Reassessing Collaborative Writing Theories and Frameworks in the Age of LLMs: What Still Applies and What We Must Leave Behind

Abstract

In this paper, we conduct a critical review of existing theories and frameworks on human-human collaborative writing to assess their relevance to the current human-AI paradigm in organizational workplace settings, and draw seven insights along with design implications for human-AI collaborative writing tools. Our main finding was that, as we delegate more writing to AI, our cognitive process shifts from the traditional planning/translating/reviewing process to a planning/waiting/reviewing process, breaking the process due to the waiting that occurs in between. To ensure that our cognitive process remains intact, we suggest a "prototyping" approach, where the tool allows for faster iterations of the cognitive process by starting with smaller chunks of text, and gradually moving on to a fully fleshed-out document. We aim to bring theoretical grounding and practical design guidance to the interaction designs of human-AI collaborative writing, with the goal of enhancing future human-AI writing software.