literature problem!

the more I look around, the more I understand that this project is quite unique. not that no one has ever done participatory design, or that there haven't been any distant collaboration design projects, or projects scarce with resources. there have been many of them.

the problem is that the combination that I have, is virtually impossible to find anywhere else. even remotely close to it. I was hoping to be able to finish my background report today, trying to write something about distant groups and their collaboration problems and such, but I just can't find any literature that accurately fits into my problem. much of the distance-relevant stuff builds on the problem of trust and personal gain (such as the prisoner's dilemma or similar), but that is simply not an issue here, as everyone wants the best of the project and contribute what they can.

there have been distributed participatory design projects, but they've had access to video cameras and the participants have had some sort of gain of participating, either monetary reward or simply it being part of their work. in my project, my group members are doing this in their spare time. I'll see what I can dig up, but I want to be able to write at least 3-4 pages about this, because it is quite a big and unique issue in my project... of course, I'll have to expand and elaborate on what I've done myself in the actual method part, but it doesn't hurt to have some background on what others have done... we'll see.