-
derstanding, however, users lack the orien-
tation and coordination required for group
interaction.
Solution : Display the activities that took place
in a workspace as a timeline.

By providing a plenary R o o m , sharing and com-
munication in a whole class or organization can
be supported. By creating new R o o m s for sub-
groups and connecting those to the classes' or
organization's R o o m , work and collaboration can
be flexibly structured. Starting from the plenary
R o o m users can navigate to the connected sub-
rooms (6).
For user coordination, CURE supports various
types of awareness information. Users can see in
the R o o m ' s properties who else has access to this
R o o m (7). Users can see in a u s e R l i s t (8) who
else is currently in the same R o o m .

Communication is supported by two room-based
communication channels, i.e. a F o R u m (4) and an
e m b e d d e d C h a t (5). Users can use the room-based
e-mail to send a mail to the room. Users of the
R o o m that have sufficient communication rights
will receive this message like being a member of
a mailing list.

u s e R l i s t

Problem : Users do not know with whom they are
interacting or could interact. Consequently,
they do not have a feeling of participating
in a group.
Solution : Provide awareness in context. Show
who is currently accessing an artifact or
participating in a C o l l a b o R a t i V e s e s s i o n .
Ensure that the information is always
valid.

F o R u m

Problem : Users want to communicate about a
specific topic. Without knowing people in-
terested in the same topic, this is difficult.
Solution : Create a forum as a central place for
communication in which all group mem-
bers can discuss asynchronously by read-
ing and writing messages. Keep forum
messages persistent.

If the e m b e d d e d C h a t (5) is enabled in the R o o m ,
users can directly start chatting to each other. Users
can trace who has previously edited the current
page (9) (cf. a C t i V e n e i g h b o R s ). e m b e d d e d C h a t

a C t i V e n e i g h b o R s Problem : Users need to communicate. They are

used to sending electronic mail. But since
e-mail is asynchronous by nature, it is of-
ten too slow to resolve issues that arise in
synchronous collaboration.

Problem : The u s e R l i s t pattern only shows us-
ers with the same focus. If users work on
related artifacts, they are not aware of each