Abstract
Cooperative problem-solving systems are computer-based systems that augment a person's ability to create, reflect, design, decide, and reason. Our work focuses on supporting cooperative problem solving in the context of high-functionality computer systems. We show how the conceptual framework behind a given system determines crucial aspects of the system's behavior. Several systems are described that attempted to address specific shortcomings of prevailing assumptions, resulting in a new conceptual framework. To further test this resulting framework, we conducted an empirical study of a success model of cooperative problem solving between people in a large hardware store. The conceptual framework is instantiated in a number of new system-building efforts, which are described and discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
D.C. Engelbart, W.K. English, “A research center for augmenting human intellect,” in Proceedings of the AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference, The Thompson Book Company, Washington, D.C., 1968, pp. 395–410.
M.J. Stefik, “The next knowledge medium,”AI Magazine, vol. 7, pp. 34–46, 1986.
G. Fischer, “Communications requirements for cooperative problem solving systems,”The International Journal of Information Systems (Special Issue on Knowledge Engineering), vol. 15, pp. 21–36, 1990.
R.R. Burton, J.S. Brown, G. Fischer, “Analysis of skiing as a success model of instruction: Manipulating the learning environment to enhance skill acquisition,” in Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context, edited by B. Rogoff, J. Lave, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA—London, pp. 139–150, 1984.
T.W. Malone, “How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems,”ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, vol. 1, pp. 99–112, 1983.
G. Fischer, C. Rathke, “Knowledge-based spreadsheet systems,” in Proceedings of AAAI-88, Seventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (St. Paul, (MN), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA, 1988, pp. 802–807.
D.A. Schoen,The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books: New York, 1983.
L.A. Suchman,Plans and Situated Actions, Cambridge University Press: New York, 1987.
T. Winograd, F. Flores,Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Ablex Publishing Corporation: Norwood, NJ, 1986.
J. Lave,Cognition in Practice, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1988.
G. Fischer, “Making computers more useful and more usable,” in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Honolulu, Hawaii). Elsevier Science Publishers, New York, 1987, pp. 97–104.
S.K. Card, “Human factors and the intelligent interface,” in Combining Human and Artificial Intelligence: A New Frontier for Human Factors, Symposium for the Metropolitan Chapter of the Human Factors Society. New York, 1984.
R.R. Burton, J.S. Brown, “An investigation of computer coaching for informal learning activities,” in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, edited by D.H. Sleeman, J.S. Brown, Academic Press: London—New York, chapter 4, pp. 79–98, 1982.
B.G. Buchanan, E.H. Shortliffe,Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA, 1984.
B.G. Buchanan, E.H. Shortliffe, “Human engineering of medical expert systems,” in Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA, pp. 599–612, chapter 32, (1984).
J. McDermott, “RI: A rule-based configurer of computer systems,”Artificial Intelligence, vol. 19, pp. 39–88, 1991.
G. Fischer, S.R. Henninger, D.F. Redmiles, “Intertwining query construction and relevance evaluation,” in Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'91 Conference Proceedings (New Orleans, LA). ACM, pp. 55–62, 1991.
D.D. Woods, “Cognitive technologies: The design of joint human-machine cognitive systems,”Al Magazine, vol. 6, pp. 86–92, 1986.
T.W. Malone, K.R. Grant, K.-Y. Lai, R. Rao, D. Rosenblitt, “Object lens: A “spreadsheet” for cooperative work,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'88), ACM, New York, 1988, pp. 115–124.
G. Fischer, R. McCall, A. Morch, “JANUS: Integrating hypertext with a knowledge-based design environment,” in Proceedings of Hypertext '89 (Pittsburgh, PA), ACM, New York, 1989, pp. 105–117.
B. Curtis, H. Krasner, N. Iscoe, “A field study of the software design process for large systems,”Communications of the ACM, vol. 31, pp. 1268–1287, 1988.
R.L. Teach, E.H. Shortliffe, “An Analysis of Physicians' Attitudes,” in Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA, pp. 635–652, Chapter 34, 1984.
H.A. Simon,The Sciences of the Artificial, The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1981.
G. Fischer, H. Nieper-Lemke, “HELGON: Extending the retrieval by reformulation paradigm,” in Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'89 Conference Proceedings (Austin, TX), ACM: New York, pp. 357–362, 1989.
M.D. Williams, “What Makes RABBIT Run?”International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, vol. 21, pp. 333–352, 1984.
G. Fischer, “A critic for LISP,” in Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Milan, Italy), edited by J. McDermott, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Los Altos, CA, August, 1987, pp. 177–184.
G. Fischer, A.C. Lemke, T. Schwab, “Knowledge-based help systems,” in Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'85 Conference Proceedings (San Francisco, CA), ACM, New York, pp. 161–167, 1985.
J.R. Carbonell, “Mixed-initiative man-computer instructional dialogues,” Report 1971, BBN, 1970.
D.G. Bobrow, R.M. Kaplan, M. Kay, D.A. Norman, H. Thompson, T. Winograd, “GUS, A frame-driven dialog system,”Artificial Intelligence, vol. 8, pp. 155–173, 1977.
G. Fischer, C. Stevens, “Volunteering information—Enhancing the communication capabilities of knowledge-based systems,” in Proceedings of INTERACT'87. 2nd IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Stuttgart, FRG), edited by H.-J. Bullinger, B. Shackel, North-Holland: Amsterdam, pages 965–971, 1987.
