Postdoc position at INRIA Nancy-Grand Est, France

The proposed job is offered by Inria Nancy-Grand Est research center for a position of postdoc in the SCORE research team (http://score.loria.fr).

Evaluation of distributed collaborative systems

Starting date of the job: as soon as possible

Employment period: 9 months (possibly extendable to 18 months)

Gross salary: around 2600 Euro

Subject

Distributed collaborative systems enable distributed group work using computer technologies. Designing such systems requires an expertise in the domain of Distributed Systems and in the Computer-supported collaborative work research area. In addition to theoretical and technical aspects of distributed systems, design of distributed collaborative systems must take into account the human factor in order to offer solutions suitable for users and groups.

SCORE team (formerly ECOO) developed many distributed collaborative systems supporting cooperation and coordination of user groups: wiki-based systems, collaborative editors, process management systems and collaborative forges. An evaluation of these systems was done from a theoretical point of view (e.g. proving correctness and analyzing the complexity of synchronization algorithms) and from a practical point of view (e.g. simulation and evaluation of system performances). However, the proposed systems were not evaluated from a user point of view (for instance realizing user studies). The potential candidate for this postdoc should reinforce the expertise of SCORE team in preparing and realizing user studies and analyzing and interpreting results of these real experiments.

More precisely, we are currently working on the following topics:

  • Real-time wiki systems in the context of the project Wiki 3.0 (https://wiki30.xwikisas.com) where users are allowed to edit in real-time wikis either using wiki syntax or WYSIWYG editor
  • Peer-to-peer real time social applications in the context of ANR STREAMS (http://streams.loria.fr/) project.
  • DooSo6 an easy to use synchronizer for shared projects that does not require installation and creation of accounts and users do not need to learn and deal with complex commands for efficiently using the tool and they can continue using their favorite editor [1].
  • Trust assessment mechanisms in peer-to-peer collaborative editing where users share their private data by specifying some obligations the receivers must follow and trust values are adjusted according to user previous activities on the shared data [2].
  • Coordination systems for distributed teams in crisis situations [3].

The successful candidate for the postdoctoral position will be involved in the evaluation of one or more of these systems by conducting user studies in order to assess the benefits of these systems in real use cases. We want to particularly check to what limit users accept delays in real-time collaboration, how users deal with conflicts and how awareness can help them understand conflicting situations, the ease of use and user acceptance of certain systems and how these systems help coping with groups of growing size in different kinds of scenarios.

Required qualifications

  • PhD in Computer Science or Information Technology
  • Expertise in user studies
  • Preferably French language for conducting user studies
  • Good communication skills for working in a team
  • Preferably but not mandatory knowledge in one or more of the domains: collaborative systems, distributed systems, peer-to-peer systems

Candidates should send their CVs at ignatcla@loria.fr (Claudia-Lavinia Ignat, INRIA Researcher) and francois.charoy@loria.fr (Francois Charoy, Associate Professor, University of Lorraine) as soon as possible.

References

[1] Claudia-Lavinia Ignat, Gérald Oster and Pascal Molli.DooSo6: Easy collaboration over shared projects. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization and Engineering - CDVE 2009, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, September 2009

[2] Hien Thi Thu Truong, Claudia-Lavinia Ignat, Mohamed-Rafik Bouguelia, Pascal Molli, A Contract-extended Push-Pull-Clone Model, Proc. of the 7th International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing (CollaborateCom 2011), Orlando, Florida, USA 2011

[3] Jörn Franke, François Charoy. Design of a Collaborative Disaster Response Process Management System. 9th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems - COOP 2010, Aix-En-Provence, France, Mai 2010.