Task analysis for groupware usability evaluation: Modeling shared-workspace tasks with the mechanics of collaboration

  • Authors:

  • David Pinelle;Carl Gutwin;Saul Greenberg

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK;University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK;University of Calgary, Calgary, AB

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Researchers in Computer Supported Cooperative Work have recently developed discount evaluation methods for shared-workspace groupware. Most discount methods rely on some understanding of the context in which the groupware systems will be used, which means that evaluators need to model the tasks that groups will perform. However, existing task analysis schemes are not well suited to the needs of groupware evaluation: they either do not deal with collaboration issues, do not use an appropriate level of analysis for concrete assessment of usability in interfaces, or do not adequately represent the variability inherent in group work. To fill this gap, we have developed a new modeling technique called Collaboration Usability Analysis. CUA focuses on the teamwork that goes on in a group task rather than the taskwork. To enable closer links between the task representation and the groupware interface, CUA grounds each collaborative action in a set of group work primitives called the mechanics of collaboration. To represent the range of ways that a group task can be carried out, CUA allows variable paths through the execution of a task, and allows alternate paths and optional tasks to be modeled. CUA's main contribution is to provide evaluators with a framework in which they can simulate the realistic use of a groupware system and identify usability problems that are caused by the groupware interface.