G. Fischer, A.C. Lemke, “Construction kits and design environments: Steps toward human problem-domain communication,”Human-Computer Interaction. vol. 3, pp. 179–222, 1988.
S.W. Draper, “The nature of expertise in UNIX,” in Proceedings of INTERACT'84, IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 182–186.
A.C. Lemke, “Design environments for high-functionality computer systems,” PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, 1989.
G. Fischer, A.C. Lemke, R. McCall, A. Morch, “Making argumentation serve design,”Human Computer Interaction, vol. 6, nos. 3–4, pp. 393–419, 1991.
E. Wenger,Artificial Intelligence and Tutoring Systems, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: Los Altos, CA, 1987.
K.-Y. Lai, T.W. Malone, “Object lens: A “spead-sheet” for cooperative work,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'88), ACM, New York, 1988, pp. 115–124.
N. Wilde, C.H. Lewis, “Spreadsheet-based interactive graphics: From prototype to tool,” in Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'90 Conference Proceedings (Seattle, WA), ACM: New York, 1990, pp. 153–159.
H. Petroski,To Engineer Is Human, St. Martin's Press: New York, 1985.
B.N. Reeves, “Locating the right object in a large hardware store—An empirical study of cooperative problem solving among humans,” Technical Report CU-CS-523–91, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 1991.
T. Winograd, “A Language/Action Perspective on the Design of Cooperative Work,”Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 3, pp. 3–30, 1988.
T.N. Carraher, D.W. Carraher, A.D. Schliemann, “Mathematics in the streets and in the schools,”British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 3, pp. 21–29, 1985.
J. Larkin, et al, “Expert and novice performance in solving physics problems,”Science, vol. 208, pp. 1335–1342, 1980.
H.W.J. Rittel, “Second-generation design methods,” in Developments in Design Methodology, John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1984, pages 317–327.
A.B. Van Gundy,Stalking the Wild Solution: A Problem-Finding Approach to Creative Problem Solving, Bearly Limited: Buffalo, NY, 1986.
M. Wertheimer,Productive Thinking, Harper & Row: New York, 1959.
R.G. Smith, “On the development of commercial expert systems,”AI Magazine, vol. 5, pp. 61–73.
M. Stelzner, M.D. Williams, “The evolution of interface requirements for expert systems,” in Expert Systems: The User Interface, Ablex Publishing Corporation: Norwood, NJ, pp. 285–306, Chapter 12, 1988.
F.P. BrooksJr., “No silver bullet, essence and accidents of software engineering,”IEEE Computer, vol. 20, pp. 10–19, 1987.
D.A. Norman,The Psychology of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York, 1988.
A.C. Lemke, G. Fischer, “A cooperative problem solving system for user interface design,” in Proceedings of AAAI-90, Eighth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press/The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp. 479–484.
G. Fischer, A.C. Lemke, R. McCall, “Towards a system architecture supporting contextualized learning,” in Proceedings of AAAI-90, Ninth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press/The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp. 420–425.
M.E. Atwood, B. Burns, W.D. Gray, A.I. Morch, E.R. Radlinski, A. Turner, “The grace integrated learning environment—A progress report,” in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems (IEA/AIE 91), 1991, pp. 741–745.
A.C. Lemke, S. Gance, “End-user modifiability in a water management application,” Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, 1990.
G. Fischer, J. Grudin, A.C. Lemke, R. McCall, J. Ostwald, B. Reeves, F. Shipman, “Supporting indirect, collaborative design with integrated knowledge-based design environments,”Human Computer Interaction, Special Issue on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 7, no. 3, 1992 (forthcoming).
J.H. Walker, “Document examiner: Delivery interface for hypertext documents,” in Hypertext'87 Papers, University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill, NC, pp. 307–323, 1987.
G. Fischer, K. Nakakoji, “Making design objects relevant to the task at hand,” in Proceedings of AAAI-91, Ninth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press/The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1991, pp. 67–73.
S. Henninger, “Defining the roles of humans and computers in cooperative problem-solving systems for information retrieval,” in Working Notes of the AAAI Spring Symposium Workshop on Knowledge-Based Human Computer Communication, AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, 1990, pp. 46–51.
F.G. Halasz, “Reflections on notecards: Seven issues for the next generation of hypermedia systems,”Communications of the ACM, vol. 31, pp. 836–852, 1988.
G. Fischer, K. Nakakoji, “Empowering designers with integrated design environments,”Artificial Intelligence in Design '91, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd: Oxford, England, 1991, pages 191–209.
S. Slade, “Case-based reasoning: A research paradigm,”Al Magazine, vol. 12, pp. 42–55, 1991.
J.L. Kolodner, “What is case-based reasoning?” in AAAI'90 tutorial on case-based reasoning, 1990, pp. 1–22.
G. Fischer, A. Girgensohn, “End-user modifiability in design environments,” in Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'90 Conference Proceedings (Seattle, WA), ACM, New York, pp. 183–191, 1990.
S. Papert, “Welcome to the BYTE summit: Future directions,”BYTE, vol. 15, pp. 226–230, 1990.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fischer, G., Reeves, B. Beyond intelligent interfaces: Exploring, analyzing, and creating success models of cooperative problem solving. Appl Intell 1, 311–332 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00122020
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00122020