Intertwining Perspectives and Negotiation

Cooperative work typically involves both individual and group activities. Computer support for perspectives allows people to view and work in a central information repository within personal contexts. However, work in personal perspectives encourages divergent thinking. Negotiation in group perspectives is needed to converge on consensus, shared understanding, and cooperation. Negotiation processes on their own can delay progress. By intertwining perspective and negotiation mechanisms, individual results can be systematically merged into a group product while work continues. Personal perspectives on shared information are thereby intertwined and merged into a shared group understanding. WebGuide is a prototype system that integrates perspective and negotiation mechanisms; its user interface has been mocked up in detail to work out the many issues involved. We have begun to use partial implementations of WebGuide to support cooperative intellectual work in small research groups. SUPPORT FOR INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP