673 U A Use-Centered Strategy for Designing E-Collaboration Systems Daniel H. Schwartz Air Force Research Laboratory, USA John M. Flach Wright State University, USA W. Todd Nelson Air Force Research Laboratory, USA Charlene K. Stokes Air Force Research Laboratory, USA Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. IntroductIon The ubiquity of collaboration cannot be overstated. Derived from the Latin collaborare, which means “work with” or through, collaboration is the process wherein agents work together through transaction. Collabora- tion entails the existence of a team if a common goal or purpose underlies the transaction. A virtual team exists when collaboration takes place (to a varying degree) through technology across time, space, and (often) or- ganizational boundaries; also known as e-collaboration. As a general defnition, we follow the lead of Kock and colleagues (Kock, Davison, Ocker, & Wazlawick, 2001; Kock & Nosek, 2005), and state that e-collaboration is “collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task using electronic technologies” ( Kock et al., 2001, p. 1). This is a very broad defnition and includes such historical means of e-collaboration as the U.S. Depart- ment of Defense’s ARPANET and early group decision support systems (GDSSs) such as Lotus Notes (Kock & Nosek, 2005). Few would argue the contemporary impact computers, the Internet, and network architec- tures (e.g., local area networks; LANs) have had on collaboration and teams (Schwartz, Divitini, & Bras- ethvik, 2000). Current instantiations of e-collaborative systems include the Internet (which includes various e-collaborative subsystems such as Internet relay-chat, bulletin boards, and weblogs), videoconferencing, and virtual workstations. The opportunities created by this new wave of e-collaboration and virtual teamwork have, in turn, dramatically transformed military forces (e.g., network-centric warfare; Cebrowski, 1998), business (e.g., B2B collaboration; Rosenberg, 2003), infrastructure (e.g., traffc fow regulation; Jermann, 2001), and other areas of society (e.g., collaborative music development; Weinberg, 2005). The fact that e-collaboration wires together so many organizations highlights the idea that there is some advantage in having work virtually distributed across multiple decision makers. Thus, researchers are beginning to frame questions around the nature of e-col- laboration and virtual teams. Important dimensions of this phenomenon include the organizational dynamics (e.g., Rochlin, 1997), the technological capabilities (e.g., Iacovou, Benbasat, & Dexter, 1995), and the human factors (e.g., Proctor & Vu, 2005). However, the focus of this article will be on the work domain or problem space as a signifcant context for understand- ing the interactions among the lower order dimen- sions. The central premise is that all work, including teamwork, is situated (e.g., Hutchins, 1995; Suchman, 1987). That is, success depends on adaptation to the demands of the problem (i.e., the work, the situation, the ecology). Therefore, modeling the work domain constraints becomes an essential factor for predicting how the organizational structures, information technolo- gies, and human abilities will interact to determine the overall success and stability of the team. In sum, we would like to make the case for a Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) (e,g., Rasmussen, Pejtersen, & Goodstein, 1994; Vicente, 1999) or Ecological (e.g., Flach & Dominguez, 1995; Flach, Hancock, Caird, & Vicente, 1995) approach to questions about e-col- laboration or virtual teams. Below we highlight a military example of the use- focused design and development of an e-collaborative