Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

From Artefacts to Infrastructures

In their initial articulation of the direction of the CSCW field, scholars advanced an open-ended agenda. This continuing commitment to open-ness to different contexts and approaches is not, however, reflected in the contents of the major CSCW outlets. The field appears to privilege particular forms of cooperative work. We find many examples of what could be described as ‘localist studies’, restricted to particular settings and timeframes. This focus on the ‘here and now’ is particularly problematic when one considers the kinds of large-scale, integrated and interconnected workplace information technologies—or what we are calling Information Infrastructures—increasingly found within and across organisations today. CSCW appears unable (or unwilling) to grapple with these technologies—which were at the outset envisaged as falling within the scope of the field. Our paper hopes to facilitate greater CSCW attention to Information Infrastructures through offering a re-conceptualisation of the role and nature of ‘design’. Design within an Information Infrastructures perspective needs to accommodate non-local constraints. We discuss two such forms of constraint: standardisation (how local fitting entails unfitting at other sites) and embeddedness (the entanglement of one technology with other apparently unrelated ones). We illustrate these themes through introducing case material drawn on from a number of previous studies

Growing an information infrastructure for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records

The papers of this thesis are not available in Munin. Paper 1. Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2014). Generification by Translation: Designing Generic Systems in Context of the Local. Available in: Journal of Association for Information Systems, vol. 15(4): 3. Paper 2. Christensen, B., Silsand, L., Wynn, R. and Ellingsen, G. (2014). The biography of participation. In Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference, 6-10 Oct. Windhoek, Namibia. ACM Digital Library. Paper 3. Silsand, L. and Ellingsen, G. (2016). Complex Decision-Making in Clinical Practice. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM Digital Library. ISBN: 978-1-4503-3592-8. Paper 4: Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2017). Governance of openEHR-based information Infrastructures. (Manuscript). Paper 5. Silsand, L. (2017). The ‘Holy Grail’ of Interoperability of Health Information Systems: Challenges and Implications. Available in: Stigberg S., Karlsen J., Holone H., Linnes C. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 294. Springer, Cham. This thesis provides empirical insights about socio-technical interdependencies affecting the making and scaling of an Information Infrastructure (II) for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records. The Ph.D. study is an interpretive case study, where the empirical data has been collected from 2012 to 2017. In most developed countries, the pressures from politicians and public in general for better IT solutions have grown enormously, not least within Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems. Considerable attention has been given to the proposition that the exchange of health information is a critical component to reach the triple aim of (1) better patient experiences through quality and satisfaction; (2) better health outcomes of populations; and (3) reduction of per capita cost of health care. A promising strategy for dealing with the challenges of accessibility, efficiency, and effective sharing of clinical information to support the triple aim is an open health-computing platform approach, exemplified by the openEHR approach in the empirical case. An open platform approach for computing EPR systems addresses some vital differences from the traditional proprietary systems. Accordingly, the study has payed attention to the vital difference, and analyze the technology and open platform approach to understand the challenges and implications faced by the empirical process. There are two main messages coming out of this Ph.D. study. First, when choosing an open platform approach to establish a regional or national information infrastructure for healthcare, it is important to define it as a process, not a project. Because limiting the realization of a large-scale open platform based infrastructure to the strict timeline of a project may hamper infrastructure growth. Second, realizing an open platform based information infrastructure requires large structural and organizational changes, addressing the need for integrating policy design with infrastructure design

An investigation of constraint-based risk management for collaborative design

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In the context of internationally challenging economic, design has been regarded as a key factor in assisting design and manufacturing companies to survive. By using up-to-date computer-supported technology, the global design collaboration based on multidisciplinary and distributed environment is becoming a mainstream to new product development (NPD). However, during the process of collaborative design, risk is rarely mentioned. In particular, due to the complexity of design process and lack of efficient design decision-making, there have been some design collaboration failures across multiple companies. Some design projects cannot deliver the benefits as companies have expected through the collaboration. Moreover, a number of stakeholders, managers and designers expressed their disappointment at not seeing the projected savings in cost and time, which critically discredited the value of design collaboration. Many studies in academia and commercial cases have suggested that risk assessment can be applied as an effective means in the realm of design. Nevertheless, few of them conducted risk management research associated with design constraints under a collaborative environment from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In current risk practice, many risk practitioners simply report key risks to their management teams and no further analysis, which might subsequently result in confusion with excessive discussions. Consequently, to prevent the failure of design collaboration and perform a satisfactory risk assessment, it is important to perform risk management with an upstream perspective and at an operational level. An approach, called constraint-based design risk management (DRM) where a conceptual framework has been proposed on the basis of collaborative design features, risk management process and Theory of Constraints (TOC). Moreover, a DRM matrix has been developed to map, measure and mitigate collaborative design risk through evaluating the critical design constraints, and then specified design risk variables in the light of risk criteria. Design constraints are quantitative parameters that frequently affect main design processes and decisions. The combination of design constraints and risk criteria can be accessible and applicable by designers and design mangers. In addition, a Bayesian weighting method based on Bayesian theorem has been developed to measure collaborative design risk in a more efficient manner. Ultimately, a DRM tool has been created as a simulated scenario prototype, which incorporated with three case-study evaluations, to demonstrate the importance and effectiveness of using TOC and risk theory in the realm of design collaboration

ECSCW 2013 Adjunct Proceedings The 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 21 - 25. September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus

This volume presents the adjunct proceedings of ECSCW 2013.While the proceedings published by Springer Verlag contains the core of the technical program, namely the full papers, the adjunct proceedings includes contributions on work in progress, workshops and master classes, demos and videos, the doctoral colloquium, and keynotes, thus indicating what our field may become in the future

Group and individual time management tools: what you get is not what you need

Some studies of diaries and scheduling systems have considered how individuals use diaries with a view to proposing requirements for computerised time management tools. Others have focused on the criteria for success of group scheduling systems. Few have paid attention to how people use a battery of tools as an ensemble. This interview study reports how users exploit paper, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and a group scheduling system for their time management. As with earlier studies, we find many shortcomings of different technologies, but studying the ensemble rather than individual tools points towards a different conclusion: rather than aiming towards producing electronic time management tools that replace existing paper-based tools, we should be aiming to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of each technology and look towards more seamless integration between tools. In particular, the requirements for scheduling and those for more responsive, fluid time management conflict in ways that demand different kinds of support

This Thing Called Fairness: Disciplinary Confusion Realizing a Value in Technology

The explosion in the use of software in important sociotechnical systems has renewed focus on the study of the way technical constructs reflect policies, norms, and human values. This effort requires the engagement of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines. And yet, these disciplines often conceptualize the operative values very differently while referring to them using the same vocabulary. The resulting conflation of ideas confuses discussions about values in technology at disciplinary boundaries. In the service of improving this situation, this paper examines the value of shared vocabularies, analytics, and other tools that facilitate conversations about values in light of these disciplinary specific conceptualizations, the role such tools play in furthering research and practice, outlines different conceptions of ``fairness''deployed in discussions about computer systems, and provides an analytic tool for interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations around the concept of fairness. We use a case study of risk assessments in criminal justice applications to both motivate our effort--describing how conflation of different concepts under the banner of ``fairness'' led to unproductive confusion--and illustrate the value of the fairness analytic by demonstrating how the rigorous analysis it enables can assist in identifying key areas of theoretical, political, and practical misunderstanding or disagreement, and where desired support alignment or collaboration in the absence of consensus