Collaboration Engineering for Incident Response Planning: Process Development and Validation

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Technical and Environmental Challenges of Collaboration Engineering in Distributed Environments

Collaboration in distributed settings has become a reality in organizational life. Yet we still have much to learn about issues inherent to distributed collaboration. One important area of study is the integration of Collaboration Engineering in distributed virtual teams for helping them in structuring their interaction. The field of Collaboration Engineering offers promising guidelines for process structures, but its application in distributed arenas is just beginning to be studied. We report on the design and development of a new collaboration environment for the incorporation of Collaboration Engineering principles, as well as the results of an initial study that examined leadership and process structure effects on the development of shared understanding. The paper describes the research motivation, the environment, and the results of the study, including an analysis of participants’ feedback and their message exchanges. We discuss both technical and environmental challenges for research on Collaboration Engineering in distributed environments

Information Systems and Health Care XIII: Examining the Critical Requirements, Design Approaches and Evaluation Methods for a Public Health Emergency Response System

Research pertaining to emergency response systems has accelerated over the past few years, particularly since 9/11 events, and more recently due to Hurricane Katrina and concern of the avian flu pandemic. This study examines the requirements that are the most demanding with respect to software and hardware, and the associated design strategies for a public health emergency response system (ERS) for electronic laboratory diagnostics consultation. In addition, this study illustrates ways to evaluate the design decisions. An important goal of a public health ERS is to improve the communication and notification of life-threatening diseases and harmful agents. The system under study is called Secure Telecommunications Application Terminal Package or STATPack. STATPack supports distributed laboratories to communicate information and make decisions regarding biosecurity situations. The intent of the system is to help hospital laboratories enhance their preparedness for a bioterrorism event or other public health emergency. The practical nature of this research concerns how an ERS diagnostic and consultation system was designed to alert and support first responders and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The academic nature of the research centers on the critical requirements of an ERS and how these unique needs can be met through careful design. Understanding the critical requirements will assist developers to better meet the expectations of the users. Specifically, I conducted a thirteen month study analyzing the requirements, design, and implementation of the system

A Design & Evaluation Framework for Setting Up a Community of Practice

In the recent years, there has been a tremendous amount of exposure of Knowledge Management (KM) and value creation. Organizations are beginning to understand the need to capitalize all the available information, tacit and explicit, as most of the organizations are operating in a global and competitive economy. One such organizational concept that can capture both tacit and explicit knowledge is Communities of Practice. Communities of Practice (CoPs) are seen as a mechanism for knowledge sharing and learning across and within institutions, based on the common ground of a professional discipline, a skill, a topic, or a business process. Although CoPs have been receiving much attention recently and could play a critical role in knowledge sharing, it is very important for organizations to find out if it is viable before they invest their time and money in building it. The objective of my research is to layout the frameworks for designing and evaluating CoP’s before launching them. The research is carried out through an in-depth study on a Community of Risk and Control Self-Assessment (R&CSA) facilitators at International Financial Services (IFS). The practical goal is to identify and prototype some of the key Community of Practice processes for the R&CSA approach. The design framework can lead the coordinator through a series of steps to gather the requirements in a short amount of time. The evaluation framework will measure the outcome and tell us if launching a CoP is desirable

A Gaming Laboratory to Study Distributed Collaboration Processes.

Current events present many examples of situations where a fast and coordinated response is required from many and diverse organizations and stakeholders. Technology-mediated communication and collaboration may be the only option for getting things done in situations like these. There is a real need for research on the kinds of environments and processes that best support fast response on urgent tasks for virtual teams. The paper presents the development and initial test of a gaming laboratory to study such processes. The laboratory is adaptable to different kinds of situations. We discuss the design principles and implementation of the laboratory environment, along with lessons learned from the first experiences with it

Development of a theory and evidence-based, user-centred family healthy eating app

The proliferation of health promotion apps along with smartphone's array of features supporting health behaviour change, offers a new and innovative approach to childhood weight management. However, research on the content of current industry led apps reveals they lack a basis in behaviour change theory and evidence. Equally important remains the issue of how to maximise users' engagement with mHealth. Therefore the thesis aimed to address these gaps and design and develop an evidence and theory based, user-centred healthy eating app targeting parents for childhood weight management. The Behaviour Change Wheel framework (BCW), a theoretically-based approach for health behaviour change intervention development, along with a user-centred design philosophy and collaboration with industry, guided the development process. This involved a review of the evidence and conducting a series of nine focus groups (Study one and two), a usability workshop and a 'Think Aloud' study (study three) (N=70) comprised of Change4Life advisors, parents with overweight and healthy weight children aged 5-11 years, university students and staff and consultation with experts to inform the app development. Thematic analysis of focus groups helped to extract information related to relevant theoretical (using the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour Model (COM-B) and Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF)), user-centred and technological components to underpin the design and development of the app. Inputs from parents, case workers and experts working in the area of childhood weight management helped to identify the main target behaviour: to support parents' provision of age appropriate food portion sizes. To achieve this target behaviour, the behavioural analysis revealed the need for eliciting change in parents' Capability, Motivation and Opportunity and twelve associated TDF domains. Therefore, the thesis provides a more comprehensive analysis of the problem compared to previous theoretical accounts, demonstrating that parents' internal processes such as their emotional responses, habits and beliefs, along with social influences such as partners and grandparents and the environmental influences relating to aspects such as schools, the media, and household objects, all interact and impact on their portion behaviours. Theoretical domains were subsequently mapped to five intervention functions and twenty-three behaviour change techniques (BCTs) to bring about change in this target behaviour. BCTs were then translated into engaging app features drawing on parental preferences for healthy eating app features including ease of use, minimal data input, visual aids of food and gamification. Overall parents viewed the prototype app positively. The 'Think Aloud' study highlighted key areas to improve usability in such as navigability. Application of the BCW to the issue of childhood weight management yielded a novel conceptualisation of potential approaches to supporting parents' portion behaviours in the home environment. This thesis is also the first to fully explicate the systematic approach applied in developing a family-oriented mHealth app grounded in the BCW framework and evidence, and balanced with users' preferences to help maximise its potential engagement with the target population. Challenges and adaptations relating to the implementation of the BCW are discussed and suggestions for future research in mHealth development and childhood weight management are provided, along with the implications for public health practice