CSCW Evaluation in Five Types
One of the potentially confusing aspects of evaluation within computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is that there are many activities one might wish to carry out at different times that evaluate socio-technical systems. I identify five ideal types: the effects of a new computer system in an organisation; the formative development of a piece of software; the evaluation of conceptual developments; the evaluation of a cooperative system where factors other than the computers are more interesting; and the determination of which piece of software to buy.