Discriminating Conduct: Deploying Systems to Support Awareness in Organizations

Alongside the emergence of the use of fieldwork studies for design there has been a discussion on how best these studies can inform system development. Concerns have been expressed as to whether their most appropriate contribution is a list of requirements or design recommendations. This article explores a recurrent issue that has emerged from fieldwork studies in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, awareness, and with respect to a particular system development project discusses some of the implications for the development and deployment of one particular kind of technology—image recognition systems—in particular, organizational settings. In the setting in question—surveillance centers or operations rooms—staff utilize a range of practices to maintain awareness. Rather than extending field studies so that they can better assist design, it may be considered how workplace studies can contribute to a respecification of key concepts, like awareness, that are critical to an understanding of how technologies are used and deployed in everyday environments.     

Designing for ethical innovation: A case study on ELSI co-design in emergency

The ever more pervasive ‘informationalization’ of crisis management and response brings both unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Recent years have seen the emergence of attention to ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) in the field of Information and Communication Technology. However, disclosing (and addressing) ELSI issues in design is still a challenge because they are inherently relational, arising from interactions between people, the material and design of the artifact, and the context. In this article, we discuss approaches for addressing such ‘deeper’ and ‘wider’ political implications, values and ethical, legal and social implications that arise between practices, people and technology. Based on a case study from the BRIDGE project, which has provided the opportunity for deep engagement with these issues through the concrete exploration and experimentation with technologically augmented practices of emergency response, we present insights from our interdisciplinary work aiming to make design and innovation projects ELSI-aware. Crucially, we have seen in our study a need for a shift from privacy by design towards designing for privacy, collaboration, trust, accessibility, ownership, transparency etc., acknowledging that these are emergent practices that we cannot control by design, but rather that we can help to design for—calling for approaches that allow to make ELSI issues explicit and addressable in design-time.     

Development of a stakeholder identification and analysis method for human factors integration in work system design interventions – Change Agent Infrastructure

In any work system design intervention—for example, a physical workplace re-design, a work process change, or an equipment upgrade—it is often emphasized how important it is to involve stakeholders in the process of analysis and design, to gain their perspectives as input to the development, and ensure their future acceptance of the solution. While the users of an artifact or workplace are most often regarded as being the most important stakeholders in a design intervention, in a work-system context there may be additional influential stakeholders who influence and negotiate the design intervention's outcomes, resource allocation, requirements, and implementation. Literature shows that it is uncommon for empirical ergonomics and human factors (EHF) research to apply and report the use of any structured stakeholder identification method at all, leading to ad-hoc selections of whom to consider important. Conversely, other research fields offer a plethora of stakeholder identification and analysis methods, few of which seem to have been adopted in the EHF context. This article presents the development of a structured method for identification, classification, and qualitative analysis of stakeholders in EHF-related work system design intervention. It describes the method's EHF-related theoretical underpinnings, lessons learned from four use cases, and the incremental development of the method that has resulted in the current method procedure and visualization aids. The method, called Change Agent Infrastructure (abbreviated CHAI), has a mainly macroergonomic purpose, set on increasing the understanding of sociotechnical interactions that create the conditions for work system design intervention, and facilitating participative efforts.     

Design process knowledge for crisis-driven information systems solutions: Insights on building digital resilience from an action design research study

As global disruptions escalate, digital resilience (DR)—the capacity to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to external shocks by leveraging Information Systems (IS)—has become crucial for individuals and organisations confronting and managing unprecedented crises. This research advances understanding on how to develop DR, drawing on insights from an Action Design Research (ADR) study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research explores a particular facet of DR: the capacity to manage exogenous shocks through the design  of new IS solutions. We introduce the ADAPT framework, comprising five key enablers—Agility, Designation, Alignment, Participation, and Trust—recommended to support design teams developing IS solutions during and for crises. Our ADR project, which resulted in the creation of a telemonitoring system used by over 115 frontline healthcare workers to monitor the symptoms of more than 1000 COVID-19 patients, demonstrates the instrumental role these five enablers play in supporting a crisis-propelled IS design process that is urgent, resource-limited, and multi-partite. By presenting new design process knowledge and practical recommendations that guide crisis-driven IS design, we aim to equip design teams with the understanding they need to effectively navigate similar challenges in the future. We also hope to inspire and support IS researchers to apply their expertise in the design, deployment, and use of IS solutions to contribute to crisis-driven design endeavours that tackle the pressing and urgent challenges of our time.     

