User interface design principles for team support systems

Companies are increasingly streamlining their business units with the apparent shifting towards team-based organizations, where a team is a basic structural unit having self-managing nature. Team members are responsible for managing both the administrative and project tasks. Consequently, there is a need to develop various team support systems that make use of computer technology to enhance the performance of teams in organizations. Because various types of interactions are required both among the members of the team and with the team support system (TSS), the user interface is one of the most critical factors influencing acceptance and successful use of TSSs. The authors identify major issues that need to be addressed in the design of TSS user interfaces and propose design principles that help in satisfying the requirements in practice. They are derived from the consideration of user interface design issues for interactive single user systems plus characteristics and development criteria for TSSs. The authors are emphasizing, in particular, the notions of user-tailorability and extendibility in the context of developing team support systems