Customer Reviews

Designing Collaborative Systems: A Practical Guide to Ethnography (Computer Supported Cooperative Work)

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I was looking for theory and insight into issues concerning how collaborative systems operate and how to design them. This book begins with a long discourse on the good and mostly bad of current and prior methods of observing collaboration in situ. I found the critique of "cognitive science" to mostly apply to early "cognitive psychology" methods. Cognitive science, in my professional view, is much more in line with what the author advocates, i.e. situated cognition.

The book then goes on to discuss methods of collaboratively designing a system. What I missed was theory concerning collaboration, per se. I got the impress that Crabtree believes that theory is misleading and elides over critical details. I disagree. I think concepts like discourse grounding and transactive memory can guide designers to better solutions - and I was looking for more of that. It's not here.

So be sure you want what this book offers.

That said, it's well written, and the critique is interesting and useful.