A Web-based system for collaboration

Abstract

Today's complex environmental and organizational pressures lead to business teams distributed along the dimensions of space, time, and computing resources. Distributed teams often need to collaborate to solve complex problems together. Many information systems support simple information sharing, however group research has shown that productive problem solving extends far beyond this. Group Support Systems (GSS) researchers and product reviewers suggest that simple discussion tools fall short of supporting additional phases of group problem solving. Research into distributed collaboration is needed to understand this complex domain. This dissertation describes an investigation into distributed collaboration to design, develop, implement, evaluate, and iteratively refine a prototype World-Wide-Web (Web) based distributed GSS. The research addresses requirements derivation, architecture design, prototype implementation, evaluation, iterative refinement, and the nature of roles played by participants. The literature review examines the areas of meeting analysis, hypertext, the Web, GSS, distributed GSS, collaborative interface design, group facilitation and systems engineering. The systems development research method is applied according to the following stages: Conceptual Framework Development, Requirements Identification, Systems Architecture Development, Systems Design, Systems Implementation and Systems Evaluation. An evolutionary prototyping approach incorporates evaluator suggestions and evolving technology into the system. Systems requirements are derived from the literature review, interviews with dozens of GSS researchers, practitioners and developers and hundreds of users from around the world. The initial specification employs the data model and interface design of an existing face-to-face GSS. A Distributed GSS architecture, consisting of a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)/JavaScript client interface and a centralized HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP)/Common Graphical Interface (CGI) server, is proposed, designed, and implemented. The logical data model is extended for distributed collaboration through identification of relevant data entities and relationships. The interface is extended through iterative prototyping based on observations, user feedback and technical enhancements. Prototype systems functionality is extended based on lab and field observations and direct feedback from users. Research contributions include a new distributed architecture, knowledge about distributed GSS interfaces, functionality, facilitation, leadership and participation, a prototype for additional research, and knowledge about the processes and group dynamics for distributed teams.