We used a survey and an analysis of change management data to measure the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization. Results indicated that cross-site work takes much longer and requires more people than comparable same-site work. We describe several tools we have deployed and others we are developing as new products, all of which are designed specifically to address the issues of speed we identified. We conclude with an examination of research findings that were helpful, others that were less helpful than we would have thought, and research issues we think should get more attention.

In this paper, we present an approach to improving the usability of software systems based on software architectural decisions. We make specific connections between aspects of usability such as the ability for a user to "undo" or "cancel" and software architecture. Designers can use this collection both to generate solutions to those aspects of usability that they choose to include in their system and to evaluate their systems for specific aspects of usability. We present the results of using this approach in evaluation and design of three real-world systems.

The Virtual World Group (VWG) in Microsoft Research and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (the Hutch) are collaborating to develop and study online social support systems for patients at the Hutch. Medical research has shown that social support contributes positively toward psychological and physical well-being. However, in the real world, it is difficult for immune-compromised patients, their families, and their caregivers to interact with others facing similar challenges. In order to address the needs of Hutch patients and their caregivers, Microsoft and the Hutch developed HutchWorld, a Virtual Worlds application, to provide online, computer-mediated social and informational support. The present paper describes the approach of each design phase of the project, and lessons learned about a) developing an interactive online support system for a specific audience, b) the deployment of the online social support system to its target audience, c) the rigorous study of both its use and its impact on user well-being, and d) issues affecting collaboration among technology, medical, and research groups. A controlled study examined the impact of HutchWorld. Self-reported evaluations of HutchWorld and analyses of usage patterns from user logs will be discussed.

In this paper, we describe the real work experiences associated with a radical new form of working together, extreme collaboration, where team members are physically collocated, and technology is intensively used to support their coordination and information exchange in synchronous work. We describe the role of technology in different phases of the team process, and an experiment using life-size HDTV to support distance collaboration with this team.

We describe our participatory analysis of the diversity of working relations and roles of designers at Lotus Development Corporation. Designers are an example of a minority discipline - that is, a discipline whose members are often isolated in their work teams among coworkers with different training, backgrounds, and career paths. We contrast designers' experiences at Lotus with conventional results from design research of the work of groups of designers.

To see what the major companies are doing about usability, I interviewed 10 people from 10 companies -- a mix of large software developers, telecommunications companies and web and consulting organizations. They talked about what they did, how they gain acceptance, their key methods, and various success/disaster cases supporting the use of User Experience Engineers in the product development lifecycle. This paper reports on the findings and sets an agenda for research and practice.

Wireless devices, like PDAs and mobile phones, call for comprehensive treatment of their usability. As mobile technologies, wireless devices can be used in a variety of places, and therefore must be dynamically managed: software and hardware features have constantly changing relevance depending on the situations in which they are employed, for example. Like other service-based technologies, understanding how wireless devices operate extends beyond the hardware and software components to include an understanding of network services ("netware") and service provider business agreements ("bizware") as well. Finally, wireless devices, and in particular wireless phones, play a role in the social world. Developing a personal practice of wireless telephony communications necessarily includes attention to how one affects and is affected by one's social networks and locale. Usability of such technologies, therefore, is more accurately assessed if it extends beyond an examination of the devices themselves to include broader attention to the contexts of their acquisition and use. We report on the results of a study in which 19 new wireless phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after service acquisition. The proposal for the study originally called for an assessment of the usability of telephone handsets, and for an evaluation of the process of learning and discovery of hardware and software features. However, we kept the investigation broad in scope, hypothesizing that there was a great deal to learn about the experiences of new users more generally. As we observed our new users, we discovered that fundamental aspects of sales, service, and business communications were critical to their learning and discovery of features. When these aspects were misunderstood by users, it directly affected the use and usability of their wireless telephones.

Low-fidelity prototypes and simulations are quick low-cost methods for studying user behavior and gathering design feedback early in the product development lifecycle. Yet development teams are often resistant to using these low- tech methods for several reasons: (1) automatic conditioning to use higher quality prototypes; (2) limited experience with low-fidelity models; (3) judgement of colleagues and management; (4) disbelief that quality information can be gained from low fidelity methods

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the very real challenges faced by usability engineers at Microsoft, particularly the MSN usability group, in having an impact on the development of commercial software and web sites. The presentation will cover several methods the usability engineers have used and adapted to gather information to impact the products, and why adoption is necessary, while the extended abstract aims to provide a richer context in which to understand challenges that need to be overcome in order to see good research converted into applied results (i.e., the UI).

