Privacy in Collaborative tool “Google Wave”

Introduction

What is Collaboration?

Collaboration is a working practice whereby individuals work together to a common purpose to achieve business benefit. Key features of collaboration tools are:

• Synchronous collaboration such as online meetings and instant messaging
• Asynchronous collaboration such as shared workspace and annotations

Many organizations are also looking at Free-form Collaboration tools to improve collaboration and reduce the number of emails used for collaboration [6].      

The Collaborative softwares are designed to facilitate collaboration and support the exchange of information and communication of ideas between people who are working towards a common goal. This kind of collaborative environment on the Internet encourages the Working Group supports the flow of information, exchange of information, calendars, and document management. At the end of the day program enhances productivity group and help organizations achieve their objectives more effectively. In this paper we investigate the privacy setting of Google Wave, because Internet technologies for collaboration are very popular mean of communicating with other people, gathering information, sharing information etc. The most important point about the success of any collaborative tool or software is the active participation of the collaborators while sharing any documents, file, video etc. By doing this a lot of personal data is disclosed either directly or indirectly to other users, so there are privacy risks involved without knowing the privacy of any collaborative tool. No doubt collaborative tools have positive features like it enables user to collaborate with other user at a time, it improves the efficiency of the collaborative work, and however the user should not give up all the control of his or her personal data to other users. “Therefore, in the first place user need to be aware whom they are disclosing which data” [2].“It need to be consider that there is essential difference between actual privacy and that is realized and secured by technical mean by one hand and perceived privacy as an individual feeling on the other hand” [2].

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a platform which gives the opportunity for the users to communicate with each other through different application. These applications are whether gadgets or robots. 

Google Wave main purpose is to make the communication easier and more interesting for users, so people will prefer to use Google Wave instead of chatting, messaging or writing emails.        

What is privacy?

Safety is the most concerning problem specially when users are in communicating field they would not like to share their privet information with everyone, but Google Wave has prepared this safety for the users, and users can also change their privacy setting if they would like to share with some specific users. 

The information and the messages which exist inside the Google Wave by users will be available to access by Google Wave even if it is private, but just due to the google rules, in necessary situation.

Advantages of Google Wave

·         Ease of use

The interface of the Google Wave is designed in a way so that new users can join easily, start to communicate and become familiar with the interface and use more complex functionalities.

·         Speed

Speed is an important issue in Google Wave, specially that the applications works synchronize and people should view the messages and response at the same time, and even though there are application, robots and gadgets are running in Google Wave, but they have provide a good speed.  

·         Real-time Gratification

One of the Google Wave main point is to let users to communicate with each other, but for making the communication interesting, the messages should be send and receive quickly and visible for the user, Google Wave let users to be aware of each other messages synchronized, so users will not get bored of waiting for the response. 

·         Functionality

The functionality of Google Wave is mostly based on communication tools e.g. writing email, chatting, send and receives instant messages or inserting new gadget.

·         Extendability

Repetition of using any application for a long time will make the users to get tired of it, users always like to see and explore new features, Google Wave let the users to create and add their own gadgets and robots with new ideas for communication. 

·         Integration with third-party services and platform

Google Wave let the users to insert their wave inside other websites so other users of the wave or even maybe visitors of that website would like to interact with it.

·         Playback

Playback allowed the users to walk through the history of the Google Wave and see how and when the following wave has been created and what are the hierarchical of the messages and by which users [9].

Background

Description of the research area

In the area of Collaboration between different collaborators using collaborative tools there is a lot of research done. There are so many collaborative tools which provide a powerful collaboration like Google Docs, wiki and office live workspace, office live etc. In collaborative tools privacy is one of the major part on which they put more emphasis on that.

In the study of “Privacy-awareness information for web forums”, they have shown that in general a lot of people indicate a privacy-aware attitude on their data and collaboration. According to them one possible explanation is that while you give privacy to users, users “blind out” their privacy settings after some time while they are enjoying their CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) and also sometimes users overestimate their level of privacy settings.

In the other research done by Sproull and Kiesler have found deregulation and egalitarian effects of CMC as compared to face to face interaction e.g. In a company disclosure of large data in front of audience.

Background of research area

In the beginning when a wave is being created there are at least one user and one message where according to the attributes the messages and answers can be public or private for just some specific users , they can just response to the message or even make change to others messages.

Extended Background

Structure of Google Wave

“Today we have organizational and software procedures that control the exchange of inter personal information in social networking sites, text messaging, instant messenger programs, bulletin boards, online role-playing games, computer-supported collaborative work, and online education” [7]. To fulfill all these user requirements, Google introduced Google Wave in 2009. In Google Wave user can create blank wave, discussion section, task tracking, meeting, document and brainstorm. In all these characteristics of Google Wave user can share photos, initiate any discussion, can do instant messaging.

Create a Wave

To initiate any discussion a user can create a new wave by clicking the new wave button and a new window (Wave) is created [Appendix 1]. In this wave a user can invite as much collaborators as he wants [Appendix 2]. By clicking on the plus sign user can share this wave with other collaborators which are already in the contact list.

Collaboration in wave

When a new wave is created and shared among collaborators, anyone can start chat instantly. There are different features embedded in the wave for the ease of collaborators to interact with each other, e.g. when a session is created by one collaborator, other can edit that section or can reply separately.

Research Question

Our main research question is “How collaborative softwares provide privacy to collaborators”?

Research Goal

Our main research goal is to see if people are aware and make them aware when they are using such tools as Google Wave and they are not aware of the privacy settings.

Methodology

The methodology that we have used in this article is both qualitative and quantitative since at first we read some articles regarding Google Wave and then we did user test. The article that we have chosen was from ACM library and we had the permission to use these articles via Stockholm university. The articles where almost new and updated and the date were mentioned in each article.

Google Wave is designed to facilitate the users and support the exchange of information and communication of ideas between people who are working towards a 

common goal. This kind of collaborative environment on the Internet encourages the 

collaborators, supports the flow of information, exchange of information, calendars, and document management. At the end of the day these tools enhances productivity and help 

organizations to achieve their objectives more effectively.

User Test

In our research, we have studied some articles about Google Wave use and also got information from Google source. So in the light of that information we conducted  user tests on different users which consist of different tasks about the use and the privacy settings of the Google Wave and then we asked some questions about that specific task and the interaction with Google Wave.

Tasks and Questions

In the user test the users performed the following tasks.

·         Create a new wave.

·         Invite one collaborator to this wave.

·         The invited collaborator invited more collaborators to this wave.

·         All the collaborators started collaboration within one wave now, but two collaborators started private chat and the third one was not aware of that private chat.

The questions about these tasks are:

·         This question is regarding to task 3, when a second collaborator invites the third collaborator so we asked from the second collaborator that “were you aware of sharing information to the third collaborator without permission of the first one. Do you like this feature in Google Wave or not?

·         The most important question from the first collaborator is that “Are you notified that the second collaborator is inviting other collaborators or not?

·         This question is regarding task 4, “Is any user aware of private chat between two other  collaborators within the same wave, and do u like this private chat within the same wave or not.