“The Canary in the Coal Mine…” A cautionary tale from the decline of SourceForge

Forges are online collaborative platforms to support the development of distributed open source software. While once mighty keepers of open source vitality, software forges are rapidly becoming less and less relevant. For example, of the top 10 forges in 2011, only one survives today—SourceForge —the biggest of them all, but its numbers are dropping and its community is tenuous at best. Through mixed-methods research, this article chronicles and analyze the software practice and experiences of the project's history—in particular its architectural and community/organizational decisions. We discovered a number of suboptimal social and architectural decisions and circumstances that, may have led to SourceForge 's demise. In addition, we found evidence suggesting that the impact of such decisions could have been monitored, reduced, and possibly avoided altogether. The use of sociotechnical insights needs to become a basic set of design and software/organization monitoring principles that tell a cautionary tale on what to measure and what not to do in the context of large-scale software forge and community design and management.     

The teacher's responsibility in whole‐class debriefing of mathematical activity

Abstract

Prompted by recent moves in the United Kingdom to guide teachers’ practices in whole‐class, direct interactive teaching, in this article, we offer an opportunity for North American mathematics educators to reflect on possibilities for whole‐class teaching of mathematics. We focus particularly on the plenary aspect of lessons—what might be considered the debriefing of mathematical activity—and specifically on the teacher's responsibility during those sessions, both to his or her students and to the authenticity of the discipline of mathematics. Drawing on data from a Grade‐3 classroom and invoking complexity science as a theoretical lens to explore the classroom as a complex learning system, we present implications for teaching in whole‐class debriefings of mathematical activity.     

Heedless programming: ignoring detectable error is a widespread hazard

Software should be correct and robust. This paper suggests that we need forthright words for the failure of not being robust—heedless and heedlessness—and of recursively creating software (such as a compiler or virtual machine) that itself does not support dependable software development. Heedless programming is common, particularly affecting ‘trivial’ operations such as on numbers, and extends deep into programming language design and into the use of computers more widely, thus making robust, dependable applications of all sorts unnecessarily problematic. The paper defines the problem and presents a call to action to start addressing the problems identified. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Appropriating virtual learning environments: A study of teacher tactics

In research on Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), it has been shown that teachers often do not explore VLEs to their full potential and only adopt a limited set of the available tools. In this article, we approach teachers’ design of VLE learning activities as end user development. We describe a study of Toledo, a virtual learning environment used across several higher education institutions in Belgium. Using a combination of a semiotic, multimodal analysis and an in-depth user study with 24 respondents, we provide a detailed account of how teachers appropriate the learning environment to suit their needs. Combining the insights from the semiotic investigation and the user research, we analyze how user appropriations can be explained as practices emerging from both how the platform communicates, and contextual factors. The study showed that some teachers design very specific learning activities using the VLE - not by using the dedicated VLE tool, but by reinterpreting more generic tools. These appropriation tactics concentrate platform use in a limited number of tools, even when teachers do use more complex learning activities. These results have implications for the design of VLEs: rather than offering a wide range of tools targeted at specific learning activities, VLEs could concentrate on providing basic communication tools that are open for appropriation.     

The episodal associative memory: Managing manufacturing information on the basis of similarity and associativity

In this paper we report on continuing research on the organization and functionalities of a certain type of computer-implemented associative memory. The associative memory in question is being created to serve as part of a feature-based design system, at present to be used primarily in support of the design, fabrication planning, or inspection planning of discrete mechanical machine parts. This present effort is consonant with prior related work in the realm of case-based reasoning, especially as related to the role of memory in design. Our associative memory innovations are in the use of fuzzy sets and neural net computing in the representation, storage and retrieval of design, fabrication, inspection and materials knowledge. We have designed and implemented a considerable portion of the associative memory and have demonstrated retrieval of previous designs on the basis of qualitative geometry. We have also demonstrated ability to explore materials composition with the objective of meeting critical materials properties constraints.     

