METIS researchers have launched an evaluation project on different CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work) platforms available, to find out their usability characteristics and analyse the functionality and schemas of the future CSCW system under METIS's design.

Currently we have focused on such platforms as Groove, Community Zero, and of course, Bureau Normad. Experimental work has been done via these platforms to simulate a virtual workgroup across Europe and China. Results of the experiments show that existing solutions of CSCW are mostly dealing with fundamental functionalities of collaborative working environment, such as the sharing of resources, instant messaging and sketchboard. None of the solutions is perfect for collaborative multimedia content production. And this would become what METIS would put efforts on in the future.