In general, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has been directed to factors related to the users' competence in communicating with computers. On making the user-computer interaction its main focus, HCI has in large scale ignored extremely important factors at group level. The design of tools for Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) must also address such factors previously ignored by HCI, such as the factors that influence one's competence in communicating with others, and the influence that technology mediation might have on both processes, and on its result.
During this first year we spent most of our time researching the literature on CSCW. We came across several areas of research within CSCW, I here enumerate and give a brief description of some of them.