Designing Cooperative Systems

Book excerpt: The main assumption behind the COOP conferences is that co-operative systems design requires a deep understanding of the co-operative work of dyads, groups and organizations, involving both artefacts and social conventions. The key topic of COOP'2000 was The Use of Theories and Models in Designing Cooperative Systems. Two opposite methodological approaches to co-operative system design can be clearly identified - a pragmatic approach or an approach based on theories and models. Objectives of the COOP'2000 Conference included: clarifying the reasons why one needs or does not need to use a theory or a model for design, comparing the pragmatic and the theory/model-based approaches, and identifying possible joint points between them, discussing the relevance of the theories/models with respect to the design of co-operative systems, to better delimit the respective application fields of the various theories/models, and to identify their possible joint points.