Situation awareness on the World Wide Web

Abstract

The World Wide Web (web) has become a major vehicle for people to engage in virtual cooperative interaction for their mutual benefits. Although computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) has been a research topic for decades and even the software industry has adopted corresponding concepts, convincing web solutions are still under development. This is due to a variety of reasons, ranging from social and organizational problems to purely technical issues. In particular, many systems make it difficult or even impossible for people to keep aware of one another. Situation awareness, which is the topic of this dissertation, is treated as a fundamental and key factor in CSCW systems, as it allows people to coordinate and structure their own work such that they can perceive easily what others are working on. This dissertation argues that the neglecting of other users is obstructive, particularly in web-based CSCW systems, where users interact with the system at the same time, but are isolated from each other. It examines the provision of an appropriate functionality that will support situation awareness. In comparison to other traditional awareness research, this dissertation studies awareness from two perspectives: human factors and technologies. Hence, the research objectives are: 1) to study awareness attributes and possible representations of these attributes, and 2) to study different system mechanisms that will largely satisfy the different awareness requirements. The dissertation studies the existing theories of situation awareness and its relevant implementations by investigating the evolution of awareness research, analyzing the achievements made by others, and creating a general framework linking both social and technical perspectives. In particular, this dissertation demonstrates how the theory of situation awareness can be applied to the real environment, i.e. the web, via the implementation of a commercial product.