Support for collaborative design: Animated electronic meetings

In an action research study at the Amsterdam Municipal Police Force, we critically evaluate the combined use of Group Support Systems joint modeling facilities, and animation techniques to support subject matter expert (SME) involvement in organizational change processes. The SMEs involved in the study jointly constructed and evaluated static and dynamic models of the police force's current and future structure and processes. Our findings illustrate the potential of the above facilities used to support SME involvement in terms of efficiency, resulting model quality, and SME satisfaction with process and technologies. Issues for further research include group modeling strategies, techniques, and group size, as well as automatic animation generation.