Improving User Involvement Through Live Collaborative Creation

Creating an artifact - such as writing a book, developing software, or performing a piece of music - is often limited to those with domain-specific experience or training. As a consequence, effectively involving non-expert end users in such creative processes is challenging. This work explores how computational systems can facilitate collaboration, communication, and participation in the context of involving users in the process of creating artifacts while mitigating the challenges inherent to such processes. In particular, the interactive systems presented in this work support live collaborative creation, in which artifact users collaboratively participate in the artifact creation process with creators in real time. In the systems that I have created, I explored liveness, the extent to which the process of creating artifacts and the state of the artifacts are immediately and continuously perceptible, for applications such as programming, writing, music performance, and UI design. Liveness helps preserve natural expressivity, supports real-time communication, and facilitates participation in the creative process. Live collaboration is beneficial for users and creators alike: making the process of creation visible encourages users to engage in the process and better understand the final artifact. Additionally, creators can receive immediate feedback in a continuous, closed loop with users. Through these interactive systems, non-expert participants help create such artifacts as GUI prototypes, software, and musical performances. This dissertation explores three topics: (1) the challenges inherent to collaborative creation in live settings, and computational tools that address them; (2) methods for reducing the barriers of entry to live collaboration; and (3) approaches to preserving liveness in the creative process, affording creators more expressivity in making artifacts and affording users access to information traditionally only available in real-time processes. In this work, I showed that enabling collaborative, expressive, and live interactions in computational systems allow the broader population to take part in various creative practices.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145810/1/snaglee_1.pd

The Minnesota GDSS Research Project: Group Support Systems, Group Processes, and Outcomes

The Minnesota GDSS Research Project is a 20-year program of interdisciplinary research that has generated more than 80 articles, chapters, dissertations, and proceedings publications and has influenced other researchers who developed their own niches. Grounded in Adaptive Structuration Theory, which emerged and evolved as the research unfolded, the project studied the impact of technology characteristics (level of support, restrictiveness) and other support (training, heuristics, facilitation) on group processes and outcomes for a range of tasks (problem definition, decision making, planning). The project entailed a complex tapestry of a series of laboratory experiments and two major field studies. The basic theoretical framework, experimental strategy and design, field study design, and results are summarized, along with a discussion of the significance and implications of the project for contemporary theory and practice

Teaching in the Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment of Second Life: Design Considerations For Virtual World Developers

Educators are seeking ways to better engage their students including the use of collaborative virtual learning environments (CVLEs). Some virtual worlds can serve as CVLEs as the advent of Second Life has created particular interest within the education community. Second Life, however, was not initially designed to facilitate education alone. I propose that as a CVLE, Second Life may be failing educators' expectations of its initial, ongoing, and future use as a system for supporting education. In order to determine how Second Life may be failing educators, I conducted a case study with a group of university-level educators that examined their reasons for and against adopting Second Life as a CVLE, the affordances they explored, the barriers they encountered, and how these affordances and barriers affected student learning and the participant's future use of Second Life and future virtual worlds in education. I then compare their use of Second Life to that of traditional groupware systems. As a result, I propose and detail the development of a rich integrated development environment, application programming interface, more flexible privacy policy, and more robust community tools for educators based on these comparisons

A Review On Evaluation And Benefits Of Decision Support Systems

This review paper identifies benefits from various Decision Support Systems (DSSs) and introduces a range of examples from the literature. Those examples are organized according to the driving technological architecture of the DSS. Benefits may impact a decision or the decision-making process. Some techniques for assessing the benefits of a particular DSS were also surveyed

Softer perspectives on enhancing the patient experience using IS/IT

Purpose – This paper aims to argue that the implementation of the Choose and Book system has failed due to the inability of project sponsors to appreciate the complex and far-reaching softer implications of the implementation, especially in a complex organisation such as the NHS, which has multifarious stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use practice-oriented research to try and isolate key parameters. These parameters are compared with existing conventional thinking in a number of focused areas. Findings – Like many previous NHS initiatives, the focus of this system is in its obvious link to patients. However we find that although this project has cultural, social and organisational implications, programme managers and champions of the Connecting for Health programme emphasised the technical domains to IS/IT adoption. Research limitations/implications – This paper has been written in advance of a fully implemented Choose and Book system. Practical implications – The paper requests that more attention be paid to the softer side of IS/IT delivery, implementation, introduction and adoption. Originality/value – The paper shows that patient experience within the UK healthcare sector is still well below what is desired

Digital Member Network Implementation and Coproduction: An Investigation of an Alumni Association Network

Digital Member Network Implementation and Coproduction: An Investigation of an Alumni Association Network by Derrick Vance Warren August 2019 Chair: Dr. Lars Mathiassen Major Academic Unit: Executive Doctorate in Business Given the rapid rate of technological change, IT professionals need continuous guidance to implement digital member networks (DMNs) successfully. Moreover, because key stakeholders can drive initial participation and ongoing engagement in these networks, ensuring that stakeholders have positive implementation experiences is particularly important. Against that backdrop, this study focuses on understanding the enablers and barriers to implementing DMNs and identifies ways to accelerate continuous engagement by involving key members in coproduction of the network. A literature review synthesizes key challenges in digitally enabled social network implementation and coproduction in general and provides background for the study, while Implementation Theory and Coproduction Theory offer the analytical framing. From this foundation, the researcher empirically investigates the enablers and barriers to implementing and coproducing a DMN for a university’s alumni association. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature on DMNs, insights on the implementation of digitally enabled social networks, and interventions that may drive coproduction and positive member engagement. INDEX WORDS: Digital Member Networks, Implementation, Coproduction, Enablers and Barriers, Alumni Associatio