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The potential benefits of collaboration technologies are typically realized only in groups led by collaboration experts. This raises the facilitator-in-the-box challenge: Can collaboration expertise be packaged with collaboration technology in a form that nonexperts can reuse with no training on either tools or techniques? We address that challenge with process support applications (PSAs). We describe a collaboration support system (CSS) that combines a computer-assisted collaboration engineering platform for creating PSAs with a process support system runtime platform for executing PSAs. We show that the CSS meets its design goals: (1) to reduce development cycles for collaboration systems, (2) to allow nonprogrammers to design and develop PSAs, and (3) to package enough expertise in the tools that nonexperts could execute a well-designed collaborative work process without training.

Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaborative work practices that can be executed by domain experts without the ongoing support of external collaboration professionals. Since 2001, CE has been an active and productive topic of research that has attracted scientists from different backgrounds and disciplines. CE research started with studies on ways to transfer professional collaboration expertise to novices using a pattern language called thinkLets. Subsequent research focused on the development of theories to explain key phenomena, the development of a structured design methodology, training methods, technology support, design theories, and various field and experimental studies focusing on specific aspects of the CE approach. This paper details the contributions from CE research and practice based on a literature assessment of 331 publications. It extracts the key insights from the body of CE research thus far, identifies significant areas of inquiry that have not yet been explored, and looks ahead at the CE research opportunities that are emerging as our society, organizations, technologies, and the nature of collaboration evolve.

Global collaboration is the major trend in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry; training in global engineering collaboration thus is highly demanded in existing engineering education. One approach to this training is to expose students to sufficient experiences, such as having them participating in a global project-based course. To do this, the authors participated in and co-designed a global project-based course, called Sky Classroom, from 2014 to 2016. That course, which aimed to teach global engineering collaboration skills, required international students to collaborate in the design of buildings. During the course, we identified three issues in the existing communication platform: low communicability, passive problem finding, and poor spatial cognition. Since the communication platform is the key factor in successful collaboration, we designed and implemented an appropriate platform, the virtual building information modeling (BIM) reviewer (VBR), for addressing these issues. VBR is an avatar-based communication platform that allows users to enter the BIM model and find problems from their individual perspectives. It was developed and continuously improved based on observations of students’ global collaboration behaviors and feedback in Sky Classroom. VBR has undergone two development phases with two virtual reality types, desktop-based and immersive. While the desktop-based VBR solves the issues of low communicability and passive problem finding, the immersive VBR solves the issue of poor spatial cognition, and the application of the VBR in Sky Classroom will solve the issues in the existing communication platform and assist students in collaboration, respectively.

Shared understanding has been claimed to be crucial for effective collaboration of researchers and practitioners. Heterogeneity in work groups further strengthens the challenge of integrating understanding among diverse group members. Nevertheless, shared understanding and especially its formation are largely unexplored. After conceptualizing shared understanding, we apply collaboration engineering to derive a validated collaboration process module (compound thinkLet \"MindMerger\") to systematically support heterogeneous work groups in building shared understanding. We conduct a large-scale action research study at a German car manufacturing company. The evaluation indicates that with the use of MindMerger, team learning behaviors occur, and shared understanding of the tasks in complex work processes increases among experienced diverse tool and dye makers. Thus, the validated compound thinkLet MindMerger provides designers of collaborative work practices with a reusable module of activities to solve clarification issues in group work early on. Furthermore, findings from the field study contribute to the conceptualization of the largely unexplored phenomenon of shared understanding and its formation.

Trust is frequently investigated as an indicator of a mutual relationship. Trust is especially important for globally distributed collaboration in light of the lack of face-to-face interactions. As the perception of trust is a dynamic process, however, little research is conducted measuring trust development. Whether facilitation intervention is beneficial for trust development is also unknown. In order to fill the research gaps, we followed a design science approach and incorporated collaboration engineering into the design of the treatment. Data were collected in a series of experiments with Chinese and U.S. mixed teams, including a longitudinal survey, interviews, and documentation. Through the comparison of the treatment group with the control group, we found that trust was significantly improved in the treatment group. In addition, several trust antecedents were found to explain the development. The power of facilitated collaboration is also validated as helpful for trust development. This research makes several implications, such as proposing a series of trust antecedents, a treatment design of a collaboration engineering (CE) approach for trust improvement, and a new context application of CE. This research could also help the practitioners in globally distributed collaboration who want to improve trust over time.

