EUSSET: Congratulations on receiving the EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award! This recognition underscores your profound contributions to the innovation and evolution of the computing field, particularly in the realm of computer-supported cooperative work and design. Given your extensive work in addressing the challenges of our rapidly changing technical and social landscape, we would be delighted to hear your thoughts on your career, your perspective on design, and your predictions for the future of CSCW.
Could you share your journey in researching the intersection of technology and collaboration, and what initially inspired you to explore this area?
Gerhard: Let me start with an opening remark: when I address your questions in this interview, our research included publications on transcending the unaided, individual human mind. I tried to live my professional life following this basic idea, and I profited throughout my whole career by being involved and developing socio-technical environments in collaboration with others. The unique contributions of my PhD students, the interdisciplinary collaboration with professional colleagues from a spectrum of different fields, and the attempt to integrate European and American research traditions were major success factors that motivated and allowed us to engage in doing “basic research on real problems”.
A very brief summary: the following organizational units have been critical in my career: (1) the INFORM project at the University of Stuttgart and (2) the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
From the very beginning of my career (around 1970), my core interests were not focused on the technical aspects created by computers, but on finding answers to what I considered the fundamental issue at the center of my research interests:
“how can we create socio-technical environments that will have a positive impact on the quality of life and quality of education for all human beings?”
Addressing this challenge, I was inspired by my mentors John Seely Brown, Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, and Herbert Simon, and I was fortunate to work with them at their institutions for extended periods in my early career.
EUSSET: Throughout your remarkable career, you have consistently emphasized the importance of design and ergonomics in collaborative systems, particularly to ensure that each individual user receives systems tailored to their needs. How has your perspective on design evolved over the years, and what key insights have you gained along the way?
Gerhard: My perspective on design has evolved over several decades, including the following stages:
– making all people independent of high-tech scribes by promoting digital literacy — e.g.: starting in the mid 1970s, we taught experimental courses to high-school students and in-service teachers using LOGO as a programming language;
– complementing generic computational environments with domain-oriented design environments
– exploring early Artificial Intelligence approaches in supporting designers with critiquing systems
– transcending designer-centered systems with meta-design frameworks that empower all stakeholders to tackle open-ended, wicked, and socially significant problems grounded in the basic assumption that the most creative outcomes arise when people can shape their own tools.
EUSSET: Your work has often centred around the concept of social creativity. We would love to hear how you define this idea and how it has influenced both your research and your approach to design.
Gerhard: Our fundamental assumption, based on informal empirical studies, was that social creativity exploits the synergy of individual and collaborative creativity to address problems that are too complex for any single person to solve.
A key intellectual concept that created our focus on collaboration is the “symmetry of ignorance,” which acknowledges that complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person can possess, and that the knowledge relevant to a problem is often distributed and controversial. Rather than being a limiting factor, this shared state of ignorance provides the very “foundation for social creativity”.
To effectively harness the power of social creativity, scholars must actively cultivate an environment of “cultural and epistemological pluralism” and consciously work to prevent the dangers of “groupthink and filter bubbles”. Complex problems are seldom confined to the boundaries of a single domain and therefore require the contributions of stakeholders with various backgrounds, each speaking with their own voice
EUSSET: As a passionate advocate for the role of technology in supporting learning, how do you envision the relationship between technology and learning evolving in the future?
Gerhard: The digital age greatly enhances the opportunities and supports the necessity for “making learning a part of life”. But while the growth of technology is certain, the inevitability of any particular future is not.
Our research efforts and frameworks transcend “gift-wrapping” approaches that add technologies to “the schools of today” by exploring the co-evolution between learning and teaching, new learning organizations, and technologies.
The transformation of schools needs to be informed by an understanding of the impact of mindset formation that will determine people’s approach to learning for the rest of their lives. Learning in the future needs to become lifelong, interest-driven, and embedded in daily life.
“The challenge for the future is not to use technology to automate learning, but to use it to augment human intelligence, foster critical thinking, and support learners as active contributors to knowledge creation throughout their lives.”