This presentation reviews an invitational design competition to create the default look and feel for the Java platform. The discussion will revolve around the issues encountered while trying to create a cross platform look and feel in a quasi open source milieu. The discussion will focus on the design brief, competitor submissions, public scrutiny and feedback followed by the difficult decisions we had to make based on polarized feedback from different user communities.

AT&T Research has conducted studies of Instant Messaging (IM) use in the workplace. Sun Labs and AT&T have created research prototypes that provide IM and other awareness features for users in distributed workgroups. Taken together, our research presents a case study of how studying real use in the world led to design implications for research prototypes. But an even larger question emerges on how to transfer the experience gained in the research community on awareness to the fast-paced world of IM products. AOL and the like appear to be shaping the landscape of mass-market IM products (arguably the most widely deployed interactive CSCW technology). How can and should the research community inject our experience gained from awareness prototypes into the fast-moving market of IM products?

The way we communicate will change dramatically in the not too distant future because of the increased bandwidth being made available to home and business users. Not only will enhanced services, such as find-me follow me services, telephony style communications coupled with presence information, etc., take the place of traditional telephony services, but completely new services will also be possible. In our presentation at the workshop we will discuss a novel communications system we have developed that allows users to communicate with others via video chat while watching a shared video event. The shared event can be a live sporting event (a World Cup event, the Olympics, baseball, etc.), a live broadcast of a musical performance (a virtual jazz club), a television broadcast, etc. The system not only leverages the increasingly available bandwidth to users, but also takes advantage of the convergence of broadcast media with the internet.

DLESE is a grassroots, community-led digital library conceived to provide Earth system educators with access to high-quality educational resources. This article describes the application of task-centred design in the DLESE project. Task-centred design techniques have not only been instrumental in the design of DLESE but have also led to the articulation of deeper research questions regarding the role of digital resources in education.

Computer-supported collaborations in schools introduce awareness and knowledge management problems and opportunities. Students and teachers engage complex tasks found in real-world settings. Collaborative systems can mediate problems and offer solutions that can be transferred to other domains. This paper describes insights gained in studying collaborative systems in local school settings.

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems are often distinguished by the time and space proximity of their intended users. A four-quadrant graphic is often used to show the possible combinations: synchronous - co-located, synchronous -- remote, asynchronous - co-located, asynchronous - remote. We argue that several dimensions other than time and space are critical to consider. In particular, we discuss the dimensions of communication range and contention with a special emphasis on synchronous, co-located collaboration systems.

Intelligent, networked devices are increasingly common, and most of these devices are capable of reporting presence information about users or sets of users. Further, many of these devices are being built with the ability to send and receive short text messages. These systems are increasingly being used in work settings, in addition to their wide-spread use for personal and social tasks. One serious limitation is that most existing presence awareness systems are unable handle multiple presence sources or locations at once, nor are they able to handle a user performing multiple roles.

Advanced requirements analysis for improving IT support for knowledge reuse. A thirteen month ethnographic field study of the distributed problem solving behavior of service engineers in a world-class aircraft manufacturer. Examines the boundary objects, information flows and organizational memories which facilitate the routine handling of technical support requests from airlines.

We compare six definitions of the concept of "representative user," including interpretations based in statistics, grounded theory, political theory, and design practice. We hope to engage our colleagues in thinking about when and how we (all) might choose each approach.

Meeting capture has been a subject of research in the ubiquitous computing community for the past decade. However, little work has been done in understanding its proper place in the workplace. We present our ideas of the contribution of meeting capture and access that we plan to evaluate in real settings. We also describe a new system, TeamSpace, a collaborative meeting environment that supports automated capture and access that we have built to facilitate our research agenda.

Educational software simulations enable active learning through construction. Our studies indicate characteristics for an environment supporting the creation of simulations by teachers who are novice programmers. Our expectation is to increase the accessibility of programming and give teachers a tool empowering them to create and modify their own software.