Concepts for usable patterns of groupware applications

Patterns, which are based on in-depth practical experience, can be instructing for the design of groupware applications as sociotechnical systems. On the basis of a summary of the concept of patterns - as elaborated by the architect Christopher Alexander its adoptions within computer science are retraced and relationships to the area of groupware are described. General principles for patterns within this domain are formulated and supported by examples from a wide range of experience with knowledge management systems. The analysis reveals that every pattern of a groupware application has to combine the description of social as well as technical structures, and that a single pattern can only be understood in the context of a pattern language. It also shows that such a language has to integrate patterns of socio-technical solutions with measures and procedures for introducing them, and that the language not only has to express one type of directed relationship between the patterns but a ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: GROUP
• Authors: Thomas Herrmann, Marcel Hoffmann, Isa Jahnke, Andrea Kienle, Gabriele Kunau, Kai-Uwe Loser, Natalja Menold
• Keywords: GROUP 2003, Groupware Application, Knowledge Management, Pattern Language