From social to collaboration: a collaborative system to support research groups

• Abstract:

More and more the speech about the importance of shared and integrated knowledge is being heard, be it in a company or even in the academic world. Deriving from the necessity of making information exchange means available, came the collaborative systems. However, the options for fomenting scientific production and the formation of knowledge networks among researchers are scarce, be it in local or global form. The objective of this work is to create a proposal for a collaborative system which supports scientific production while facilitating that specialists know each other and work together inside and outside the system: the iColleges. For that purpose, an approach focused on the user is being used, where possible existing solutions are evaluated and on interacting with researchers to understand their needs, transforming them into requirements, creating a prototype of the solution and, finally, receiving feedback about what was created.
The main contributions of this work are the report of the difficulties that researchers have to interact with each other, independent of their geographical proximity, and the development of a collaborative system focused on scientific development. The interface prototypes of iColleges were well-received on the interviews and the possibilities for enhancements for the system are innumerous, as well as its possible adaptations for different contexts and areas of science.

Keywords: Collaborative systems, user experience, scientific production, ISO 13407.

• Computer Center (CIn) - Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE)

• Dissertation (Portuguese, .pdf)