Designing Collaborative Spaces
The Collaborative Software Lab (http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl) has developed several different collaboration spaces in the last years, including CaMILE (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/edtech/CaMILE.html), ProjectWeb, MuSwiki, iScream, and Swiki (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki). It's pretty easy technically to build a new kind of collaboration space (e.g. just provide somewhere that people can access a networked, shared database), though it's challenging to get it right -- something that has benefits over whatever they're using now, something that's usable, something that people will use.
This project is to design a collaboration space: Someplace network-based where people can work together. Choice of media (Web, audio, video) is up to you. You're welcome to extend one of our existing tools. You should start by establishing a particular goal for your space, such as:
- Usable for casual use by people who never see one another face-to-face. Design Issue: How do people ever find out that something useful or interesting has happened?
- Usable for young children. Design Issues: Help with reading and writing might be needed, easier interface than Swiki probably required.
- Usable for competitive group projects. Design Issue: Don't want anyone to read or write another group's space, but want shared group space.
You may want to read some papers on the design of collaborative spaces, such as those at http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/Papers.