Multimedia Support of Collaboration in a Teleservice Team

The purpose of this paper is to outline an architectural model for how multimedia can establish and support cooperative work. The proposed architecture emerged from empirical work in a large UK bank. Previous efforts have, as we see them, been largely experimental, and have focused on supporting informal work. Few examples concern the support of actual work tasks in companies outside a research context. The outlined model offers a conception of work as distributed across time, space, tasks, people, and artefacts. It aims to integrate informal and formal aspects of work by supporting the initiation and management of interaction as well as the cooperative work process itself.