Collaborative User Experience: Reinventing Email and Instant Collaboration

Abstract

The Collaborative User Experience Group in Cambridge is a center of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) research within IBM Research. the group focuses on issues that have shaped IBM's Lotus- branded groupware products, and that are increasingly playing a role in wider range of IBM products and service offerings. This talk will include an overview of the group's work as well as a more detail report with design pieces and prototypes from two projects, reinventing email and instant collaboration. The group's work has three themes: personal, team and large community perspectives on collaboration. The reinventing email project builds on user studies that revealed new problems facing individuals managing their lives through email. Instant Collaboration addresses the need to make a smooth transition from email to lightweight sharing in small teams.