EUSSET: Collaboration is a cornerstone of your research. Can you tell us about a particular collaboration that has been especially meaningful to you, and what made it stand out?
Gerhard: At the organizational level, our collaborations (1) with the Institute of Cognitive Science at CU allowed us to explore interdisciplinary research approaches with targeted communities (e.g., supporting people with cognitive disabilities) and (2) with industrial research labs and with citizen organizations engaged us in “doing basic research on real problems”.
At the technological level, we extended our research on domain-oriented design environments (supporting individual researchers from specific domains) to the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC). The EDC was a socio-technical environment designed to help communities collaboratively frame and address complex, “wicked” problems—initially focusing on urban planning and later extending it to other domains like sustainability and education.
The EDC wasn’t just a “tool” — it was an inspirational prototype of a socio-technical environment illustrating our core ideas of:
– Meta-design: The system was intentionally “underdesigned” so communities could adapt it to their evolving needs.
– Social creativity: Diverse stakeholders (residents, planners, educators, policymakers) are brought together to build shared understanding and evolve and enrich the existing solutions with new ideas.
– Symmetry of ignorance: No single participant (including the designers) had the full solution; everyone’s knowledge mattered.
EUSSET: Following up on this, are there any particular moments that you hold especially dear?
Gerhard: The fact that the world is evolving requires that the systems that model parts of a changing world need to evolve too, creating the following requirements for our research activities:
– We must design for designers—systems should be “underdesigned” so users can adapt them.
– Adopt the “Seeding–Evolutionary Growth–Reseeding (SER)” model as a generic framework to support Meta-Design.
– Lifelong learning in today’s world is not an option, but a necessity because change is inevitable, complete coverage is impossible, and obsolescence is unavoidable. Given the explosion of knowledge, people simply cannot learn in school all or even most of what they will need to know in later life.
We identified, conceptualized and developed “learning on demand” as a promising approach for addressing these problems based on: (1) it contextualizes learning by allowing it to be integrated into work rather than relegating it to a separate phase, (2) it lets learners see for themselves the usefulness of new knowledge for actual problem situations, thereby increasing the motivation for learning new things, and (3) it makes new information relevant to the task at hand, thereby leading to more informed decision making, better products, and improved performance.
EUSSET: In your view, what are some of the most significant challenges currently facing the field of CSCW, and how can researchers work together to address these challenges?
Gerhard: In the digital AI world of the future, integrating AI successfully into collaborative work represents a fundamental challenge and opportunity. A long-standing focus of our research has been to explore the fundamental distinction between two competing frameworks: “AI versus Humans” and “AI and Humans”. The former is a substitutionary approach, focused on creating fully automatic solutions with the goal of replacing human capabilities. The latter, in contrast, is a complementary approach that aims to “empower and augment human capabilities”. This is a crucial distinction, as it frames the ethical and design imperatives of AI not as a race to automate, but as a collaboration to enhance human potential.
Some other significant challenges currently facing the field of CSCW:
– Risk of over-reliance on AI for decision-making, diminishing human creativity and critical thinking — this can and should be addressed by combining AI and End-User Development (EUD)
– Over-automation eroding human agency — this can and should be addressed by developing meta-design and intelligence augmentation principles to support lifelong learning and collaborative problem framing
– Communities of Practice (CoPs) representing homogenous teams that are poorly equipped to cope with wicked problems — this can and should be addressed by conceptualizing and supporting Communities of Interests (CoIs) that bring different CoPs together to increase the creativity potential in addressing complex problems
– Open-source projects and online communities often face participation fatigue, and contributor burnout — this can and should be addressed by inventing reward structures to acknowledge the contributions of participants, thereby sustaining engagement in long-term, open-ended projects
EUSSET: Your contributions have left a lasting impact on both academia and practice. What do you hope will be your legacy in the field of CSCW, and how do you envision it influencing future generations?
