Developing Usable Experiences

Collaboration Software Changed My Life

May 18th, 2011 8:47 pm —  39 views

When I first learned about the field of CSCW, I began to see the world differently. Here was an entire discipline focused on the science of using technology to communicate and collaborate. As surely as I knew the web was the way, I knew collaboration software was critical.

I was in a graduate class the fall of 2007. It was being taught by Gary Olson, a professor at the School of Information. In 1992, he published research showing the effectiveness of shared editing using a program they developed called ShrEdit. Professor Olson showed us pictures from their research project. One was a room filled with monochrome screens. Very old school looking.

Everyone knew how difficult it was to collaborate on a report or lengthy paper. Having network access helped, but then only one person could edit it at a time. Emailing a document back it forth happened a lot. Track changes could be useful if you knew how to use. In 1992, it was paper, pencils and a whiteboard or old school CRTs. The Internet was in its infancy.

It was in this course that I worked on a group project analyzing Google Docs, a web based document editor by Google. It was similar to MS Word, but in a browser. Better yet, a number of people could edit at the same time. Google Docs was a better way. I knew it immediately. Such things could make working with others so much easier.

The group project required that we find ways to improve it, and we came up with a few ideas such as showing the cursor position of other people editing the document. Since then, that feature and a number of other improvements, have been implemented by Google.

The technical challenges associated with multiple people working on the same digital artifact are significant. But the advantages afforded to people working collaboratively on the same document is considerable. Being able to see where a person’s cursor was, and whose cursor it was, and to see what they typed as they were typing it was mind boggling and totally awesome. I loved it!

This type of editing revelation was similar to the one I had when I first learned about wikis in 1999. I was using ModWiki, a Perl based web application, and wondered why more people weren’t using wikis. When I realized how simple it was to enable people to create and edit web pages together, I knew it would change the world. Just like I knew that databases behind web applications would change the world.

Fast forward a decade and I’m writing my 507th blog post talking about how people interact with technology. I’m doing it as the first featured blog post for a corporate wiki about collaboration resources!

Every day I interact with technology that connects me to co-workers, family, and friends. I’m in meetings using my computer, phone, and a video camera to interact with a dozen people in different locations. I can see when someone is talking but forgot to unmute their microphone. I can see people yawn or lose interest in what’s being said. All the while I have various instant messaging threads going with co-workers and teammates. Even people in the same web meeting, via yet another instant messaging application.

My daily life involves using working with computers and people to get work done and to help others get work done. I think about it how to make things better all the time. I love gadgets and technology that allow me to interact with information and people in different ways.

And I know there is always an easier way. It just takes time to find it.

Image: This is a picture of an adaptation made by a novice installer when code dictated a 4 inch pipe, even though the coupling was for a 3 inch pipe. It took some effort to crip the metal like that. But I couldn’t help but think there had to be an easier (and less hacked) solution. There was. That’s another story as well.

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My Job is to Get Better

May 2nd, 2011 8:18 pm —  10 views

Recently a Rands in Repose twitter post reminded me of something important; my job (so to speak) in life, is to get better. He phrased it a little differently, but it was still a message to me that rang harmonious with the things that have been going on in my life.

But the thing is, it’s really difficult sometimes to determine your job. There are so many, we have so many.

One of the first dividing cuts that separate job types is often between personal and professional. It’s a dull blade that dissects this level, and the edges are usually rough and imprecise. But there are things that don’t surface in one or the other. It’s just the nature of sharing and how much you have time and inclination to reveal. So there is personal and professional.

Managers often see the most jagged edge as they must journey further into the personal, the deeply personal at times, with their professional subordinates and direct reports. Regardless of what you know or what you reveal, it is still important to stay focused on getting better.

Getting better means not forgetting the past, learning from it. Not being prejudiced by it, knowing there are so many variables to any event. Sometimes, trying the same thing a second time can yield different results. If the failures are different, perhaps there is the chance to get better, learn from mistakes. Is that happening?

Then there are the times where you find yourself in a repeating loop. You keep trying to find that break, that terminating condition. But there isn’t one. Knowing I need to get better, that it’s both a personal and professional thing, how do I improve those situations where I have little to no direct influence? Do they exist? Am I just missing something, perhaps not saying the right thing at the right time?

It’s complicated. More complicated that I’d imagined yet almost in an intentional way that seems simple and instinctual. An evolved complexity that embraces the simple solutions invisible to others.

Here it is, over a month since my last post. Things keep happening, I don’t always know how much to share. So I skim the limited surface of sharing via Facebook and Twitter. Yet it becomes more complicated finding the balance between sharing and revealing.

Perhaps it is the forked tongue revealing glimpses and riddles, which allows the creative and cunning mind time to develop and maneuver. In the end the complicated things are simple and their happening seems obvious and unavoidable.

This is how we live our lives.

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