A Generic Support for Distributed Deliberations
Résumé
Under the umbrella term deliberation, we classify a wide range of process fragments, more or less spontaneous, structured, and complex. They can include both individual and collective activities, both synchronous and asynchronous phases. But in every case, at the heart of a deliberation is the negotiation of some result by exchanging arguments. This paper describes a comprehensive and flexible generic support for distributed deliberations, providing collective problem solving support. First, the paper defines the most important requirements through a real life demonstrative example: the assessment of solutions in a concurrent engineering setting. Then, the paper emphasizes the main design choices and describes the current Java prototype.