ACM SIGOIS Bulletin

Hoschka, Peter

doi: 10.1145/290575.290576pmid: N/A

GMD-FIT, the Institute for Applied Information Technology, is a research unit of GMD, Germany's National Research Center for Information Technology. It is located on GMD's Schloss Birlinghoven campus near Bonn. FIT is committed to inventing and designing innovative information technology which is really needed and wanted by users, is based on an understanding of human communication and human information processing, and is seamlessly integrated into the user environment. We pursue a vision of information technology moving• from personal computing to social computing,• from distributing information to helping utilize information,• from rigid systems to user-adaptive environments, and• from automation tools to enabling systems.The main application areas of FIT are office and home environments, and the area of medicine.The FIT institute is grouped in two departments: Cooperation Support Systems (CSCW) and Human- Computer Interaction (HCI). The following sections give an overview of our work in the CSCW group.

Unland, Rainer

doi: 10.1145/290575.290577pmid: N/A

This article presents the main goals and intentions of some of the recently started research projects within the German CSCW-community 1 . It does not intend to present established results of (more or less) finished projects. All members of the German special interest group "CSCW in Organizations" were asked to submit a short description of their most recent research work. Since most projects are still in their early stage commonly available literature may not exist so far for some projects.The main intentions of this article are on the one hand to give an impression of the current state-of-the-art and interests of German CSCW research groups and on the other hand to stimulate international discussions and cooperations between researchers. Most of the presented projects are still in their starting phase. Therefore, I am pretty sure that the researchers whose work is described in this article are happy about every fruitful comment or constructive critics or any offer for cooperation if other researchers think that the presented work does nicely fit into or extend their work.For further information please contact the respective author directly or visit the appropriate WWW pages. An introduction the special interest group can be found here: http://www.informatik.uniessen.de/Fachgebiete/DatWiss/FG551/Introduction

Anderson, William L.

doi: 10.1145/290575.290578pmid: N/A

Churchill, Elizabeth F.; Snowdon, Dave

doi: 10.1145/290575.290579pmid: N/A

A Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is an application that uses a Virtual Environment to support human-human and human-system communication. Within such virtual environments, multiple users can convene, communicate and collaborate. Virtual Environments vary in their representational richness; for example environments may be graphical (2D or 3D) or may be purely text-based as with many MUDs/MOOs. Users are often represented by embodiments (or "avatars"), which also can vary from rich moving characters (such as in the Massive environment 1 or in Microcosm 2) or simple 2D static cartoon images (as in The Palace, 3).The design, development and use of CVEs is a growing research area with much potential for inter-disciplinary collaboration between researchers in the fields of computer science, psychology, sociology, cultural & media studies, architecture & urban planning, Artificial Intelligence, human computer interaction and CSCW.The Second International Conference dedicated to the design, development and evaluation of such Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE'98) recently took place in Manchester. CVE'98 was part of Manchester's Digital Summer, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the "birth of the Baby"; the demonstration of the first stored computer program. The conference took place over two days, from the 17th until the 19th June in the MANDEC Centre on the University of Manchester campus, and attracted 95 attendees from all over the world, drawn from computer science, human factors, sociology, psychology, graphic arts and other disciplines.

Capps, Michael; Pekkola, Samuli; Greenhalgh, Chris

doi: 10.1145/290575.290580pmid: N/A

We have recently held the second annual "System Aspects of Sharing a Virtual Reality" workshop, in conjunction with CVE '98 (see report in this issue). The single-day format allowed for twelve presentations plus discussion, which are summarized below. The topics addressed were: designing systems to cope with network limitations; managing communication and information; the construction of systems and toolkits; issues of presentation and user interaction; and application development and evaluation.

Giboin, Alain

doi: 10.1145/290575.290581pmid: N/A

COOP'98, the Third International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, was held in Cannes, France, from May 26-29, 1998. It was attended by about 100 people.

Giboin, Alain

doi: 10.1145/290575.290582pmid: N/A

Koch, Thomas

doi: 10.1145/290575.290584pmid: N/A

Johnson-Lenz, Peter; Johnson-Lenz, Trudy

doi: 10.1145/290575.290585pmid: N/A

Stiemerling, Oliver; Wulf, Volker; Cremers, Armin B.; Bancroft, Clive; Buelens, Christine; Boulliard, Gert; Maidhof, Martin; Peters, Ralph; Fricker, Francis; Durand, Charles

doi: 10.1145/290575.290586pmid: N/A

TRANSIT investigates the current challenges and potential of computer supported transnational cooperation of small and medium size engineering firms in Europe. The project is an international initiative supported by the European Social Fund's ADAPT program and involves Universities and private companies in the UK, Belgium, and Germany. The partners from each country are in turn involved in national ADAPT projects which benefit from the experiences made on the transnational level. The project started in January 98 and will end in December 99. In this article we describe the TRANSIT approach to the investigation of transnational SME-cooperation and present findings to date.