Over the summer break Gordon Paynter and myself implemented three prototypes for adding notes to a CSCW system. The project was funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology(FoRST) and was titled Improved Computer Supported Cooperative Work Systems. The first two systems were developed in parallel, and then evaluated. The good and bad points of each system were considered and a new system constructed. This system will be referred to as Sticky Notes.
Notes are commonly found attached to documents in the form of yellow sticky notes. This technology was originally developed by 3m. We took the notion of sticky notes a little bit further and created an automated form of them. The notes developed can be browsed collaboratively, in asynchronous, semi-synchrounous, or asynchronous communication modes. Notes can be attached to artefacts (if desired), and be directed to certain users.
The notes were designed so that were reasonably generic (they can be attached to text and canvas widgets, or to other notes), so that they could be used with other applications. The notes were developed using GroupKit, and can ideally (there are a few little problems that may occur) be used with any GroupKit application.
Notes have since been modified to work with W4. The code was modified slightly to allow for greater functionality, and closer coupling with W4.
If you've got any queries or suggestions I'd be happy to here about them. This page is fairly basic atm, but I'll probably update it to contain more info later.
Apperley, M.D., Gianoutsos, S., Grundy, J.C., Paynter, G., Reeves, S., Venable, J.R. Notes: An Experiment in CSCW, Working paper 96/9, Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, April 1996, 42pp. Postscript. WARNING: this file is huge when uncompressed.
