Transparency and awareness in a real-time groupware system

This article explores real-time groupware systems from the perspective of both the users and the designer. This exploration is carried out through the description of GroupDesign, a real-time multi-user drawing tool that we have developed. From the perspective of the users, we present a number of functionalities that we feel necessary in any real-time groupware system: Graphic & Audio Echo, Localization, Identification, Age, and History. From the perspective of the designer, we demonstrate the possibility of creating a multi-user application from a single-user one, and we introduce the notion of purely replicated architecture.