Creating New User Experiences to Enhance Collaboration

: When technologies are introduced into collaborative settings, people are often required to work together in new, unfamiliar ways. This can lead to problems of resistance, and even non-adoption. Conscious of this issue, we have developed a system which is designed to support collaboration, not through any major change to the work process, but rather by improving people’s experience of working together. Here we report on a system designed to support the collaborative use of information accessed by salesperson and customer during the early stages of a sales transaction. The system, embedded in a shared worktable, promotes a number of new user experiences, changing the way people are able to meet, sit together, communicate, and represent what they are discussing. We found that the new user experiences enhance collaboration, supporting the work process while avoiding problems of resistance.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: INTERACT
• Authors: John Halloran, Yvonne Rogers, Tom Rodden, Ian Taylor
• Keywords: Collaborative Settings, INTERACT 2003, INTERACT 2007, Unfamiliar Ways, Work Process