The EDGE of Face-to-Face Collaborative Technology

For centuries humans have been working together successfully to solve problems. The advent of the computer provided new opportunities for supporting collaboration. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research has traditionally focused on distributed collaboration, which was not feasible before computers. We believe it is equally important to investigate how emergent technologies can enrich our co-located collaborative activities. Advances in wireless, mobile computing are opening up new avenues for the support of face-to-face collaboration. The notion of a truly ubiquitous network is on the horizon. However, how users will effectively interact within this new environment, particularly when collaborating, remains an unanswered question. Many of the core assumptions and ways of interacting with single-user computers need to be re-thought. Merely adapting existing architectures to support this new interaction paradigm will inhibit the potential of these new environments. Innovative research on new metaphors and interaction strategies is essential to ensure seamless support for collaboration. We are currently exploring these metaphors and strategies to elucidate how technology can support users in their daily collaborative work practices. Through a series of vignettes, we will present some of our on-going research as well as our vision for emergent research directions.