Mobility in collaboration

Abstract

This paper addresses an issue that has received little attention within CSCW -the requirements to support mobility within collaboration activities. By examining three quite different settings each with differing technological support, we examine the ways in which mobility is critical to collaborative work. We suggest that taking mobility seriously, may not only contribute our understanding of current support for collaboration, but raise more general issues concerning the requirements for mobile and other technologies.

Moving to get aHead: Local Mobility and Collaborative Work

“…The term 'local mobility' within the CSCW literature gained its present currency through Bellotti and Bly (1996) and Heath and Luff (1998). A critical review of these shows, however, that local mobility tends to get out their central focus.…”

“…Thus, while they focus on getting away from the desktop, they direct their attention towards linking local and remote collaboration rather on local mobility and collaboration itself. Luff and Heath (1998) similarly lament the fact that new technologies that promise to provide new spaces and environments for collaboration are only "…available on devices which are static and tied to the desk" (Luff and Heath 1998:p305). The static nature of then present technologies entailed the risk of "…undermining an important resource in collaboration, namely, and individual's ability to reconfigure him or herself with regard to ongoing demands of the activity in which he or she is engaged" (Luff and Heath 1998:p306).…”

“…In recent years, there has been an emergent literature on local mobility, which has argued that despite the technological achievements of computers and their ability to communicate over distances, their effect has been to make work evermore static since they all focus on the desktop computer and fix the actors to their desks (Bellotti and Bly 1996;Luff and Heath 1998). Recent developments in cell phones, tablet computers and wireless networks promise to bridge this ambiguous situation of being able to link across vast distances and yet still be fixed to the desktop.…”

Handheld CSCW in the Meeting Environment

“…Luff and Heat [6] illustrate the importance of these artifacts with the example of the medical record, which in many circumstances serves to organize work and mediate the interactions between doctors and patients, as well as other health care personnel. In this perspective PDA must support two fundamental requirements of collective artefacts.…”

“…The other requirement is flexibility. People manage collective artefacts in many subtle ways according to the affordances of the medium, situated nature of work, type of interaction and degree of cooperation (Luff and Heat highlight the importance of what they designate micro-mobility [6]). Meeting environments represent another instance where fluidity and flexibility are vital.…”