協調作業支援機能を持ったカード操作ツールKJエディタの評価実験 (<特集論文>特集 : 「発想支援システム」)

抄録

A distributed and networking card-handling tool named KJ-Editor that simulates arranging index-cards on a desk as working in collaboration is described. Card-handling is one of the most useful methods for information representeation and idea-generation. In KJ-Editor, hundreds of cards can be generated on any place in a display and a sentence can be written on each of them. A generated card can be picked and moved by a mouse. Cards may be grouped by enclosing them with a curve. Relationships of cards and groups can also be marked by special lines. The chart of cards edited on KJ-Editor can be output by a printer and stored in a disk. When a user of the cooperative work makes some operations on the chart in KJ-Editor, the other collaborators can see the operations on thier own displays. That is so-called WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) facilities are implemented in KJ-Editor. An experiment that four collaborators made a specification of a middle-scale software- "LIFT" problem, that is well known as a common problem for requirements analysis-using KJ-Editor was conducted. The collaborators meet at a room and are provided with separate networked computers. They can make a face-to-face communication. According to our observation and analysis on this experiment, some features of cooperative work activity using KJ-Editor are identified : (1) a computer-supported card-handling tool is a useful resource for the group in mediating their cooperative work ; (2) pointing a card or an element of the chart by a mouse has an effect for concentrating the discussion, and (3) WYSIWIS facilities sometimes become obstacles for personal viewing of the card-arrangement and cause collaborators to be uncomfortable.