A Representational Framework for Scenarios of System Use

Scenarios are becoming widely used in three areas of system development: software engineering, human–computer interaction (HCI), and organisational process design. There are many reasons to use scenarios during system design. The one usually advanced in support of the practice is to aid the processes of validating the developers’ understanding of the customers’ or users’ work practices, organisational goals and structures, and system requirements. All three areas identified above deal with these processes, and not surprisingly this has given rise to a profusion of scenario-based practices and representations. Yet there has been little analysis of why scenarios should be useful, let alone whether they are. Only by having such a framework for understanding what scenarios are, and what they are for, can we begin to evaluate different scenario approaches in specific development contexts. This paper is a contribution toward such a framework. We lay out a space of representational possibilities for scenarios and enumerate a set of values or criteria that are important for different uses of scenarios. We then summarise several salient representations drawn from the software engineering, HCI, and organisational process design communities to clarify how these representational choices contribute to or detract from the goals of the respective practices. Finally, we discuss how scenario representations from one area of design may be useful in others, and we discuss the relationship between these representations and other significant early-design and requirements engineering practices.     

Knowing the Way. Managing Epistemic Topologies in Virtual Game Worlds

This is a study of interaction in massively multiplayer online games. The general interest concerns how action is coordinated in practices that neither rely on the use of talk-in-interaction nor on a socially present living body. For the participants studied, the use of text typed chat and the largely underexplored domain of virtual actions remain as materials on which to build consecutive action. How, then, members of these games can and do collaborate, in spite of such apparent interactional deprivation, are the topics of the study. More specifically, it addresses the situated practices that participants rely on in order to monitor other players’ conduct, and through which online actions become recognizable as specific actions with implications for the further achievement of the collaborative events. The analysis shows that these practices share the common phenomenon of projections. As an interactional phenomenon, projection of the next action has been extensively studied. In relation to previous research, this study shows that the projection of a next action can be construed with resources that do not build on turns-at-talk or on actions immediately stemming from the physical body—in the domain of online games, players project activity shifts by means of completely different resources. This observation further suggests that projection should be possible through the reconfiguration of any material, on condition that those reconfigurations and materials are recurrent aspects of some established practice.     

The use of prototypes to bridge knowledge boundaries in agile software development

Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or complete failure of software development projects. Prior researchers have reported that software prototypes can be used to help bridge knowledge boundaries between team members in traditional software development settings, yet their use in an agile development setting remains unexplored. Agile development centers the interactions between team members on emerging representations of the prototype whose properties are prone to change over time. Therefore, we conducted an in‐depth study of an agile development project to enhance our understanding on how software prototypes are used as boundary objects in a distributed team setting. Our analyses of team member interactions during 46 virtual meetings that took place over a period of 6 months revealed four different prototype use practices (exemplifying, contrasting, relating, framing) that were effective in bridging syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic knowledge boundaries. We also provide empirically grounded evidence of how variations in object properties can afford different use practices, how the use practices take advantage of these properties, and how object properties are reshaped through these use practices as different types of knowledge boundaries are bridged. These findings bear important implications for research on prototypes as boundary objects in software development in particular and boundary object use in general.     

An object-oriented framework for modeling and designing intelligent training systems

The use of a software engineering approach in the design and development of Intelligent Training/teaching Systems (ITS) can increase productivity and improve the quality of the resulting software systems. In this paper, we describe an object-oriented framework for modeling and designing an ITS. This framework is based on software engineering principles. To illustrate our discussion, we consider an ITS—the CAD Demonstrator—which we have designed using this framework. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teachers' implementation of a game-based biotechnology curriculum

Research in education suggests that computer games can serve as powerful learning environments, however, teachers perceive many obstacles to using games as teaching tools. In this study, we examine three science teachers' implementation and perceptions of a curriculum unit incorporating the game, Mission Biotech (MBt) and a set of supporting curriculum materials. The curriculum unit was designed to provide multiple avenues for teachers to adjust and modify materials and implementation plans based on their unique classroom goals and environments. To understand how individual teachers use, conceptualize, and reflect upon the MBt unit and its implementation, we conducted three case studies, including classroom observations and teacher interviews. Findings include many similarities among teachers including adaptation of activities to classroom norms and practices, high value placed on quality curricular resources and support, advantage of the game to provide experiences that are normally out of reach for students, and concerns about effective use of time. Unique features of different teachers revealed implications for design and professional development for game-based curricula. For example, the study revealed that teachers need support to integrate and make explicit connections between the game and supporting curriculum materials.     

