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I was just back from IFIP WG8.4 Multi-User Interfaces and Applications
Conference(Sep 24-26), Crete, Greece.

I attended also CHI'90 and COIS'90.
So this is the third conference I attended this year in some groupware
related conference.

(I am biased to compuer communication, it shouldbe noted.)

In CHI'90, I felt that user-interface issues became focusing on
'group interface' or 'human-to-human interface issue' from personal
interface. Examples are 'The Computer Reaches Out'(J.Grudin pp.261-268)
and 'VideoDraw: A Vido Interface for Collaborative Drawing'(J.C.Tang,
S.L.Minneman: Xerox PARC). Also I felt incresing emphasis on
user-participatory design and scandinavian approaches(readers may see
papers from CHI90 pp.353-378, under the session
"The Organizational Context of Desgin").
In addition, collaboration awareness was suggested, in 'Collaboration
Awareness in Support of Collaboration Transparency: Requirements
for the Next Generation of Shared Window Systems'(J.C.Lauwers
and K.A.Lantz). It follows some previous suggestions about 'revisited WISIWYS'
arguments.

In COIS'90, I felt that there were increasing discussion on two fundamental
directions on CSCW: design discussions on implementation of shared workspace,
and some group processing in logical sense.
The former examples were 'Commune: A Shared Drawing Surface'(S.A.Bly and
S.L.Minneman pp.184-192) and 'Shared Views and Interactions with Single
user Applications(S. Greenberg, pp.227-237).
The latter example was some discussion on Coordination Theory including
'SACT: A Tool for Automating Semi-Structure Organizational Communication'
(C.C.Woo pp.89-98).
People agreed that multi-user multi-media era was coming, however,
I felt that desgin paradigm is still in the middle of progress.

And now in IFIP WG8.4 Multi-user Interfaces and Applications,
we could see more specific results as it could be easily imagined
with the conference focus on multi-user issues.
I felt that I could see 'working prototypes' with particular significant
design policies in this conference than any other conference before.
(Of course, we can see more CSCW'90, it is guaranteed!).
I would like to report three of examples.
(Don't ask me everything! Of course, it is just a part of conference
 highlights, each participant might have his/her own different opinion.)

There were three design policies which I was interested:
(1) Multi-user hypertext design which is intended for multi-user application
 platform

 My most favorite paper in this conference is 'Platform and Application
Issues in Multi-User Hypertext'(L.M.Berlin & Vicki L. O'Day; HP Lab;
pp.293-304).
 They discussed 'Hoopertext', which has been developed in HP.
 The general platform for multi-user applications is what I wanted for
long, especially hypertext features and consideration to application
specific tailoring.  'Banyan', a graphic hypertext-like conferencing
system(e-news viewer) was presented as an example of Hoopertext-based
application, and it seemed to be quite powerful and interesting.

 I am also interested in their arguments that multi-user versioning may
just move the problem from concurenty control to 'merge management'.
 I agree with the fact that it is easy to produce many versions,
however, it is difficult to merge them to procude a single shared artifact.
 (interested readers may see a footnote in p.302)

(2) Shared workspace in emphasis on 'fusing Desktop and Computer Screen'

 Three different approaches for realtime shared workspace designs
(single user application, multi-user application, overlaid transparent
workspace) were discussed in 'Design of TeamWorkStation: A Realtime
Shared Workspace fusing Desktops and Computer Screen'(H.Ishii & M. Ohkubo;
NTT; pp.131-142). The idea of allowing arbitary overlaying visual workspace,
which has somehing in common with 'VideoDraw' study in Xerox, was
presented in relation to three design choices.
 It may have some deadend in semantic features of final combination
of workspaces, however, it seems quite powerful for the transition
stage between traditaonal office to 'electronic office'.

(3) Integration of 'synchronous' and 'asynchronous' modes in one applicion

 The one application which can support both of synchronous(realtime) and
asynchronous(distributed, and individual) application modes was
discussed in 'A Multi-User Document Review Tool'(J.L.Koszarek, T.L.Lindstrom,
J.R.Ensor and S.R.Ahuja; AT&T Bell Labs; pp.207-214).


 <Temporary Conclusing remarks>
 In general, computer science is a process to find bottlenck
and propose a solution from one point of view.
 There are two groups of people; those who find bottlenecks in
media spacific shared workspace and those who find ones in logical
shared information space.
 The former people discuss multi-media shared workspace,
its design paradigm, its multi-user metaphor and implementation
toolkits.(Readers should be noted that there are a ingreasing number
of multi-media toolkits, maybe we will see more in CSCW'90).
 The later people discuss soft-locking, version control and cordination
techniques.
 There are still quite a lot challenging open issues, and I wish
I could summarize them. However, interested readers find some examples
in above mentioned or other this year's hot conference proceedings.

-- yam
-- 
Toshihiko YAMAKAMI(NTT, Japan) Resident visitor in Bell Labs until Feb 1991
 Room 4G634, AT&T Bell Labs, Crawfords Corner Rd. Holmdel, NJ 07733-1988
 Tel:(908)949-5742	e-mail: yam@vax135.att.com (was: yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp)