Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces

People wish to maintain a level of awareness of timely information, including presence of others in the workplace and other social settings. We believe this provides better exchange, coordination and contact within a community, especially as people work in asynchronous times and distributed locations. The challenge is to develop lightweight techniques for awareness, interaction and communication using shared information appliances. In this paper, we describe the design of an exploratory responsive display projected within a shared workspace at the MIT Media Lab. The system uses visual sensing to provide relevant information and constructs traces of people’s activity over time. Such aware portals may be deployed in casual workplace domains, distributed workgroups, and everyday public spaces.     

Distributed Apprenticeship in Online Communities

Supporting learning in online communities is an important direction for the future of human–computer interaction as people increasingly leverage social technologies to support professional growth and development. However, few have studied how people leverage the socio-technical affordances of online informal workplace communities to develop professional skills in the absence of dedicated expert guidance. We draw from theories of apprenticeship to introduce an emergent theory of distributed apprenticeship, which outlines how community expectations of transparency and mutual support allow for instruction to be directed by a distributed network of nonexperts. We develop distributed apprenticeship through a qualitative study of crowdfunding entrepreneurs, where novices leverage social interactions with community members to develop a wide range of entrepreneurial skills. We then generalize distributed apprenticeship to other workplace contexts and provide design implications for online communities where people develop professional skills with minimal dedicated formal guidance.     

Collaboration Within Different Settings: A Study of Co-located and Distributed Multidisciplinary Medical Team Meetings

This paper reports our findings from a study of multidisciplinary team meetings for the treatment and ongoing management of breast cancer patients. The focus of the fieldwork was the meetings within and between a large group of multidisciplinary health professionals from two hospitals in Sydney, a large public teaching hospital and a much smaller private hospital. The paper examines the common work of the meetings and the variation within and between local practices and sites in the doing of this work, both in the local settings of each hospital and in the video-mediated setting when the local meetings are linked. Variations in the physical setup of the meetings, the presentation of the patient cases and the preparation of images used in patient discussion are identified, traced to their various sources and examined within their particular sociotechnical context. This is followed by a discussion of how local variation contributed to the particular challenges of the video-mediated meetings as experienced by the participants and how they might be addressed. Our motivations are to contribute both to the growing case studies of multidisciplinary team meetings within healthcare settings and to the important work being done to generate conceptual and design approaches that can support the development and successful use of CSCW technologies across highly variable local settings.     

A Survey on the Evolution of the Notion of Context-Awareness

The notion of context has been considered for a long time in different areas of Computer Science. This article considers the use of context-based reasoning from the earlier perspective of artificial intelligence as well as the newer developments in ubiquitous computing. Both communities have been somehow interested in the potential of context-reasoning to support real-time meaningful reactions from systems. We explain how the concept evolved in each of these different approaches. We found initially that each of them considered this topic quite independently and separated from each other; however, latest developments have started to show signs of cross-fertilization amongst these areas. The aim of our survey is to provide an understanding on the way context and context-reasoning were approached, to show that work in each area is complementary, and to highlight there are positive synergies arising amongst them. The overarching goal of this article is to encourage further and longer term synergies between those interested in further understanding and using context-based reasoning.     

Integrated clinical pathway management for medical quality improvement – based on a semiotically inspired systems architecture

Clinical pathway is an approach to standardise care processes to support the implementations of clinical guidelines and protocols. It is designed to support the management of treatment processes including clinical and non-clinical activities, resources and also financial aspects. It provides detailed guidance for each stage in the management of a patient with the aim of improving the continuity and coordination of care across different disciplines and sectors. However, in the practical treatment process, the lack of knowledge sharing and information accuracy of paper-based clinical pathways burden health-care staff with a large amount of paper work. This will often result in medical errors, inefficient treatment process and thus poor quality medical services. This paper first presents a theoretical underpinning and a co-design research methodology for integrated pathway management by drawing input from organisational semiotics. An approach to integrated clinical pathway management is then proposed, which aims to embed pathway knowledge into treatment processes and existing hospital information systems. The capability of this approach has been demonstrated through the case study in one of the largest hospitals in China. The outcome reveals that medical quality can be improved significantly by the classified clinical pathway knowledge and seamless integration with hospital information systems.     

