Extended awareness support for cooperative work in non-WYSIWIS condition

Abstract

Most conventional groupware systems only support cooperative work in WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) or relaxed- WYSIWIS condition. Although the WYSIWIS principle enables users to receive awareness information easily, it also limits flexibility of a system. VIEW Media supports cooperative work in both WYSIWIS and non-WYSIWIS conditions with the aim of providing more general framework for groupware systems. Non-WYSIWIS condition needs more rich awareness information than WYSIWIS condition for smooth interaction among users. Thus VIEW Media provides extended awareness support functions that can summarize, abstract, and customize awareness information. This paper describes customization functions of VIEW Media realizing cooperative work in non-WYSIWIS condition and functions supporting extended awareness information, then some examples for the extended awareness information, such as shared pointers, virtual seats, and channel checker are shown.