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Abstract
The interdisciplinary research presented in this article is part of the study of collective human activities supported by technical devices. We begin by stating the objectives of the study and the type of activity observed, i.e. joint mediated writing. Then, we describe our procedure by (i) justifying our methodological choices, which are grounded in a psycho-ergonomic approach of ethnographical inspiration, (ii) detailing the setup of the study and (iii) describing the modes used to present the observables. Next, we present our analysis of a session, while revealing some intermediate results related to the properties of computer traces of interaction and their use in the course of the session. We end with a discussion of the results and limitations of the study followed by the conclusion, which opens up some pathways for designing ‘tracing systems’ capable of supporting joint mediated activities.
Notes
1. We also could have called this type of layout ‘quadravision’.
2. The French pronoun used here was ‘on’, the third person singular indefinite personal pronoun. ‘On’ is widely employed in informal French to mean ‘we’.
3. What we have in mind here are computer systems capable of recording information about system utilization by users, putting that information in a form that is ‘intelligible’ for humans (other than log files), and then displaying it to the person, whether it be the user him/herself or an analyst of the situation. The reader will find a four-family classification of such ‘tracing systems’ in Ollagnier-Beldame (2006).