Building voting tools to support group collaboration

Researchers in Group Support Systems (GSS) and facilitators of group meetings recognize that implementing convergence processes in group is a challenging task. Voting, when used properly, can be a great aid in the convergence process. To reap the full benefit of voting in GSS, the processing and communication capability in GSS must be used when building voting tools. In this paper, we describe the functional requirements of sophisticated voting tools for group collaboration by reviewing theories and existing voting tools. These considerations can serve as guidelines for design and development of next generation voting tools.