DISSERTATION Human Interactions in Mixed Systems

Web-based collaboration platforms evolve into service-oriented architectures by promoting composite and user-enriched services. In such platforms, the collaborations typically include both human and software services, thus creating highly dynamic and complex interactions. However, in existing platforms users cannot specify different interaction interfaces as services that can be reused in various collaborations. We argue that people need more ways to indicate their availability and desire to participate in collaborations. Furthermore, open service-oriented environments require a flexible yet reusable collaboration model because compositions comprise interactions between people and a number of software services. The presented work introduces Human-Provided Services (HPS), which can be included in ad-hoc and process-centric collaborations. The HPS framework fosters the user-driven integration of human capabilities into service-oriented infrastructures, thereby promoting reusability and flexibility of interaction flows. By using the framework, people can manage their interactions and provide services in dynamic collaborations.