Electronic Meeting Systems in Computer Human Interface Design: A Case Study

The increasing economic and practical necessity of groups or teams of individuals working together to accomplish shared objectives can be observed in many diverse organizations (Alvai and Keen, 1989; Kraemer and King, 1988). This trend is reflected in many ways in complex system development environments. For example, the growing emphasis on concurrent engineering practices, and the application of tools that better organize and coordinate engineering efforts across diverse groups (e.g., CASE tools), both require and reflect the need for coordinated group activities. In turn, the growth of group work environments has led to growing interest and need for tools that can support and enhance the effectiveness of group work activities. Such a tool is an electronic meeting system (EMS). This case study reports the effectiveness of an EMS applied as part of a computer-human interface (CHI) design evaluation methodology, in the design of an air traffic control system.