Usability of collaboration technologies
Abstract
The objective of this study is to develop and validate an instrument that evaluates the usability of collaboration technologies, for synchronous and asynchronous work, as well as for distant and co-located collaborative work. An instrument based on the dimensions of usability and general group tasks was developed and tested via an online survey (N=183). A factor analysis resulted in 22 refined items with an eight factor model for usability of collaboration, which explained 63.1% of common variance. The eight factors are Communication Efficiency, Communication Effectiveness, Sender Awareness, Coordination Efficiency, Coordination History, Member Role Awareness, Cooperation Effectiveness, and Cooperation Efficiency. The concept of collaboration index was proposed to measure the overall fit between technology support and task requirement, which is a weighted sum of the eight factor indices. The ANOVA results showed no significant differences of the eight factors across gender, academic background, job, and the different levels of experience with collaboration technologies. However, there were significant cultural differences between Korean and American subjects. Korean subjects needed more support during collaboration than American subjects in the three factors of Coordination History, Communication Effectiveness, and Member Role Awareness. An experiment was conducted to assess the external and predictive validity of the instrument. Seventy-five subjects, in groups of three, participated in the experiment. Eight collaboration technologies were utilized to complete four collaborative tasks so as to examine the association between performance variables and collaboration index. The result indicated that a pair of task and technology scoring higher on the collaboration index was significantly associated with greater usability—faster task completion, less errors, greater number of ideas generated and greater user satisfaction. The use of the instrument for usability evaluation is discussed in both formative and summative evaluations, with guidelines for designing collaboration technologies considering American and Korean markets.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Hahn, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Industrial engineering
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