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Interviewer: Phong
Interviewed: Sebastian d., 04/01/2005
- previous experience with collaborative tools; have been using swiki for 2 years, also have used Groove for collaboration; and NetMeeting for interactive remote meeting for collaboration;
- for joint document production: someone always own a document whether that is supported as a workflow in the application is another matter; Groove Network indicates that someone has checked out a document (and indicate the status within a workflow); also could be an off-line agreement among the participants;
- one of the major issue with wiki is that it doesn't fit with current way that seb does thing; doesn't like the switching between typing in content and formating to viewing it; current swiki implementation does not support what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing – it leaves out the rest of the needed task (viewing and printing out the document);
- also when producing a joint document, since the document need to be printed from a word processing application, it makes a lot more sense to produce the document using the word processing application and then using the swiki as a depository; but this process is also clumsy; the swiki by itself doesn't meet the need (can't act as a word processing application) an the word processing application doesn't have robust collaborative features [3:00]; if ultimate goal is to get a document and print it out;
- document production: remote brainstorming context; specific example of WebEx (running a particular application on the computer desktop and allowing someone else to take control) –> good for communications when you can demonstrate what you are doing to someone else; this has been useful and work really well to support discussion and clarification of meeting real-time to reduce potential conceptual or other disconnect;
- desired functionality: versioning is important; as document evolve want to see what changes someone made [13:00]; swiki has diff capability but really is for administrative stuff; especially if multiple people are involved;
- annotation capability is important; if using microsoft word folks can see and used to seeing annotation; for review of documents in collaboration in other folks; use annotation to make specific comments (localized to certain parts of the document) to use as markers to remember what was said and decided about the direction of changes [14:00]; rarely used to make high level comments; also used to ask questions (e.g. "what do you mean here?");
- in localized comments: knowing who made comment, when, what does the comment point to are critical pieces of information;
- filtering: able to see phong's comment from last week, rather than everyone's comment; get overwhelmed by the sheer number of meta information; see phong's comment the last time we talked; no need for structure beyond this simple filtering; the document provides the backbone structure; create views is another way of expressing this;
- things that was good with Groove Network: had a content management capability (build content management repositories that include website etc), folder as organization; but it was easy for people to use; similar to Lotus Notes;
- other major problem with the swiki implementation this the separation of view and edit activities; users are not used to having to use specialized markup vs. what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing capability [21:00];
- collective memory: when using the wiki to take note during a live meeting and using the edit mode, it takes an extra step to hit save to save the current stage and then hit edit again to continue typing [25:00]; when you hit save you are missing the ongoing interaction and have to catch up; so most folks have switched to a word processing application to take note and then upload it later;
- Groove network: social awareness; you know who is "present"; know that Peter and John are working on this right now, send an IM to see if they need help; know who is on-line and what they are doing [27:00];
          
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