The thesis introduces the concept of a thinXel as a new design approach for a reusable instruction element. A thinXel is defined as ’an atomic facilitator instruction leading to a response that has a well-defined function in the context of the group’s goal’ [Knoll et al., 2007]. The name ’thinXel’ (thinking element) is formed analogously to the well-known ’pixel’ (picture element) in Computer Graphics.
The concept of a thinXel is based on the Shannon-Weaver Model of a communica-tion process [Shannon, 1948] which describes the transmission of a message between a sender and a receiver. In this model, the sender encodes a given intention in a mes-sage, which will be transmitted to the receiver via a channel. The receiver needs to decode the message to understand the intention and be able respond to it. Noise can degrade the quality of the transmission, so that the interpretation of the message might not match the intention of the sender. In a collaboration process, a facilitator instruc-tion or user interface represents a coded inteninstruc-tion of the facilitator for the participants
of a collaboration process. This message can lead to unintended activities of the partic-ipants by providing to much information (e.g. an instruction or interface that provides information for more than one process step) or only abstract information about the col-laboration process (e.g. an interface or instruction that leaves open how to execute an intended activity). As a result, a thinXel is introduced as an instruction element that represents one atomic instruction or interface which leads to only one basic activity of the participants.
The design of a thinXel is influenced by the research on the Cognitive Network Model, which shows that the working memory of a participant is limited. People can only pay attention to about seven concepts at the same time [Miller, 1956]. Without a refresh by conscious rehearsal or by external stimuli, the content of the working memory would fade within seconds [Brown, 1958]. As a result, the thesis intends that an instruction element may contain only those pieces of information that must be conveyed to the participant to perform the activity intended by the collaboration workflow. An exam-ple is the instruction ’Please write down on a sheet of paper a comment, which you associate with the issue’ for the collaborative activity ’to create a comment for the is-sue’. The concept of thinXel uses this property and defines that an instruction element should lead to one basic activity like ’add’, ’select’ and ’move’. This makes a thinXel an atomic instruction element.
These properties define the difference between the concept of a thinkLet and a thinXel.
A thinkLet is a reusable logical design element that describes a sequence of abstract rules which lead to a collaboration pattern. However some abstract rules of a thinkLet can leave open the question, which instruction or interface should be used to achieve an intended action [Knoll et al., 2007]. Therefore it depends on the experience of the practitioner or software engineer which instruction or interface is used. In contrast, a thinXel represents a reusable physical design element which defines one atomic in-struction or interface that leads to only one atomic activity of the participants.
The concept of thinXel can be categorised into context and data-oriented thinXels [Knoll et al., 2008]:
A context-oriented thinXel represents an instruction element with the in-tention to create a working environment for the collaboration process.
Resulting instructions or interfaces explain the constraints, goals and the intended working process, which can support the participant’s acceptance of the collaboration process. Furthermore, these instruction elements can be used to modify the working environment by requesting the participants to select a working element (e.g. a pen and some sheets of paper) or to decide which activity should be done next. Examples of the indented actions of the participants can be:to know(to know the process goal),to read(to read the process information),to select(to select a concept from the dataset) orto take(to take something from somewhere).
A data-oriented thinXel represents an instruction element with the inten-tion to change the existing dataset of the group process.
Resulting instructions or interfaces can be divided into three kinds of activities:to cre-ate (to create a concept to the groups work space), to grow(to enhance an existing concept from the groups work space with new concepts) orto relate(to establish the relationships between two concepts). Other data activity like the defined actions of a thinkLet (Add, Delete, Edit, Relate, Judge) [Kolfschoten et al., 2004] can be rep-resented by a combination of these three activities. For example, the activity Delete can be represented by the activityto relate, which leads to a relation between a given contribution and a contribution named Wastebasket.
4.3.1 A class diagram of a collaboration process
Similar to the concept of Rules in Collaboration Engineering [Briggs et al., 2006] a se-quence of thinXels can be used to describe actions that participants must execute using the capabilities provided to them under some set of constraints. However, the concept of thinXels provide a more detailed description of an action by taking the factor fa-cilitation into the account. As a result, the thesis intends to combine the concepts of thinkLet and thinXel to define the collaboration workflow in more detail.
Figure 4.1 illustrates a class diagram for a collaboration process combining the con-cepts of thinkLet and thinXel. This model refines the given thinkLet class diagram [Kolfschoten et al., 2006] by replacing the concept of Rule by the new concept of thinXel. The central component of this model is the collaborationprocess that de-fines a collaborative process for a group of participants. Aparticipantis a person that executes the activities that are related to thecollaborationprocess. Arole abstractly denotes a set of behaviors, rights and obligations aparticipant needs to execute the intended activities of the process.
The collaboration process itself is composed of a sequence ofthinkLetsthat represents a named, scripted, reusable, and transferable collaborative activity for creating specific known variations of the six patterns of collaboration among people working together toward a goal [Briggs et al., 2006]. Under the old model, rules describe actions that participants must execute using the capabilities provided to them under some set of constraints. To include the facilitation factor,thinXelswere used to define the relation-ship between aparticipantin a definedrole, aninstructionfor an intendedactionand its result oncontextanddataset. Table 4.1 provides some examples of these data and context-oriented thinXels. Here, aninstructionprovides information for the partici-panthow to use the providedcapabilitiesand certain pieces of information given by parameterto achieve an intendedaction. According to the given group constellation thisinstruction can vary instyle from formal to informal. Similar to Collaboration Engineering,modifier defines repeatable variations of athinkLet in order to create a predictable change in the pattern of collaboration or the result that a thinkLet produces.
Figure 4.1: Class diagram of a collaboration process using thinkLet and thinXel adapted from [Kolfschoten et al., 2006]
Type Action Capability Parameter Style Instruction
Context Read sheet of paper with
process information
formal Please read the following infor-mation about the process
Context Select application that
supports selection
formal Please select one contribution from the given list of contribu-tions by<using the application in a specific way>
Context Decide different work
sta-tions
informal We have distributed different work stations across the room.
Now go around and decide at which station you want to work in the next phase
Context Organise informal Now all of you should build
groups of three participants
Data Create application that
supports generation
task formal Please create a contribution for
the<task>by<using the
ap-plication in a specific way>
Data Grow application that
supports generation
criterion informal Change the contribution if you think that it does not fulfill the
<criterion>by<using the
ap-plication in a specific way>
Data Relate set of cards with the
contributions; paper clips
informal Combine contributions with a similar content by using a pa-per clip
Table 4.1: Examples of data and context-related thinXels