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1993
Journal Article
Titel
Using a Cooperative Hypermedia Editing Tool to Enhance Group Communication and Productivity
Abstract
Cooperative hypermedia means producting and manipulating hyperorganized multimedia data by a group of (co-)users. We have been realizing a prototype that enables coauthors to cooperatively produce hypermedia documents. It allows coauthors to communicate their ideas, drafts, guidelines, and constraints within a group in order to exchange information (remotely or face-to-face) and improve the final document. When analyzing the transition from individual work to group work within differnet human activities, two pitfalls are often detected if computer support is considered. On the one hand are the social and technological communication problems, particularly if members of the group are geographicaly distant from one another. On the other hand are the productivity falls, which are usually due to communication difficulties and frequent social inadequacies of the group`s computer support. We would like to propose the use of this prototype - CoMEdiA - as a way to enhance, or prevent the fall o f, intra-group communication and the outcomes of group edit tasks (constrained to the kind of tasks for which it has been designed). Most of the techniques used to achieve this can be used in other tools to support opther specific type of group activities.