Being your own role model for improving self‐efficacy: An elementary teacher self‐actualizes through drama‐based science teaching

Abstract:

Many teachers in elementary schools lack school science self‐efficacy, largely because of their inexperience with the subject. This frequently leads them to avoid teaching science or to teach it in ways that compromise the development of aspects of students’ scientific literacy. This paper describes how one teacher was able to improve her school science self‐efficacy through facilitated action research. In response to becoming aware of a discrepancy between her school science practices and her fundamental educational beliefs, Lisa developed a drama‐based, integrated science unit that she judged successful in helping students to achieve relevant learning goals. This experience led Lisa and her students to feel much more positive about teaching and learning in school science. Rather than learning from another, however, “Lisa, the science teacher” learned— to a great extent—from “Lisa, the drama‐based educator.” This finding has implications for science‐phobic teachers and for facilitators of their action research.     

Participatory design in OSS development: interpretive case studies in company and community OSS development contexts

This article examines distributed participatory design in open source software (OSS) development. User participation is becoming a relevant topic of research in the OSS development context. Though it has not been examined much to date, the OSS development context has been argued to advocate a particular type of participatory design, which can now be scrutinised in its natural setting as it evolves. Two interpretive case studies on user participation in OSS development are included in this article. The first examines a traditional community OSS development project; the second concentrates on the company OSS development context, the case being a software development unit of a global corporation involved in OSS development. Through analysis of the cases, different forms of participatory design (PD), especially of distributed PD, are identified. Distributed PD is interpreted to include gaining an understanding of users' current practices, redesigning them together with users and gathering feedback from users related to the solutions. Different kinds of roles are available to users, as well as to for intermediaries ‘representing users’. Especially, the importance of online forum-based and intermediary-driven PD is emphasised in this article. Implications for PD and OSS research and practice are considered.     

User involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems

Information systems (IS) research on user involvement has primarily theorized relationships between developers, managers and users in systems development. However, so far, marginal attention has been paid to differences in user involvement practices between information systems. This paper explores user involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems (MTIS). We refer to MTIS as heterogeneous systems that rely on network technologies for increasing the ubiquity of information services for users on the move. Such systems are becoming increasingly important in leveraging, e.g. car infotainment, supply chain management and wireless e‐commerce. With particular emphasis on the nature of MTIS and its implications for user involvement, the paper analyses the systems development process of an action research project. The findings suggest that user involvement practices need to be adapted to accommodate features of this class of systems. Being an early attempt to trace the implications of technology features such as use context switches and temporary system relationships, the paper contributes to the development of an updated theory of the user role in an era of increased system complexity and stakeholder ambiguity.     

Crafting sustainability: approaching wicked environmental problems through high–low tech practice

Abstract

Wicked environmental problems are complex, ill-defined and constantly shifting. Analytical methods alone are typically under-equipped to address these problems. High–low tech is a craftmaking and design practice that encourages makers to merge high- and low-tech materials, processes and cultures. We explore how high–low tech practices can create new ways of understanding wicked environmental problems and lead practitioners towards new ways of approaching them. Through five examples of high–low tech practices, we explore the qualities of these practices—an embrace of complexity, a transdisciplinary approach to work and a maker ethos—that make high–low tech practices particularly well suited to addressing wicked environmental problems.     

Designing for inquiry-based learning with the Learning Activity Management System

This paper explores the relationship between practitioners' pedagogical purposes, values and practices in designing for inquiry-based learning in higher education, and the affordances of the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) as a tool for creating learning designs in this context. Using a qualitative research methodology, variation was identified in participants' conceptions of inquiry-based learning pedagogy and in their approaches to inquiry-based learning design. LAMS was found to offer design affordances that are compatible with more strongly teacher-led conceptions of, and approaches to, inquiry-based learning pedagogy. The paper draws some implications for the further development and use of design tools for inquiry-based learning. The authors suggest that, in addition to tools created for teachers, there may be a valuable role for tools that explicitly support students as designers of their own inquiry processes and activities.     

The coordination of work activities: Cooperation and conflict in a hospital context

An understanding of the ways in which work coordination is achieved in practice is essential to the development of effective CSCW technologies. However, previous studies are limited in their focus on small, self-contained work groups. In this analysis of work coordination in a hospital context, a broader perspective was adopted, allowing examination of activities across time, group and location. The use of a relevant structured methodology and a focus on deviations from formal procedures enabled the consideration of a range of contextual factors in interaction: Important aspects of work coordination to emerge included: status influences on the effectiveness of working practices; the social and political uses of information; conflicts between work goals and between motivations for coordinating activities; the role of informal practices; and the use of formal procedures to regulate inter-group relations. The implications of these issues for CSCW design in the hospital context are illustrated.