Situation awareness support for asynchronous engineering collaboration
Abstract
Engineering collaboration over the Internet using a CAD browser is analyzed, and a conceptual model is presented from the perspective of human-computer interaction. Based on process analysis and a theoretical model of engineering collaboration, major factors that affect engineering collaboration are identified. Six hypotheses are proposed to test the six agent-based features that are developed to support collaboration awareness, communication, and coordination of collaborative activities. The new features are Comment Status, Comment Status Summary, Team Member Information Enhancement, Collaboration Task Information Enhancement, Activity Coordinator and agent with Instant Comment Alert. The CAD browser with the new features was developed using Java, Java database connectivity, and Java Servlet technologies. Four experiments were conducted to test the six hypotheses using the six features. Testing of the six hypotheses indicated the following: (1) Enhanced information about team members and collaboration tasks was utilized to coordinate the collaborative activities, which led to higher performance and satisfaction; (2) The features of Comment Status and Comment Status Summary extended the long-term memory of collaborators, which improved performance and satisfaction; (3) The agent system with the feature of Instant Comment Alert improved the performance and satisfaction; and (4) the feature of Activity Coordinator reduced the decision time and improved the collaboration performance. The results of this study demonstrate that collaboration awareness is as important for asynchronous distributed collaboration as it is for synchronous distributed collaboration. The derived information provides practical guidelines for CAD browser designers to develop effective CAD browsers to facilitate engineering collaboration over the Internet.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Salvendy, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Industrial engineering
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