Balancing fluid and cemented routines in a digital workplace

Advanced workplace technologies are increasingly used alongside traditional enterprise software packages (such as enterprise resource planning) in the workplace. However, we have only limited understanding of how different kinds of technologies are used to dynamically shape work routines and fluidity in a digital workplace. We conducted an in-depth six-year study of the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system by a large information technology service provider company. The company used the system to manage its global staffing processes. We explored how the users of this system sought to achieve the fluidity needed to do their work. Our findings show that users balance two patterns of routine performance through different technologies with varying degrees of malleability: one to generate fluidity and another to generate stability. We call this process ‘generative balancing’. Our research contributes to the literature on workplace technologies and ERP use by providing insights into how the use of technologies with different degrees of malleability helps to craft digital workspaces and enables users to deal with tensions between accomplishing local-level performance and realizing corporate-level strategic intents.     

The reality of medical work: The case for a new perspective on telemedicine

This paper considers the nature of medical work and how new telemedicine technologies can be developed to support that work. Telemedicine developers attempt to increase communication and collaboration between medical practitioners and between patients and medics, with the goal being to make medical care and information more easily accessible. However, the focus of telemedicine systems appears to have so far been technology centred, and the work they are trying to support is often ignored. We argue that to develop appropriate telemedicine technologies, it is important to understand the nature of medical work, and to examine the manner in which medical practiceactually occurs. Only then will we be in a position to design appropriate telemedicine technologies to support these activities. Unless designers have an insight into the work itself, new technologies will continue to fail to support what telemedicine effectively aims to promote — collaboration and access to distributed knowledge.     

Interaction spaces in computer-mediated communication

In this paper we describe the development of the Interaction Space Theory developed as part of the SANE project. The EU funded project provided an inter-disciplinary context for the study of interactions in the hybrid workplace where physical work environment is enhanced with information and communication technologies (ICT) which enable collaboration with remote partners. We explain how the theoretical approach, empirical work and methodological strategy employed by SANE researchers contribute toward the social intelligence design approach through the development of the methodology for identification of workplace requirements for mobile knowledge workers. In addition, we demonstrate how empirical findings, based upon our theoretical approach, can lead to development of novel methods and techniques for evaluating the impact of new and emerging technologies in the workplace.     

Video Conferencing and Application Sharing: Routes to Awareness

There is little doubt that the creation and enhancement of awareness is a critical factor for the implementation and use of telecooperation systems. However, in a broader view, which includes the perspective on cooperative work processes, awareness turns out to be even more important. Awareness information-or the lack of awareness information-is also a crucial factor for the effectiveness and efficiency of cooperative work.

Three projects are briefly described to show the broad spectrum of possible target groups and goal orientations: Teams and Tess inkontakt are projects of the Institute for Work and Technology in Gelsenkirchen with a task-oriented business-to-business and a business-to-customer focus, respectively; the Poliwork project represents an infrastructure-oriented approach for the support of cooperative work in public administration.

To describe the crucial factors of projects like these, a perspective on awareness is needed that goes beyond the immediate communication situation and the use of computer applications. A set of awareness dimensions that focuses on organizational, functional, and personal awareness is proposed and discussed along with these 3 projects.     

Knowledge work support by semantic task management

This paper describes the particular requirements of knowledge work in an industrial setting and its support by semantic technologies. This setting is characterized by specific demands with respect to information handling, communication and work coordination. It is shown how semantic technologies can meet these demands. Specifically, the Social Semantic Desktop (SSD) is discussed that covers requirements for individual structuring and proceeding as well as organizational needs. It is discussed which aspects come to the fore in an industrial setting and require particular consideration. Here we find a focus on communication and on work coordination. The latter is addressed by semantic task management and allows for new approaches towards experience management in industry. In this respect the SSD opens up completely new opportunities. It is shown how such a framework has been realized in the European Integrated Project Nepomuk.     

AGENT COORDINATION CONTEXTS IN A MAS COORDINATION INFRASTRUCTURE

In order to harness complexity in multi-agent systems (MAS), first-class entities that mediate interaction between agents and environment are required, which can encapsulate control over MAS behavior and evolution. To this end, MAS infrastructures should provide mediating artifacts, both enabling and constraining agent interactions, and possibly representing admissible agent perceptions and actions over the environment.

