Collaboration, Social Interaction and Social Protocols

Humans are fundamentally social beings wired to connect with each other. We have a natural disposition to establish empathy relations, to create groups and to cooperate with others. In addition our education, as well as our society and cultural influences further develop our capabilities of interacting and cooperating with others. Interactions and collaborations usually follow a set of predefined behavioural patterns or models, at least in a given homogeneous cultural environment. Those patterns and models are shaped probably not only by our natural abilities, but also by rational skills intended to improve productivity, especially when they are used at work. Those patterns which have been optimized and tuned by many years of usage lead usually to efficient group-work and will be called social protocols in this talk. Social protocols can be considered as relevant for social and collaboration software design because the support effective means of interacting with persons or groups and can be therefore used in technology mediated interaction and collaboration.