Cutting into collaboration: understanding coordination in distributed and interdisciplinary medical research

Coordinating goals, schedules, and tasks among collaborators is difficult, and made even more so when there are disciplinary, geographic and institutional boundaries that must be spanned. Designing CSCW tools to support coordination in these settings, however, requires an improved understanding of the constraints and conflicts that impede effective collaboration. We present findings from a study of distributed collaborations between academic surgeons and biomedical engineering researchers. These two groups differ significantly in their work priorities and institutional contexts, but are nonetheless able to work together and coordinate effectively. They accomplish this via human mediation, frequent ad hoc communication, and optimizing the use of their limited face-to-face interaction opportunities. Author Keywords Distributed and interdisciplinary research teams, coordination issues, design implication, ethnography ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3 Group and organizational interfaces: ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Saeko Nomura, Jeremy P. Birnholtz, Oya Rieger, Gilly Leshed, Deborah Trumbull, Geri Gay
• Keywords: ACM Classification Keywords, CSCW 2008, Frequent Ad Hoc, Limited Face-to-face Interaction, Social Sciences