Writing is very often a collaborative activity.
Approximately 85% of business and academic documents
are written collaboratively by several authors.
Despite this, existing writing technologies
do not support collaboration very well.
To understand how people write together
using conventional writing technologies,
we carried out extensive interviews, laboratory,
and field studies.
All this work led to a deeper understanding
of collaborative writing, and led
to the design of SASSE, the collaborative writing tool.
In the lab study, authors using separate computers
and conventional word processors had difficulty
coordinating their work.
This should be lower, sorry.
What's that?
This should be lower torso sub-assembly.
Which one?
Six.
Oh yeah, right.
Good point.
One ingenious pair switched computers during their work
in order to access each other's documents.
For the pupils and the eyes, you know how it has to be level?
Yeah, that's not too well described.
When authors were in separate rooms,
discussing their documents was even more difficult.
SASSE facilitates work on a document
in the shared workspace.
Authors work at their own individual computers, which
are networked together, and communicate
over an external link, such as a telephone or a video phone.
A SASSE screen looks like that of a single user wordprocessor,
except that the document is shared by all authors.
Here is a list of people working on this document.
Each author is assigned a unique color, which
is used to identify her work.
All authors can work on a document concurrently.
Notice the color-coded selections
of the red and blue authors.
When collaborating on a document,
people can work in a single section of the document,
or on different sections in a more loose type
of collaboration.
This first style we call highly focused or tightly coupled
work.
Here I am working with Alex on a single paragraph.
He has highlighted the second sentence to focus my attention.
If Alex wants to be sure that we're both
seeing the same thing, he can use
SASSE's "What You See Is What I See,"
or WYSIWIS synchronized view.
This provides a common frame of reference and facilitates
dialogue about the document.
Authors may also collaborate loosely
on separate sections of the same document.
Hello.
Hello, did you get my courier package?
Yeah, didn't you keep a copy of it?
Yes I did.
As you can see, coordinating activities and maintaining
awareness of what the others are doing is clearly a challenge.
Hello, it's me.
Yeah.
How are you doing?
Hello.
Hello Mike.
Yeah.
How's it going?
Hey, how are you doing, Mike?
Hi, I'm OK.
In SASSE, a shared scrollbar provides constant feedback
about what your collaborator is doing.
Alex, in red, is working midway through the document,
while Jeff, in blue, is active at the end of the document.
SASSE also provides nonspeech audio cues
to reinforce the perception of scrolling.
Alternatively, I can use the gestalt view
to display a picture of the entire document.
Although the text is too small to read,
I can clearly see the structure of the document
and the locations of my co-authors.
If I want to see what Jeff is doing,
I can use the observe view.
This is useful for coordinating work
on different sections of the document.
Our studies, along with previous research,
suggest that collaborative writing is essentially
an asynchronous activity.
This leads to an entirely new set of issues.
We'll do it.
We'll keep it your way.
All right.
So just make-- in other words, you
should indicate changes that I should put one left forearm,
and one right forearm.
Right.
I just wanted to say that.
And before you send everything back over to me,
you should probably keep a copy of your own document, that is,
your changes on my document.
OK.
I would make sure you get a copy of it,
so that if we have to talk later on,
we can refer to what you've already done.
OK.
You know what I'm saying?
SASSE provides a check in, check out facility
to address the issue of version control.
It provides a central file store, as well as
a feature which allows one author to check out
the document for individual work.
New text may be color-coded, which
allows the authors to see how the document has changed.
Colored text can also be used to insert comments
into the document.
The work to date only scratches the surface
of issues involved in the design of collaborative writing
technology.
We've mainly focused on synchronous writing thus far.
We're now beginning new research more focused
on asynchronous writing, and issues revolving around version
control, document merging, and annotations.
We are also looking at applications of SASSE
in education.
Working with the CISO project at the Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education, we are observing the use of SASSE
by grade school students.
Finally, we are continuing to evaluate SASSE
both in the field and in the laboratory.
This work enriches our understanding
of collaborative writing and will help guide our design
issues in the future.
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