Regulation in groupware: the example of a collaborative drawing tool for young children

Groupware is defined by the union of production, communication and coordination spaces. These are supports for joint activities but they rarely allow the users to organise their activities or to define the conditions under which they are exercised. It is a question of being able to regulate joint activities. The regulation concerns the social aspects of collaborative work. We propose to take this social aspect into account in groupware by adding a new space to the three existing ones: the regulation space. A participation model is associated with this space. It describes the “arenas” (location) where the activity takes place, the “interactive scenarios” guiding the interactions and the actions of the participants, and the participants themselves. They are represented in the arenas by means of “actors”, which are computer entities characterised by their roles, places and positions. We propose a reification of the participation model within a collaborative drawing software package that we have developed for educational purposes