Gerhard: Future CSCW systems should be grounded in a Lifelong Learning perspective, conceptualizing collaboration as an opportunity and as a demand for continuous learning, blurring the line between working together and learning together.
As repeatedly argued throughout this interview, I strongly believe that technology and collaboration must co-evolve in ways that empower people to become active contributors rather than passive users. The focus of education and its technological support should not only center on the isolated, individual mind of “Renaissance Scholars” but support “Renaissance Communities” with collaborative, socio-technical environments.
Researchers should not just design systems but create frameworks for designing systems (such as the SER model mentioned earlier) and usage scenarios how LLMs and other AI tools are embedded as empowering rather than replacement tools in collaborative contexts.
EUSSET: what advice would you offer to the next generation of scholars in the field?
As a mentor to many students and researchers, what advice would you offer to the next generation of scholars in the field? What skills or mindsets do you believe are essential for their success?
Gerhard: The development of mindsets is a dynamic process that emerges from both internal experiences and external encouragement and support. While internal factors like curiosity, challenges, and lived experiences drive engagement and growth in personally meaningful activities, external sources such as role models, teachers, and intuitive technologies play a pivotal role in initiating, guiding, and reinforcing specific mindsets. Ultimately, the most effective development comes from a synergy between self-driven exploration and supportive technological environments that provide the tools, inspiration, and encouragement needed to unlock an individual’s potential as an active contributor and problem-solver.
Educational settings where teachers act as meta-designers fundamentally challenge the traditional “sage on the stage” model by shifting from a “teacher-centered instructionist” to a “learner-centered constructionist” approach. While the traditional model emphasizes content delivery and standardization, the meta-design model (characterized in my previous answers) prioritizes creativity, collaboration, and adaptability, better preparing learners for real-world challenges and lifelong learning.
Future developments improving the quality of life and the quality of education should not only be defined and investigated as technological developments but should be conceptualized and explored by emphasizing the interplay of mindsets, cultures, and technologies that foster environments conducive to sustained user empowerment and engagement.
EUSSET: Finally, as you reflect on your journey and the future of CSCW, what excites you most about the direction the field is heading? What new avenues are you looking forward to exploring in your ongoing research?
Gerhard: By embracing the principles of meta-design, social creativity, and intelligence augmentation, the next generation of CSCW researchers and developers can become designers of the future—not by predicting it, but by actively creating it in collaboration with more engaged citizens and societies.
Grounded in our research activities of the past, I continue to believe that the ultimate goal of CSCW (and closely related research areas such as human-computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative learning, intelligence augmentation, end-user development, …) is to contribute to human creativity, enjoyment, and an improved “quality of life and education” by transcending a focus on mere productivity, efficiency, or economic gain as an insufficient and limiting perspective.
Design research exploring the future digital age should be firmly grounded in the basic assumption that the future is not a predetermined destination to be discovered, but a reality to be designed through intentional choices and a deep reflection on what is needed to create a more inclusive and creative society.
New avenues in our ongoing research will be grounded in the frameworks and developments that we have pursued in the past and will include:
– sustaining cultures of participation with meta-design and end-user development to ensure that socio-technical systems evolve with rather than for their users and communities
– avoiding the danger that in an AI-augmented world with the rise of LLMs, a shift will occur from active contributors to passive consumers (“couch potatoes”) of machine-generated outputs
– bridging the gap between learning and working to shape future CSCW systems by explicitly integrating learning resources into work practices
– exploiting LLMs for creating and supporting cross-boundary Communities of Interest (CoIs) across disciplines, languages, and cultures, with the design of boundary objects for establishing shared understanding and common ground
– cultivating a new generation of scholars with a focus on specific sets of skills, including creativity and critical thinking, that go beyond traditional academic education.
Remark: Many of the ideas, concepts, frameworks, cultural transformations, and developments of socio-technical environments mentioned briefly in this interview are explored in detail in our publications that can be found at:
https://l3d.colorado.edu/people/gerhard-fischers-home-page/gerhard-fischers-papers/
The interview was conducted by Mateusz Dolata