Requirements elicitation and analysis tasks in user-centered design (UCD) are pivotal for assessing digital systems’ quality and costs. However, these tasks often face challenges due to limited user involvement. This stems from unclear guidelines on how to conduct activities and engage users effectively to achieve their goals during the development process. This study explored how the integration of collaboration engineering (CE) principles with UCD approach could address these challenges. Using an Applied Science / Engineering approach, a UCD-CE process was designed drawing on the Six-layer model of Collaboration. This model aligns the CE steps with UCD principles (why), practices (what), and methods (how). Data collection tools included structured interviews, questionnaires, and observations, supported by techniques like user stories and dialogues, as well as thinkLets, and patterns of collaboration. Formative and summative evaluations were used to validate the UCD-CE process; and the results underscore its strengths, particularly its efficiency in helping users to complete tasks on time, reducing effort in reaching common goals, fostering high user satisfaction, promoting creativity and productivity, ensuring ease-of-use and learnability, and delivering comprehensive outcomes in requirements elicitation and analysis tasks during the development process. Future research aims to assess the practicality of UCD-CE integration in reinforcing user involvement during the UCD design phase.

Collaboration engineering is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaboration processes that can be executed by practitioners without the support of collaboration professionals such as facilitators. A critical challenge in collaboration engineering concerns how the design activities have to be executed and which design choices have to be made to create a process design. We report on a four-year design science study in which we developed a design approach for collaboration engineering that incorporates existing process design methods, pattern-based design principles, and insights from expert facilitators regarding design challenges and choices. The resulting approach was evaluated and continuously improved in four trials with 37 students. Our findings suggest that this approach is useful to support the design of repeatable collaboration processes. Our study further serves as an example of how a design approach can be developed and improved following a multimethod design science approach.

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is widely adopted in industry learning, but it still faces challenges, including low participation, distraction, and learning inefficiency. In our study, we follow the design science research method to develop artifacts (a process and discussion platform) to address these CSCL challenges. Collaboration engineering was used as our design theory. A Discussion Platform was designed as a tool to help non-expert practitioner instruct collaborative learning process. We carried out evaluations on the two designed artifacts through 81 managers working in various industries through a mixed-method approach, including survey and qualitative interviews. We find that our designed artifacts receive high satisfaction in industry CSCL and reduce problems of low participation, distraction, and learning inefficiency. We identified several factors that contribute to the problem solving of low participation, distraction and inefficiency in industry CSCL, including usability, expression affordance, process guidance, goal clarity, flexibility affordance, thinkLet instruction, and flow experiences.

Convergence is a collaborative activity in which members of group focus on what they consider the most promising or important contributions resulting from an ideation activity. Convergence is critical in helping a group focus their efforts on issues that are worthy of further attention. In the current study, we further research in this area by exploring and characterizing the effects of a particular convergence intervention, the FastFocus technique, in the context of a crowdsourcing project. We conducted an exploratory case study of artifacts generated by a crowd of managers addressing a real problem identification and clarification task in a large financial services organization. Using an online crowdsourcing tool, a professional facilitator led participants during preset periods through a convergence activity that focused on the brainstorming contributions that had been generated prior. To better understand the effects of the convergence technique on the group’s ideas, we compared the raw problem statements to the final output of the convergence activities in terms of the number of unique ideas present, as well as the ambiguity of the ideas. Using the FastFocus convergence technique reduced the number of concepts by 76%. Ambiguity was reduced from 45% in the set of problem statements to 3% in the converged set of problem statements. We demonstrate with these findings that the outcomes of group convergence processes in real settings can be measured, enabling future research which seeks to evaluate and understand convergence in groups. Aspects of brainstorming instructions were also identified that may make it possible to reduce the ambiguity of problem statements.

Field research and laboratory experiments suggest that, under certain circumstances, people using group support systems (GSS) can be significantly more productive than people who do not use them. Yet, despite their demonstrated potential, GSS have been slow to diffuse across organizations. Drawing on the Technology Transition Model, the paper argues that the high conceptual load of GSS (i.e., understanding of the intended effect of GSS functionality) encourages organizations to employ expert facilitators to wield the technology on behalf of others. Economic and political factors mitigate against facilitators remaining long term in GSS facilities that focus on supporting nonroutine, ad hoc projects. This especially hampers scaling GSS technology to support distributed collaboration. An alternative and sustainable way for organizations to derive value from GSS lies in an approach called \"collaboration engineering\": the development of repeatable collaborative processes that are conducted by practitioners themselves. To enable the development of such processes, this paper proposes the thinkLet concept, a codified packet of facilitation skill that can be applied by practitioners to achieve predictable, repeatable patterns of collaboration, such as divergence or convergence.A thinkLet specifies the facilitator'schoices and actions in terms of the GSS tool used, the configuration of this tool, and scripted prompts to accomplish a pattern of collaboration in a group. Using thinkLets as building blocks, facilitators can develop and transfer repeatable collaborative processes to practitioners. Given the limited availability of expert facilitators, collaboration engineering with thinkLets may become a sine qua non for organizations to effectively support virtual work teams.