How Does It Do That?: The joint placement of mutliple objects against meaningful axes allows all members of the group quickly to report their views and to see at a glance the conclusions and judgments of the entire group.
Why Is It Different? : Most teams now use either email, threaded discussions or real time conferencing to collaborate. It is nearly impossible to get an overall sense of the state of mind of a group from text based communications. Real time conferencing imposes severe scheduling costs and wastes a lot of the group’s time. In contrast, Collaboragraph allows asynchronous communication. The graphical background selected by a moderator for a particular diagram keeps all comments by individuals on topic. Placement of individual graphical objects by group members allows the collective judgment of the group to become clearly visible as it emerges and evolves over time.
Who will use it? : Teams of all kinds that need to share their judgments on various topics. The system could be used by a group to:
- Decide who to hire
- Select items for inclusion in a budget
- Prioritize team efforts
- Assess competitive risks
- Report on the status of the team’s work
Other Potential Uses : Group diagrams could become a new form of graphical group blog. The multi-dimensional axes could be used to enhance rating systems used by focus groups.
More Detailed Description : The system uses a local software client linked to other users through a central database that is updated when the user creates or modifies a diagram. Key features of of the software include:
- Choice among many different kinds of diagram backgrounds
- Legend to match graphic shape and color to source or type
- Ability to link to external sources or between diagrams
- Controls to restrict access to a diagram to team members
- Potential to “roll up” team member diagrams into an aggregate average diagram
- Diagram state is stored centrally and updated to keep all team members in sync
Lead Designer : David R. Johnson
Sponsors: Collaboragraph was developed by Graphical Groupware.
For More Information: email: bnoveck@nyls.edu; (202) 674-0187
