Experts Till Schummer and Stephan Lukosch show you how to build applications to support computer-mediated interaction. To build these groupware systems, the authors use a pattern language. the role of the patterns are twofold; they focus on the human user of the system and they provide developers with the design knowledge and rationale to make expert decisions.

Depending on your role in the development process, this book will help you in different ways:

• As a software developer the patterns will show you the different functional components that need to be developed when dealing with common groupware-related problems.
• As a user the patterns will provide you with an idea of what the groupware applications look like and how the social processes change when groupware comes into play.
• As a student or researcher the pattern language documents best practices and provides links to literature in which these practices are discussed

To complement the patterns, the authors provide a running scenario based on a distributed software development team and two case studies about successful groupware applications, to show you the feasibility of the pattern approach for groupware development.