Abstract

Introduction: Shared workspace evaluation can be expensive and time consuming. It is also usually oriented towards high-level qualitative perspectives of the collaboration among users. A quantitative method is presented, giving emphasis to the low-level details of critical scenarios of shared workspace interaction, and allowing for comparisons of predicted execution time. Method: Models of human information processing are used to approximate human behaviour while working through a shared workspace. Generic groupware input/output devices and information flows are categorised. Analysis. Three cases of shared workspace activity are analysed. For each case, two or more design scenarios are evaluated and their performance compared. Results: The method contributes to formative evaluation regarding the manipulation of coupling mechanisms and the timing and availability of group awareness information, and it offers indications about the potential performance of users working with shared workspaces. Conclusions: The proposed method is aligned with the century-old need to measure before improving. It is aimed at providing the groupware designer with a tool to make quick calculations, enabling several design iterations, without requiring users or functional prototypes. © the authors, 2008.