MUDdling through [collaborative systems]

The wOrlds project is concerned with developing next generation collaboration frameworks. We strongly believe that real progress in enhancing the usability of collaborative systems hinges on improving our understanding of work, and applying the resulting insights to development of collaborative work support frameworks. We are investigating the thesis that appropriate bases for such an approach can be drawn from existing results in sociology, specifically the work of sociologist Anselm Strauss, and his notion of social worlds (A. Strauss, 1993). We motivate and overview wOrlds, the collaborative environment we have built in order to explore our ideas and insights. We then critique wOrlds (and by implication, the class of systems known as MUDs of which it is a member), and point to future directions for investigation