Coordination in Joint Activity

> Generalizing the concepts of joint activity developed by Clark (1996), we describe key aspects of team coordination. Joint activity depends on interpredictability of the participants' attitudes and actions. Such interpredictability is based on common ground-pertinent knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions that are shared among the involved parties. Joint activity assumes a basic compact, which is an agreement (often tacit) to facilitate coordination and prevent its breakdown. One aspect of the Basic Compact is the commitment to some degree of aligning multiple goals. A second aspect is that all parties are expected to bear their portion of the responsibility to establish and sustain common ground and to repair it as needed. We apply our understanding of these features of joint activity to account for issues in the design of automation. Research in software and robotic agents seeks to understand and satisfy requirements for the basic aspects of joint activity. Given the widespread demand for increasing the effectiveness of team play for complex systems that work closely and collaboratively with people, observed shortfalls in these current research efforts are ripe for further exploration and study.