Along this line, in this paper, we take the notion of agent coordination context (ACC) as a means to model agent-environment interactions, and show how it can be embedded within a MAS infrastructure in terms of model and runtime structures. Then, we take the TuCSoN coordination infrastructure as a reference, and extend it with the ACC abstraction to integrate the support for coordination with organization and security.     

Resource management in open Linda systems

Coordination systems, in particular Linda, have established themselves as important tools for the development of applications to open systems such as the Internet. This paper shows how to tackle a forgotten, but crucial problem in open coordination systems: memory management. As with any system which intends to be of wide use and because memory is a finite resource, coordination systems must address the problems of memory exhaustion. This paper first explores the orthogonality between coordination and computation in order to make it clear that the problem of memory exhaustion in coordination systems cannot be solved using garbage collection schemes implemented at the computation language—a garbage collection scheme must exist in the coordination environment as well. Following the explanation on orthogonality, the paper will focus on describing a garbage collection scheme for the Linda family of coordination systems. It is expected that the solution in Linda can be adapted to other coordination systems as long as they are based on tuple space communication. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inspecting module interface specifications

Despite dramatic changes in computing in the two decades since the term software engineering was coined, problems of deficient quality and unmanageable costs continue to afflict the software industry. Improvements in the software engineering process are vital to bringing software quality and costs under control. Module interface specification is a mature software engineering technology that, like many other proposed methodological improvements, has not significantly penetrated industrial practice. The inspection technique is well accepted for dealing with program code and pseudo-code, but its potential for application to other work products is largely unrealized. This paper describes a successful pilot project in jointly transferring these two technologies to the software workplace. A central theme of the project was purposeful customization of the technology to a particular industrial setting. Such adaptation is important for success in the notoriously difficult process of diffusing software engineering methodology in industry.     

Digital workplace transformation: Subtraction logic as deinstitutionalising the taken-for-granted

Digital technology enables the transformation of work and workplaces. Previous digital workplace transformation (DWT) literature has shown how organisations add new digital technologies to create new workplace routines. However, such an emphasis on addition may hinder scholarship from recognising that some established workplace technologies and routines must disappear for new ones to emerge. Adopting the concept of deinstitutionalisation, we examine the rationale for and the process of how an organisation abandons workplace routines that conflict with its intended DWT. Referring to this as subtraction logic, we advance two contributions. First, we conceptualise how deinstitutionalisation of established workplace routines and technologies unfolds in DWT by outlining a process model that synthesises addition and subtraction. Second, we highlight the underlying rationales for DWT. With these insights, we shift the gaze from the dominant addition logic, which advocates for appropriating new digital technologies, to the equally important value of subtraction, i.e., removing existing workplace technologies (or inscribed institutional rules) to abandon workplace routines that conflict with the intended DWT. Hence, our study highlights the oft-ignored subtraction logic in DWT.     

Tools used in Global Software Engineering: A systematic mapping review

ContextThis systematic mapping review is set in a Global Software Engineering (GSE) context, characterized by a highly distributed environment in which project team members work separately in different countries. This geographic separation creates specific challenges associated with global communication, coordination and control.ObjectiveThe main goal of this study is to discover all the available communication and coordination tools that can support highly distributed teams, how these tools have been applied in GSE, and then to describe and classify the tools to allow both practitioners and researchers involved in GSE to make use of the available tool support in GSE.MethodWe performed a systematic mapping review through a search for studies that answered our research question, “Which software tools (commercial, free or research based) are available to support Global Software Engineering?” Applying a range of related search terms to key electronic databases, selected journals, and conferences and workshops enabled us to extract relevant papers. We then used a data extraction template to classify, extract and record important information about the GSD tools from each paper. This information was synthesized and presented as a general map of types of GSD tools, the tool’s main features and how each tool was validated in practice.ResultsThe main result is a list of 132 tools, which, according to the literature, have been, or are intended to be, used in global software projects. The classification of these tools includes lists of features for communication, coordination and control as well as how the tool has been validated in practice. We found that out the total of 132, the majority of tools were developed at research centers, and only a small percentage of tools (18.9%) are reported as having been tested outside the initial context in which they were developed.ConclusionThe most common features in the GSE tools included in this study are: team activity and social awareness, support for informal communication, Support for Distributed Knowledge Management and Interoperability with other tools. Finally, there is the need for an evaluation of these tools to verify their external validity, or usefulness in a wider global environment.     

