SEng 609.06 Special Topics in HCI Saul Greenberg, Instructor

Contents

Take Home Exam

The questions below should be answered in essay form (i.e., as a technical paer). Answers should be thoughtful, and should reflect your ability to critically appraise the subject matter. You will be graded on the sophistication, completeness, and maturity of the treatment.There are no absolute 'right or wrong' answers.

The ACME Engineering Company has a head office in Calgary and branch offices scattered across Canada. Because of a recent downsizing, engineers with particular skill sets are now scattered across these branch offices, with no single office having a well-rounded contingent of engineers.

This has introduced a problem: most engineering contracts require particular mixes of engineers and managers, with the consequence that the typical team is now distributed across the country. A typical mix now has the project manager, project administrator and lead engineer in the Calgary head office, two other senior engineers in the Toronto office, three junior engineers, and four apprentice engineers (e.g., Coop students) scattered across the other offices.

Some other factors influence the problem:

1. Customers are typically not in Calgary, although they are often located in other cities with branch offices.
2. Projects involve heavy periods of intensive work.
   • Engineers are often involved in lengthy work meetings (e.g., complete mornings and afternoons).
   • Even when pursuing individual work, engineers often require immediate clarification on issues and questions that come up.
   • Because of the intricacy of the work, up to the moment coordination is important.
3. Projects must be tightly controlled.
   • The project administrator needs to be aware of each person's progress and problems, and must facilitate problems (often by having quick meetings of particular sub-groups) before the problems get out of hand.
4. Engineers work together over many artifacts: blueprints, sight photos, engineering sketches, etc.
5. Customers often have particular issues and requests that must be directed to particular engineers.

ACME is now using conventional communications mechanisms to do their work: email, phone, fax, travel, and a dedicated video conferencing room (this is located in a different building, so people have to schedule their meetings and go there). They also have dedicated high bandwidth communication channels between all their sites. However, this is not working out well: people are not staying in touch with one another; coordination is difficult; meetings are hard to set up, and so on.

The President of ACME has heard about real time groupware systems, and has hired you (as a budding groupware expert) to do a feasibility study of its applicability to this problem. The study should identify:

• a particular configuration of real time groupware systems that could help mitigate the problem
• the particular properties the groupware components should have, and why
• the kinds of problems and/or limitations that should be expected
• approaches, issues and/or concerns that should be considered when introducing the technology to the workplace

Unfortunately, you will not be able to interview the engineers and/or go to the workplace. If really needed, you can direct a few questions to the President (saul@cpsc.ucalgary.ca). Clearly state any assumptions you make!