Progressional awareness: designing a co-authoring tool to support the planning process

Description/Abstract

Effective planning is essential to any collaborative activity. However, in practice, the co-authoring process can become derailed from an initial plan of action due to unforeseen circumstances. To be effective, the process must be capable of adapting in ways that are efficient and avoid conflict. We analyze the experiences of users involved in fifteen separate group writing projects, specifically examining the role of planning within the collaborative process, the techniques used and the problems that may arise. From this, we propose the concept of progressional awareness related to the planning process, and propose novel user interface designs that may help to avoid common problems.