As computerized technologies and the practices they support continue to grow in diversity, ubiquity, complexity, and scale, the number and type of research topics related to the study of collaborative systems have simultaneously continued to proliferate. It has become increasingly urgent to find ways to describe the problem space of practitioners and researchers in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). If we are designing to support coordinated action we should know more about what coordinated action is, and furthermore, we should have better ways to talk about the variations among them. In this way, we might get closer to understanding what it means to design for sociotechnical systems that can be simultaneously socially and technically complex and are subject to frequent changes from both within and without. A conceptual grounding—e.g. theoretical framework—is needed to help us define and describe what it is that the field of CSCW actually studies. In order to further discussions in our field, this talk reviews current models of CSCW and then introduces a new conceptual model, the Model of Coordinated Action (MoCA). The practical implications of MoCA are that it may provide a shared way to find and talk about what we study in CSCW despite its electrifying and daunting diversity.

About the Speaker

Dr. Charlotte P. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington and Director of the Computer Supported Collaboration Laboratory. She has a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Lee’s research is in the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) with a focus on studying cyberinfrastructure development as a way to understanding highly dynamic, emergent collaborations.  Dr. Lee has been awarded a Google Research Award for her work on online calendar sharing in intimate relationships and has also been awarded one NIH grant, and five NSF-funded grants that study aspects of collaboration in the development of cyberinfrastructure, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for “junior faculty who exemplify the role of outstanding teacher-scholars” awarded in 2010. She is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (JCSCW).