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Towards the Development of CSCW: An Ethnographic Approach

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Book cover People and Computers XVIII — Design for Life

Abstract

Effective and rigorous analysis of cooperative work settings is crucial to the successful development of CSCW systems. This paper investigates the relationship between the social organization of the work settings and the system development. Objectives of this paper are therefore twofold. First, it effectively analyses the social aspects of the work practices using the state-of-the-art techniques of ethnography. Such analysis provides rich and concrete portrayal of the situation thus helps systematic design of CSCW systems. Second it uses the standard Unified Modelling Language (UML) in order to represent and model the findings of the ethnographic analysis. UML-based representation of the findings has proven to be an important aid to the development of CSCW systems.

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Iqbal, R., James, A. (2005). Towards the Development of CSCW: An Ethnographic Approach. In: Fincher, S., Markopoulos, P., Moore, D., Ruddle, R. (eds) People and Computers XVIII — Design for Life. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-062-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-062-1_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-900-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84628-062-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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