Scenarios for E - Collaboration are Only Part of the Story

Addressing human factors in the development of artifacts has always been crucial for their usability (Norman, 1998). Within the domain of human-computer interaction (HCI), a number of advances have been made since the invention of computer systems, but the paradigm shift to what we are familiar with today started in the early eighties with the invention of GUI, graphical user interface (Pew, 2003). The early work in HCI tended to concentrate on an individual’s cognitive system. The range of possible interactions between human and computer then was comparatively simple due to the limited capability of the technologies. With the emergence of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), human factors were taken to a new dimension and opened up a number of different perspectives in terms of human factors challenges—personal, team, and organizational (Dourish, 2001; Olson & Olson, 2003; Orliskowski, 1992). Multiple channels (text, audio, and video) could be used in a variety of ways to facilitate collaborative work. This article explores the issue of how human factors can be addressed during the development of e-collaboration systems, in particular at the early stage of design since these systems may require new ways of working. It can be difficult to capture requirements for e-collaboration from existing users for two reasons. Firstly, engaging the potential users in requirements capture can be problematic as those users may not perceive themselves as potential users at the outset and hence not putting themselves forward in any consultation exercise. Even with the interested parties (or stakeholders) identified, they may not understand the full potential of how these new tools help people work more effectively with each other. Hence, requirements capture is a challenge for developing e-collaboration systems. Another area of challenge lies in the evaluation of e-collaboration systems. If requirements cannot be fully articulated at the outset, then evaluation of a prototype may provide useful feedback to the development team for the next iteration. However, evaluation of e-collaboration systems is known to be problematic due to the complexity of influencing factors (Ross, Ramage, & Rogers, 1995). Furthermore, the traditional human factors approach such as usability tests can only examine the hygiene factors and not necessarily the motivators (Herzberg, 1959; Zhang & von Dran, 2000). In the HCI domain, hygiene factors are those that will cause dissatisfaction for the user if they are absent (e.g., readable fonts and good color scheme). Motivator factors are those that will encourage users to continue using the system. For e-collaboration systems, both factors are crucial for their sustainability and any feedback from evaluation on these factors will be valuable. Scenario-driven techniques have been offered as possible means to engage different stakeholders (Rossen & Carroll, 2003) during a development process. These techniques can be used in a variety of ways and at any stage in the development life cycle (Carroll, 1995; Rossen & Carroll, 2003). In particular, scenarios are used to capture requirements and to provide basis for evaluation. There is a potential to apply the techniques to help meet the two challenges identified above. However, for an inspired user of scenario-driven techniques, there is a danger of stopping at the story-telling stage with the full potential of the techniques not being realized. This article will share the experience gained from three empirical studies in using scenario-driven techniques at different stages of the development cycle of e-collaboration systems. A discussion on how scenarios can be used in conjunction with the other techniques during the development process will be provided.