Developing a holistic understanding of workplace health: the case of bank workers

Understanding health in the workplace from a holistic perspective requires appropriate research approaches. An exploratory, qualitative study with whitecollar employees from a large banking organization in the North West of England is detailed here. The aim was to explore health from the perspective of the employee. Semi-structured interviews (n = 29) elicited detailed responses, allowing the relationship between psychosocial and lifestyle factors to be examined. Psychosocial factors such as job design, ability to make decisions and control over work were all reported to be positive contributors to health in the work setting-and often were reported to be more relevant than individual lifestyle issues. A more holistic approach to developing workplace health programmes in the future is recommended, which allows the workplace setting to be considered as a complex system. Very few comprehensive workplace health programmes exist at present within UK organizations, and there is a tendency for programmes to be designed by the health professional ‘expert’ rather than developed in conjunction with, and by the workforce. It is argued that qualitative research methods can help to begin the dialogue needed for workplace health programme development.     

Ontology-driven document enrichment: principles, tools and applications

In this paper, we present an approach to document enrichment, which consists of developing and integrating formal knowledge models with archives of documents, to provide intelligent knowledge retrieval and (possibly) additional knowledge-intensive services, beyond what is currently available using “standard” information retrieval and search facilities. Our approach is ontology-driven, in the sense that the construction of the knowledge model is carried out in a top-down fashion, by populating a given ontology, rather than in a bottom-up fashion, by annotating a particular document. In this paper, we give an overview of the approach and we examine the various types of issues (e.g. modelling, organizational and user interface issues) which need to be tackled to effectively deploy our approach in the workplace. In addition, we also discuss a number of technologies we have developed to support ontology-driven document enrichment and we illustrate our ideas in the domains of electronic news publishing, scholarly discourse and medical guidelines.     

Communication and Context: Collective Tacit Knowledge and Practice in Japan’s Workplace ba

In contrast to Schumpeter’s “perennial gale of creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1976: 84), government–coordinated economic development in post–1945 Japan has owed more to informal (but binding) “rules of the game” (North 1990) that situate working, learning and innovation within the spaces delineated by tightly bounded company–as–family workplace organisations or ‘ba’ (which roughly means ‘place’ or ‘interaction field’). Horizontal keiretsu groupings, together with fixed trading–patterns in supply and distribution chains, continue to support an interlocking ‘steady state’ economic structure in which new technologies tend to emerge from existing organisations. Shared experience within workplace ba generates tacit knowledge that is held in common by colleagues and retained as a potent tool for shaping future practice. It plays a vital role in facilitating ‘friction free’ communication amongst insiders, who can act as a group to ostracise and retaliate against agents who break their code. Long–term obligations link salaried male employees to their workplace ba. Consequently, autonomous boundary–spanning communities of practice, together with industry–university collaboration and other transient associations with outsiders, lack legitimacy. Cook and Brown’s (1999) pluralist epistemology is used to compare Western interpretations of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons et al 1994) with the privileged role that Japan’s workplace ba accord to insider collective–tacit knowledge, which we tentatively call ‘Mode 3’ knowledge.     

Enhancing Knowledge Management and Decision-Making Capability of China’s Emergency Operations Center Using Big Data

Emerging communication and computing technologies such as social media, Internet of Things and big data provide great opportunities to improve information management systems for emergency operations. This paper studies the issues of information management at China’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and proposes a data-driven knowledge management system (KMS) to support decisionmaking, coordination, and collaboration within EOCs and with the public. In the proposed KMS, big data analytics is employed to gather and analyze information from different knowledge domains and track how a crisis evolves in physical world and in cyber space. The proposed system aims at improving situation awareness of public opinions and regulating human behaviors in regards to an emergency. A case study is presented to explain how the proposed system is applied to improve decision-making during emergency.