Awareness, representation and interpretation

This paper discusses how representation and interpretation affect the degree and character of awareness afforded by computer systems: awareness of people and of information artifacts. Our discussion ranges from system design to theoretical concepts, and we focus on consistencies across this spectrum. We begin by briefly describing a prototype collaborative filtering system, Recer. This system tracks ongoing activity in the web browsers and text editors of a group of people, and offers recommendations of URLs and local program files that are specific to and adaptive with that activity. and that reflect patterns of earlier activity within the community of use. We then take a more general look at collaborative filtering, and compare it with two other approaches to engendering awareness of useful artifacts: information retrieval and software patterns. We discuss how each implicitly or explicitly involves collaboration, formalisation and subjectivity in its core representations. We then explore the artifact-centred approach to awareness that Recer represents, and relate it to the activity-centred approach more familiar within CSCW. We use this comparison in discussing, in more theoretical terms, how representation and formalisation affects awareness, interpretation and use. Our intention is to explore and understand the choices that designers have for the core representations of information systems, and the consequences for awareness that follow for users. We wish to relate such practical design issues to the more theoretical discussion in CSCW around concepts such as common information spaces, the space-place distinction, and the status of formal constructs.