Paul Dourish
University of California, Irvine

About Time: Examining Temporality in Cooperative Work

One of CSCW's betes noires is a quad diagram that describes collaborative encounters along two dimensions, one of space and one of time. While this diagram problematically glosses a number of important distinctions, everyone agrees that the dimensions are about right. Curiously, though, most research seems to focus on space (or distance) as the primary analytic concern. Work on distributed teams, distance collaboration, face-to-face interaction, and more, all place their emphasis on the spatial dimension, while the temporal issues have been much less closely examined.

Drawing on two recent projects -- one looking at collaborative information practices in a hospital, and one looking at creating social-network based characterisations of online activity -- I'll try to make the case for temporality as an important topic for CSCW research, show how it has come to
prominence in our work, and outline some possible areas for investigation