The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The Gap Between Social Requirements and Technical Feasibility

Abstract

Over the last 10 years, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a base set of findings. These findings are taken almost as assumptions within the field. In summary, they argue that human activity is highly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized and that computational entities such as information sharing, roles, and social norms need to be similarly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized. However, current systems cannot fully support the social world uncovered by these findings. In this article I argue that there is an inherent gap between the social requirements of CSCW and its technical mechanisms. The social-technical gap is the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically. Exploring, understanding, and hopefully ameliorating this social-technical gap is the central challenge for CSCW as a field and one of the central problems for human-computer interaction. Indeed, merely attesting the continued centrality of this gap could be one of the important intellectual contributions of CSCW. I also argue that the challenge of the social-technical gap creates an opportunity to refocus CSCW.

Privacy Considerations in Awareness Systems: Designing with Privacy in Mind

“…As a result of these distinctions, the digital domain can inhibit behaviors that may be fluid and seamless in the social realm. Ackerman [2000] pointed out that in the digital domain privacy encounters the social-technical gap, i.e., "the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically". On the other hand, characteristics of the digital domain enable actions that may otherwise be impossible or prohibitively difficult to achieve socially.…”

Using an experimental study to develop group awareness support for real-time distributed collaborative writing

“…By using a similar order, we hope to assist readers in following our mapping between elements and mechanisms. Also, in order to make it easier in describing how the mechanisms work, we present a short scenario 13 before describing each mechanism. Each scenario shows the context within which the mechanism is used.…”

“…12 Bear in mind that our research is bound within collaborative writing of a small group of less than five people. 13 A discussion of different use of scenarios is beyond the scope of this paper. In this study, scenarios are used to describe a particular setting example of how mechanisms can be used, and to describe the user interfaces of the mechanisms.…”

“…However, only few of them are used in the real world. One reason for this lack of usage is that current systems have not been able to match the diversity and richness of group interaction [13][14][15].…”

New Sociotechnical Insights in Interaction Design

“…One of the biggest challenges for HCI and CSCW is addressing the ongoing tensions created by the gap between social requirements and the affordances of technical design [1]. The translation of social knowledge into design decisions is not a simple problem, but one that requires a redefinition of disciplinary boundaries and the subject and object of interaction design.…”