Panel: Rethinking the Role of Formalization in CSCW

This panel aims at exploring formalization in use, i.e. how people acquire, develop, use, and communicate formalizations. The notion of formalization applied here emphasizes its situational and historical roots. We would like to take as our point of departure an acknowledgement of well-known obstacles in using formalization, but we want to get further than that, to an acknowledgement of the constructive aspects of using formalization. The range of formalization issues in typical CSCW situations is wide and includes various activities of description and specification during design and development of an application, procedural structures imposed on those who use the system and representation system and models used in customization and adaption of running CSCW applications.