Awareness in Context: A Light-Weight Approach

Users who work together require adequate information about their environment—group awareness. In the CSCW literature several models and systems for group awareness have been presented. They basically capture information from the environment, process it, and present it to the users. In general, only the information per se is captured without capturing information about its context of origin. Furthermore, the information is then often presented to the users regardless of their current context of work. In this paper we present a light-weight approach for modelling awareness contexts. We describe the concept, report on its examination, and discuss implications for the modelling of contexts and the design of group awareness support.