ABSTRACT
The terms multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are often used interchangeably to refer to researchers from different disciplines or backgrounds coming together to collaborate on a common goal, be it basic or applied research. Although it is relatively easy to be multidisciplinary because everyone is good at championing their own areas of expertise, it is much harder to achieve interdisciplinarity. Cognitive science is a classic example of the emergence of a new field that set itself up to be truly interdisciplinary. A main motivation behind its inception was to enable a number of different disciplines to come together to develop a better understanding of how the mind works. The perceived need for a new form of interdisciplinarity was very much the driving force behind the emergence of two new applied fields, human computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) in the late 1970s and 1980s, respectively.
