Storytelling in Collaborative Work: Design Challenges for Capturing and Representing Sensitive Interactions Wayne G. Lutters Department of Information Systems UMBC Baltimore, MD 21250 lutters@umbc.edu http://www.research.umbc.edu/~lutters Introduction Within the CSCW research community, storytelling is a known critical component in successful organizational memory systems. Storytelling plays many roles in the informal exchange of information, but in my research experience I have found that its primary contributions are as follows: • It provides access to local expertise, which is the ability to meaningfully interpret and value information by one’s experience. For example, a colleague with more experience with a given problem will help illuminate the different meanings for another. • It often helps contextualize abstract understandings. At times, information about a given situation which may have been desiccated into abstraction in a formal written process or policy, is rehydrated through storytelling, which describes in detail how this played out in a particular situation. In turn this provides more interpretive “hooks” for the listener to use in order to ascertain the story’s relevance for her current situation. • It provides support for accessing tacit knowledge. For example, individual understandings, too habitual to explicate in specific rules, often come percolating to the surface in the context of describing how actual work was accomplished previously. • It encourages an iterative process of mutual understanding. Storytelling in the workplace is rarely concluded with theatrical applause, but in contrast is routinely followed by active questions and answers from the “audience.” For example, the three co-workers gathered around the coffeepot on the morning break will likely follow on their coworker’s story with dialogue or stories of their own as they collaboratively make sense of the situation. Despite the critical importance of storytelling to collaborative work, little information systems support exists for this activity. The opportunity for improved organizational memory utilization through appropriate computer support is great, as is the need to better understand the phenomena to best inform design. Efforts to create collaborative storytelling support systems, especially for virtual teams, face a host of design challenges (which, hopefully, will be discussed in some detail by the participants of this workshop.) This position paper will briefly explore one of those challenges – the preservation of sensitive interactions.