Experiences with a cooperative design process in developing a telecooperation system for collaborative document production

This paper describes a cooperative design approach and the experiences collected when applying this approach for developing and introducing a groupware system for the support of collaborative document processing in a geographically distributed ministerial environment. Methods were developed for the elicitation and analysis of explicit and tacit user requirements in work practice. The combination of these methods facilitated a mutual learning process between users and designers. These methods include interviews, laboratory workshops, user and designer workshops, as well as mediation by user advocates who explore users' needs during regular site visits. A portrait of the various methods is given, followed by a description of the experiences with the various types of interactions between the users and design team. This is accomplished with a report from system usage and implications these design methods had on system design.