Access as a means of configuring cooperative interfaces

The emergence of CSCW has seen the development of a number of applications which simultaneously present a number of interfaces to a community of users. Limited consideration has been given to the provision of facilities that support the configuration and tailoring of these cooperative user interfaces. This paper presents a simple mechanism that enables dynamic support for tailoring user interfaces. Rather than focus on the interface as having been derived from a set of shared objects, we choose to view the problem as one of a shared interface constructed from a collection of interface objects and access to this shared interface. This paper presents an access model and an environment that facilitates the construction and runtime support of cooperative user interfaces.