“It Looks Like You Don’t Agree”: Idiosyncratic Practices and Preferences in Collaborative Writing

This paper addresses collaborative writing in academia. Recent research has indicated that while many tools for collaborative writing exist and continue to be developed, co-writers frequently employ workarounds and cumbersome substitutions to accommodate their writing approaches and collaborative needs. As part of a process to address these issues, we conducted a co-design study on collaborative academic writing with 18 participants. The paper details a three-stage co-design approach developed for this purpose. During this three-stage workshop series, the participants discussed needs, frustrations, and desires in their experiences with collaborative writing. These discussions revealed how participants’ different ways of practicing and experiencing collaborative writing entail contrasting needs that are difficult to balance. Based on an analysis of discussions and artifacts from the workshops, we argue that researchers and designers should aim to support diverse practices and propose a protocol for examining and drawing on the contradictions that arise from co-writers’ idiosyncratic preferences.