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Mobile computing has experienced a rapid growth and there are nowadays many applications being developed. According to the literature, many of these applications are designed for collaborative work or learning and share the same requirements: they implement a peer-to-peer communication architecture, there are subgroups inside the group of participants which have to work together and coordinate with the rest ofthe groups and they need to implement a proper human-computer interaction paradigm since they have a reduced area to interact with the application's interface. It is then quite natural to think about the development of a framework supporting this kind of applications. In this paper we present such a framework and an example ofits application.

Collaborative Spatial Decision Making (CSDM) involves multiple stakeholders making strategic decisions based on spatial data. Current CSDM tools have been exploring different ways to integrate spatial data with collaboration, distribution and mobility. Notably, decision-making support has not seen the same level of attention. This paper discusses the challenges raised by the integration of decision-making models in CSDM tools. We review a large collection of decision-making models using three different views: sequential, dynamic and continuous. From this review we derive a conceptual model and a set of functional requirements necessary to integrate decision-making support in CSDM tools.The conceptual model highlights the importance of several functions in decision-making processes:representing problems, finding alternatives and making choices (sequential view); classification and communication (dynamic view); and perception, comprehension and projection (continuous view). The paper also describes a prototype developed to validate the model. The paper provides two main research contributions: a unified view of decision-making support and an innovative CSDM tool blending spatial data with decision-making support.

We identify some of the challenges related with conducting research into teamwork, addressing in particular the data gathering problem, where researchers face multiple tensions derived from different viewpoints regarding what data to gather and how to do it. To address this problem, we propose a microworld approach for conducting research into teamwork. We present the main requirements guiding the microworld development, and discuss a set of components that realise the requirements. Then, we discuss a study that used the developed microworld to evaluate a groupware tool, which was designed to support team activities related to infrastructure maintenance. The paper emphasises the range of data gathered with the microworld, and how it contributed to simultaneously evaluate team behaviour and tool design. The paper reflects on the major contributions brought by the microworld approach, emphasising in particular the capacity to gather diverse data, and to combine behaviour and design evaluations. This research contributes to consolidate the microworld approach in teamwork research. It also contributes to reduce the gap between behavioural-oriented and designoriented research. The combination of the behaviour-oriented and design-oriented views is of particular importance to design science, since it is founded on iterative cycles of development and evaluation.

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