Designing Systems for Mobile Collaboration

Due to the widespread use of mobile communication devices, the mobility in everyday life including mobile working habits, a variety of collaborative software applications accompany us every day. In this paper, we aim to capture and describe the essence of the design solutions implemented in these applications in the terms of design patterns. To achieve this goal, we examined relevant services and applications in literature that enable people to collaborate on the go. Furthermore, the geographic characteristics of place, space, and mobility are discussed with regard to location-based collaboration including references to the theory of relativity. As result 11 design patterns for mobile collaboration have been elaborated. The design patterns describe, in addition to basic technologies, generic map services and privacy preserving solutions. In particular the patterns Geo Fencing, Locale Me, Geo Tracing, and Substitute Position are presented in detail. These patterns are intended to guide computer science teachers and software developers on how to design mobile collaboration systems that mediate collaboration in physical space through interactions in virtual space.