HEURISTICS FOR AWARENESS SUPPORT IN GROUPWARE SYSTEMS

Abstract

Groupware Systems or collaborative systems are software systems that support the development of activities in which a group of users interacts to combine their skills, abilities, and work to achieve a common goal. In these systems, an important feature is the awareness, which is the understanding of the events beyond current tasks that provides a context for your activity. This understanding is developed from the awareness information provided by collaborative systems, so it is a fundamental element in this kind of software. In the design and construction of these types of systems, heuristics are used as design guidelines that serve as a useful evaluation tool for product designers and usability professionals. However, current heuristics focus on supporting team awareness in the shared workspace without considering the informational needs of the individual's interaction within the workspace. To address this problem, we developed 13 heuristics integrating principles of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Cooperative Work to help groupware designers meet individual and team awareness needs. For evaluating the validity of the proposed heuristics, a structured and iterative consultation process was performed with experts in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. The proposed heuristics can help software engineers develop collaborative systems that integrate awareness information and satisfy users' contextual information needs.