Dadi Ingólfsson, Katrine Vinther Andersen, Maiken Søltoft, and Thea Bohm: The third voice: A study of the work of fiction writers with a view to a future CSCW system. - Master Thesis in Danish [Den 3. stemme - en undersøgelse af skønlitterære forfatteres arbejde med henblik på et fremtidigt samarbejdssystem], IT University of Copenhagen, 2003. - Download thesis.
The work described in this master thesis is based on an idea about supporting authors writing fiction, by creating a cooperative workspace on the internet. The product of this master thesis is, thus, a number of mock-ups that represent our first efforts in designing this collaborative web-based system.
The idea of supporting cooperative creative writing has an innovative dimension, as fictional authors seldom write together. The shared workspace, therefore, provides the settings for a new practice of work.
The key issue has been to investigate and analyze the nature of how authors work and subsequently to challenge these findings with a design sketch for a Computer Supported Cooperative Writing system. In that respect this master thesis contributes to the field of CSCWriting, in that it investigates the nature of work of fictional authors and because it offers a first sample design.
In conducting our investigation we have drawn upon ethnographic preconceptions and because including the potential users has been important to us, we have used techniques and ethics inspired by the research field of Participatory Design in our design-work. Furthermore, our theoretical foundation is build upon CSCW. As a research field CSCW has offered a valid and indispensable conceptual framework for our work.