Federico Cabitza, Carla Simone (2010): Supporting document augmentation to leverage representations in knowledge work. In Gunnar Stevens (Eds.), International Reports on Socio-Informatics (IRSI), Workshop Proceedings of 9th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems – COOP 2010, Aix-en-Provence, France, May 2010 (Vol. 7, Iss. 1, pp. 271-279) (pdf)
Abstract The paper deals with the issue of representations as support of collaboration in knowledge work. On the basis of previous studies in different domains, the paper focuses on two aspects that led to the design of two complementary technologies: first, underspecification as a means to make the communication easier between professionals of different disciplines; second, the enrichment of documents by means of several kinds of annotations that convey individual and group experiential knowledge. Since annotations can be incrementally shared in collaboration and can contribute in building a shared cognitive context, they facilitate collaborative problem solving without requiring a posteriori (re)constructions of a consensual representation of either the ongoing discussion or partial solutions. The two resulting technologies are shortly described and a scenario where their envisioned integration could be profitable is illustrated by taking inspiration from one of the field studies discussed.