Mutual engagement
occurs when people creatively spark together and enter a state of group
flow
Flow may refer to:
Science and technology
* Fluid flow, the motion of a gas or liquid
* Flow (geomorphology), a type of mass wasting or slope movement in geomorphology
* Flow (mathematics), a group action of the real numbers on a set
* Flow (psyc ...
. It involves engagement with both the products of a joint activity and with the other participants who are contributing to those products. Mutual engagement is essential for technologically mediated creative collaborations such as group improvisation with new musical interfaces,
[Bryan-Kinns, N. (2004).]
Daisyphone
The Design and Impact of a Novel Environment for Remote Group Music Improvisation". In ''Proceedings of DIS 2004'', Boston, USA, pp. 135-144. distributed brainstorming, and so on.
Identifying mutual engagement
Mutual engagement is about the ''points'' at which participants engage with each other in a creative collaboration. These points may be indicated by ''co-location'' of contributions, ''mutual modification'' of the joint product, ''discussions'' of ''quality'' of the joint product, or ''repetition'' and ''reinterpretation'' of others' contributions.
These rely on participants' skills and expertise with the system.
Designing for mutual engagement
User interfaces designed for mutual engagement should support ''mutual awareness'' of actions, ''shared and consistent'' representations, ''mutual modifiability'', and ''annotation''.
Related work
Mutual engagement is critical to creative collaborations which rely on technology. The field of
computer supported cooperative work
Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...
is closely related, but focusses more on work, task, and office based activities. Wenger's characterization of mutual engagement in a
community of practice
A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...
focuses on participants ability to "engage with other members and respond in kind to their actions". From Wenger's perspective, mutual engagement is about the work involved in learning how to interact with other people in an emerging community of practice whereas the definition given here is about informing design of collaborative user interfaces.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mutual Engagement
Group processes