JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 14(1): 4-26, doi: 10.3217/jucs-014-01-0004
The Trade-Offs of Blending Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication Services to Support Contextual Collaboration
expand article infoWerner Geyer‡, Roberto S. Silva Filho§, Beth Brownholtz‡, David F. Redmiles§
‡ IBM T.J. Watson Research, United States of America§ University of California Irvine, United States of America

Corresponding author: Werner Geyer ( werner.geyer@us.ibm.com )

© Werner Geyer, Roberto S. Silva Filho, Beth Brownholtz, David Redmiles.
This article is freely available under the J.UCS Open Content License.
Citation: Geyer W, Filho RSS, Brownholtz B, Redmiles DF (2008) The Trade-Offs of Blending Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication Services to Support Contextual Collaboration. JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 14(1): 4-26. https://doi.org/10.3217/jucs-014-01-0004
Open Access
Abstract
Contextual collaboration seamlessly integrates existing groupware technologies into a uniform user experience that combines synchronous and asynchronous interactions. This user experience is usually supported by a collaboration infrastructure that needs to efficiently cope with the fast switching and integration of different modes of interaction. In this paper, we study a model for contextual collaboration that supports multiple modalities of collaboration. Our model is based on generic shared objects that provide building blocks for supporting contextual collaboration applications. We describe a native implementation of this model and evaluate its behavior under different media traffic conditions. We compare the native implementation with an alternative implementation that integrates existing notification and meeting servers to deliver the same model behavior. We discuss trade-offs and limitations of those two implementations.
Keywords
synchronous collaboration, asynchronous collaboration, CSCW, groupware, simulation, architecture, notification