Role mechanisms in collaborative systems

Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems are computer-based tools that support collaborative activities. They should meet the requirements of normal collaborative efforts among people. They should not only support virtual face-to-face collaboration among people at a distance, but also improve face-to-face collaboration by providing more mechanisms to overcome the drawbacks of face-to-face collaboration among people. Therefore, introducing roles into CSCW systems is extremely important. By roles, one can avoid users of CSCW systems being overwhelmed by too much irrelevant information. One of the major problems in current CSCW systems is determining how to de. ne and specify roles clearly and rigorously while maintaining the flexibility for collaboration. Many traditional CSCW systems based on roles have lost their flexibility after introducing roles because they can only provide static role mechanisms based on intuitive role concepts. There are no flexible mechanisms for role tuning, changing and transitions because there is not a special mechanism to express a role. This paper reviews the applications of roles in traditional collaborative systems, clarifies the general meanings of roles, discusses the functions of roles in collaboration, and suggests a role mechanism and a group of principles to support collaboration based on roles. This paper concludes that roles need more comprehensive research and will be applied widely in different areas.