ABSTRACT
The dynamic Interfaces for cooperative Activities project has identified the following key problems to improve the interfaces for cooperative applications: approach is twofold: on one hand, extended application framework Generic INteractive Application (GINA) to provide generic support for the development of shared applications. On the other hand, the project has developed a version of the “virtual office” metaphor that represents the environment as people moving between rooms in a virtual building. To effectively support cooperation between different users, it is crucial to provide awareness-knowledge about the activities of other users. During cooperative activities, multiuser applications developed with the GINA framework offer additional information about the activities of other users. The success of computer-supported cooperative work depends to a large part on the quality of the user interface. User interfaces for cooperative applications are demanding because the environment is no longer static and the user has to be aware of other people’s actions.
