Socially Embedded Collaborative Practices: Introduction to a Special Issue based on the COOP 2010 Conference

摘要

This special issue focuses on socially embedded collaborative practices in different domains, based on the 9th International COOP Conference, which took place in Aix-en-Provence in May, 2010 and was documented in the conference proceedings (Lewkowicz et al. 2010). We present four case studies on the support of collaborative technologies for socially relevant tasks in the fields of healthcare, political engagement, science, and open source software development: software development of IT systems in the healthcare sector (Federico Cabitza), the use of collaborative technology by social movements (Saqib Saeed, Markus Rohde, and Volker Wulf), the use of technology and artefacts in archaeology (Marco Locatelli, Carla Simone, and Viviana Ardesia), and the use of the Eclipse development platform among software engineers (Gunnar Stevens and Sebastian Draxler). All of these studies apply an ethnographic research approach and strive to achieve a deep understanding of the collaborative practices in these domains and their respective social context in order to derive specific design requirements for appropriate technological support.