Annotations for Supporting Collaboration through Artifacts

TL;DR

This paper explores how annotations on shared artifacts facilitate collaboration by bridging communication gaps, discusses their functions, research issues, and future prospects in distributed systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of annotation functions in collaborative environments and discusses future research directions in asynchronous distributed systems.

Findings

Annotations enhance communication in collaborative artifact use

Various functions of annotations support different collaboration needs

Future research should focus on asynchronous distributed systems

Abstract

Shared artifacts and environments play a prominent role in shaping the collaboration between their users. This article describes this role and explains how annotations can provide a bridge between direct communication and collaboration through artifacts. The various functions of annotations are discussed through examples that represent some of the important trends in annotation research. Ultimately, some of the research issues are briefly discussed, followed by my perspective on the future of asynchronous distributed collaborative systems with respect to annotations.