Beyond being aware

To support collaborative interactions, information systems need to support awareness: Collaborators must attain and maintain reciprocal awareness of shared activity in order to coordinate effectively. Supporting awareness has often been conceptualized a matter of ameliorating deficits inherent in remote interaction. In this paper, we consider awareness support in several community informatics contexts from the standpoint of better-leveraging affordances unique to remote community-oriented interactions. We suggest positive design strategies to design awareness support “beyond” what is typical in traditional face-to-face interchange.