Users and uses of synchronous business communications software

To help designers and authors understand users' intentions and work practices for synchronous business communications in a systematic way, we used ethnographic and task-analytic techniques to collect, analyze and classify evidence of the activities of potential users as they conducted their work lives. The interactions we observed among our users took place through a variety of modalities. We found eight categories of tasks for the collaborative or interactive work in which our subjects engaged. Based on these data, we were able to classify roles of potential users of synchronous business communications software into a set of "archetypes" that characterize their use: Thinkers, Producers, Authors, Networkers and Diplomats. Issues raised by our work include questions about the nature of user archetypes, user tasks, and their modalities.