6,327 research outputs found

    Bridge Builders in IT Artifact Development

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    Expect the unexpected: the co-construction of assistive artifacts

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    This paper aims to explain emerging design activities within community-based rehabilitation contexts through the science of self-organization and adaptivity. It applies an evolutionary systematic worldview (Heylighen, 2011) to frame spontaneous collaboration between different local agents which produce self-made assistive artifacts. Through a process of distinction creation and distinction destruction occupational therapist, professional non-designers, caregivers and disabled people co-evolve simultaneously towards novel possibilities which embody a contemporary state of fitness. The conversation language is build on the principles of emotional seeding through stigmergic prototyping and have been practically applied as a form of design hacking which blends design time and use time. Within this process of co-construction the thought experiment of Maxwell’s Demon is used to map perceived behavior and steer the selecting process of following user-product adaptation strategies. This practice-based approach is illustrated through a case study and tries to integrate both rationality and intuition within emerging participatory design activities

    Dealing with an Industrial Monument: The Borden Bridge

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    Late prehistoric mortuary practices : an analysis of the Bethune, Sisterbutte, Glen Ewen and Moose Bay burials in Saskatchewan

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    There are four known Late Prehistoric burials in Saskatchewan which demonstrate at least two distinct patterns of mortuary behavior prevalent on the Northern Plains. The Bethune burial located near Bethune, Saskatchewan, is an Avonlea burial dating 1389 +/- 40 years BP. This site is the only Avonlea burial known to date in Canada, and only one of three burials now known in North America. The Sisterbutte, Glen Ewen, and Moose Bay burials are all examples of mound burials. The Glen Ewen mound has been dated at 1220 +/- 70 years BP and 1110 +/- 90 years BP, while the Moose Bay mound has been associated with the Kathio and Devils Lake Sourisford burial complexes. The Sisterbutte mound has not been radiocarbon dated, nor are there any diagnostic cultural remains associated with it. This thesis assembles, and re-evaluates, all the accumulated data on Late Prehistoric burials in Saskatchewan

    Information technology as boundary object for transformational learning

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    Collaborative work is considered as a way to improve productivity and value generation in construction. However, recent research demonstrates that socio-cognitive factors related to fragmentation of specialized knowledge may hinder team performance. New methods based on theories of practice are emerging in Computer Supported Collaborative Work and organisational learning to break these knowledge boundaries, facilitating knowledge sharing and the generation of new knowledge through transformational learning. According to these theories, objects used in professional practice play a key role in mediating interactions. Rules and methods related to these practices are also embedded in these objects. Therefore changing collaborative patterns demand reconfiguring objects that are at the boundary between specialized practices, namely boundary objects. This research is unique in presenting an IT strategy in which technology is used as a boundary object to facilitate transformational learning in collaborative design work

    Learning in a Landscape: Simulation-building as Reflexive Intervention

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    This article makes a dual contribution to scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) on simulation-building. It both documents a specific simulation-building project, and demonstrates a concrete contribution to interdisciplinary work of STS insights. The article analyses the struggles that arise in the course of determining what counts as theory, as model and even as a simulation. Such debates are especially decisive when working across disciplinary boundaries, and their resolution is an important part of the work involved in building simulations. In particular, we show how ontological arguments about the value of simulations tend to determine the direction of simulation-building. This dynamic makes it difficult to maintain an interest in the heterogeneity of simulations and a view of simulations as unfolding scientific objects. As an outcome of our analysis of the process and reflections about interdisciplinary work around simulations, we propose a chart, as a tool to facilitate discussions about simulations. This chart can be a means to create common ground among actors in a simulation-building project, and a support for discussions that address other features of simulations besides their ontological status. Rather than foregrounding the chart's classificatory potential, we stress its (past and potential) role in discussing and reflecting on simulation-building as interdisciplinary endeavor. This chart is a concrete instance of the kinds of contributions that STS can make to better, more reflexive practice of simulation-building.Comment: 37 page

    Architectural Salvage: Saving or Stealing?

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    Extrusion-based additive manufacturing of concrete products. Revolutionizing and remodeling the construction industry

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    Additive manufacturing is one of the main topics of the fourth industrial revolution; defined as Industry 4.0. This technology offers several advantages related to the construction and architectural sectors; such as economic; environmental; social; and engineering benefits. The usage of concrete in additive technologies allows the development of innovative applications and complexity design in the world of construction such as buildings; housing modules; bridges; and urban and domestic furniture elements. The aim of this review was to show in detail a general panoramic of extrusion-based additive processes in the construction sector; the main advantages of using additive manufacturing with the respect to traditional manufacturing; the fundamental requirements of 3D printable material (fresh and hardened properties), and state-of-the-art aesthetic and architectural projects with functional properties

    The Name and Nature of Software Engineering

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    The nature of software engineering is discussed with particular reference to software-intensive application systems—those whose fundamental purpose is to bring about desired effects in a physical and human problem world by interaction with a programmed machine. Such systems bring together a problem world—which is typically composed of heterogeneous domains, most of which are non-formal—and the formal or semi-formal domain of the machine. A clean engineering separation of the two is rarely, if ever, possible; and attempts to treat the application problem world as an extension of the formal machine are obstructed by its non-formal nature. Software engineers have much to learn from the structure and practices of the established branches of engineering. We must learn from their treatment of formal analysis and reasoning, from their practice of intense specialisation, from their attention to particular instances no less than to general concerns, and—above all—from their reliance on normal artifact design and on normal design disciplines: both are the golden fruit of specialisation
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