Applying recommender systems in collaboration environments

Team-based organizational structures are now widely adopted for activities such as product development, customer support and process-improvement initiatives due to their increased likelihood of making better decisions and solving problems. However, team collaboration often faces pitfalls like information overload or misunderstandings due to goal misalignment. In this paper, we put forward the idea that computer-supported collaboration environments can have a positive impact on team collaboration by increasing team members’ awareness, focusing attention on task execution, and fostering the frequency of interaction among team members. We study the impact of recommender systems on team processes in computer-supported collaboration environments, describing the results of two experiments that show how recommendations impact interactions in teams. Teams using recommendations spent less effort on information handling and engaged more in communication than teams without recommendations.