Cooperative Technologies
for Complex Work Settings
COTCOS Description
COTCOS is a European research network on Cooperative technologies. It is
funded by the European Community (Training and Mobility Program) and is
mainly devoted to improve european collaborations through exchange of students
and researchers.
COTCOS objectives are :
Identify existing approaches of man-machine interaction : appropriateness
and limits
Propose new and innovative approach of collaborative work
Produce a set of design implications and guidelines
Modeling and designing cooperative technologies for collaborative work
COTCOS research program is pluridisciplinary. It covers :
Cognitive engineering
Human-computer interaction
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Ethnography
Cognitive science
Telematics
COTCOS Research Program
The notion of cooperative technologies is a recent development in research,
raising new challenges for the design of computer support and work organization.
A central concern is how:
to facilitate productivity of groups of people, co-located or based at
geographically
dispersed locations,
to share more easily information among distributed workgroups in organizations,
to enable distributed
decision-making for high risk situations to be carried out effectively,
to develop computer supported 'organizational memory' systems
that can provide better resources than currently exist for accessing, sharing
and using information when needed in dynamic work
situations.
In this project three main objectives are pursued:
We seeks to overcome the limitations of existing single theoretical disciplinary
approaches by advancing inter and transdisciplianry theoretical frameworks
and methodologies.
The second objective will be to interrelate theories and methodologies
for the design and assessment of systems for collaborative working in complex
environment.
The third objective seeks to answer to industrial needs by looking at adequate
information supports for working and learning environments.
What is expected from this project is therefore to produce a set of design
implications and guidelines for complex collaborative technologies. It
will also provide guidelines for the deployment of innovative collaborative
systems in complex organizations.
