The Awareness-/Coordination-Support-System Paradox

Coordination and awareness have been topics in the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) starting from day one. Effortless coordination has been a major goal ever since. However, while awareness research became quite popular, coordination got increasingly out of focus. Its concepts stayed rather theoretical lacking concrete steps towards the original goal due to the absence of appropriate measurement techniques and tools. There is even an on-going general dispute if discount usability techniques deliver valid results as compared to real-world field studies. This paper supports their validity and demonstrates how the Standardized Coordination Task Assessment (SCTA) technique is used to extend the mechanics of collaboration, a framework for discount usability evaluations, allowing awareness and coordination effort assessments. The results appeared not only to be reasonable but the experiment revealed an effect we named the awareness-/coordination-support system paradox.