A visual design for collaborative work: columns for commenting and annotation

Collaboration has traditionally occurred through verbal and visual communication. In recent years, technical innovation has provided a new context for collective efforts that are supported by the computer. Yet little attention has been paid to the traditional visual designs that have supported collaboration in the past. The paper describes a visually oriented design for accessing and organizing information in the context of computer supported collaborative work. The authors show how interface design with a strong emphasis on a simple yet elegant visual metaphor can facilitate collaboration by reducing clutter and focusing end-user tasks efficiently. A columnar visual interface provides a powerful interaction mechanism for supporting collaboration in general