Co-design of use patterns to rethink offline activities through civic technologies

In this paper, we describe one of the methodologies used to co-design a civic platform oriented to support local project and activities carried out by different stakeholders operating in the city. Combining storytelling, gaming and sketching, we defined with them a set of use patterns to integrate social network technologies in offline activities, highlighting the strong connection between analogical and digital tools

RS4AAL: A Process for Specifying and Analyzing Non-Functional Requirements in Ambient Assisted Living Systems

Context: The increasing life expectancy of the world’s population is a reality, and combined with sharply declining birth rates, these advances in life expectancy could lead to a rapidly aging population around the world. Technologies such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) can provide services that enable older people to live independently, safely and healthily. During system development, it is important to ensure good specification of Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). These are requirements that define how the system will behave in certain situations and may impact the end goal of the software if not considered during the analysis and development of the project. Aims: To meet and identify all the needs and functions provided to the users of the system, this article provides a process for specifying and analyzing nonfunctional requirements in Ambient Assisted Living, called RS4AAL, which helps the requirements engineer to specify and analyze the important requirements in the development of this system by capturing the requirements with techniques such as storytelling, reuse, and legal requirements. Results: Based on systematic mapping, key nonfunctional requirements for the Health and Care in Life subdomain were identified, as well as some legal requirements that may impact system development. Conclusions: A key finding is that the personal context of older people, legal requirements such as ISO/PRF TS 823042, and AAL Guidelines for Ethics, Data Privacy and Security directly affect the specification of non-functional requirements and the design of systems. The RS4AAL helps with this mapping by showing the requirements engineer what to consider when designing AAL systems

Challenges on e-learning: From requirements engineering perspective

Nowadays, education offers great flexibility to learners in order to help them to succeed.E learning as knowledge management tool gives service to learners in disseminating and sharing information.Therefore, there is a lot of interaction from users in E-learning community that helps them to solve tasks in E-learning application.There are challenges to sustain E-learning service because users might get bored and infrequently use it.Requirements Engineering (RE) takes the opportunity to strengthen RE process by investigating how socio-technical requirements such as lack of social presence, feeling bored and lack of motivation can be transformed as socio-technical requirements and are available to be implemented by developers as agreed by users.Therefore, RE process should manage to capture socio-technical requirements in order to allow consistent motivation among learners.Requirements elicitation, as the initial stage in RE process, may improve its mechanism in eliciting socio-technical requirements for collaborative application such as E-learning. Hence, RE process and Elearning components must be carefully studied to ensure RE as in Software Engineering field can assist collaborative application to improve elicitation process and come out with a set of requirements before E-learning is implemented.This paper describes challenges in social interaction issue for E-learning environment and how RE sees these challenges

Generating User Stories in Groups with Prompts

Communicating about system requirements with user stories is a distinctive feature of Agile Software Development methods. While user stories make system requirements intelligible to both customers and technical developers, they also create new challenges for the requirements elicitation process such as personal bias and requirements coverage. In this study we propose that when elicited from groups instead of individuals, and with prompts, the number of stories generated and comprehensiveness of the stories is likely to increase. A lab experiment was conducted to examine these hypotheses is delineated in this paper. We found that prompting significantly increased the number of user stories generated as well as the comprehensiveness of the stories generated. We did not find a difference in user stories generated or comprehensiveness of stories generated by groups and individuals

Exploring Tacit Knowledge in Organizations

There has been a growing prevalent interest to explore the role of knowledge in organizations. Bhardwaj and Monin (2006) identified the knowledge of individuals\u27 as a valuable source of competitive advantage. An organizations well-rounded institutional memory- the organizations collective experiences (Rothwell & Poduch, 2004), fosters competitive advantage. There is a prevailing need to scrutinize the role of tacit knowledge in organizations and how it\u27s hard to articulate nature makes it difficult for organizations to acquire and preserve institutional memory value. The aim of this review is to illustrate that tacit knowledge contributes significantly to the institutional memory value, expansion and preservation. In an effort to simplify this relationship between tacit knowledge and institutional memory, a comprehensive literature search was performed. I first discuss the role of knowledge in organizations and use the literature on tacit knowledge as a guide to explain the importance of its elicitation for institutional memory expansion and preservation. I then propose: (1) the use of tacit knowledge elicitation as a mediator, and (2) recommend training and a learning organization environment as moderators, for the contribution to take place. Finally, I suggest that organizations: (a) Elicit tacit knowledge sharing at their human capital development training programs (b) develop and implement this trainings at managerial levels, and (c) a know-why method to elicit and capture tacit knowledge in a reference guide, to consequently add value to the institutional memory, I conclude with a discussion of implications and limitations for the proposed perspective, and provide suggestions for future research

Exploring Mechanisms in Tacit Knowledge Externalization: Preliminary Findings from Participatory Agricultural Innovation Practices in Ethiopia

Tacit knowledge is embedded in people’s experiences, expertise, know-how, skills, techniques, insights, judgments, actions or behaviors. This knowledge is a source of innovation that can provide dynamic responses to context specific problems. Effective exploitation and management of tacit knowledge is critical, but the subject of tacit knowledge in general and the process of its externalization and sharing in particular are still relatively unexplored and not fully understood. In addition, the agricultural sector has rarely been the topic of inquiry in research related to tacit knowledge elicitation and most previous studies focus on high tech industries and business organizations. This paper explored what mechanisms are being used to externalize tacit knowledge and what factors impact this process given the context of participatory agricultural research in Ethiopia. We applied a qualitative case study method using an in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis as data collection tool

Using the Arts for Food Research and Dialogue

This Briefing Paper is intended to share ideas and learning arising from the authors’ experiences of using arts-based methods in food research and engagement, as well as to give some insights into the issues that arose from a workshop for academics and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) developed by Brighton and Sussex Universities Food Network (BSUFN) and hosted by the Food Research Collaboration (FRC) in 2016. It examines the use of participatory and community-centred approaches to explore pressing food policy questions, as well as providing guidance on how to apply these methods in practice. It is intended to be relevant to academics, particularly those interested in using participatory action research methods, and CSOs working with community groups on food issues. The authors’ main interest is the way in which arts-based methods provide a set of tools which can reveal, and give voice to, perspectives on food issues which remain otherwise absent from research and policy debates. In the authors' experience, this happens either because community members are not asked for their views or because of the way in which much traditional/positivist/biomedical academic research is based around pre-determined research questions that do not provide adequate space for community members to explore and voice their own concerns. It could be said that to date, much food research has failed to meaningfully engage with the general public, both during the research process itself and in raising awareness and achieving changes in the food system, which the research evidence indicates needs to happen. The paper firstly outlines why food research is a necessary and important area of exploration. Following this it examines the development, lineage and underlying principles of participatory and arts-based methodologies as approaches to research. Three arts-based and participatory methods are then reviewed in greater detail: i. Photography and film ii. Drama, and iii. Collage. These three methods were the focus of the BSUFN/FRC workshop in 2016. For each of these three examples, theoretical and methodological implications and ethical issues are discussed, enabling readers to fully consider how and why they might apply these approaches. In reviewing these emerging and alternative approaches for engaging communities in research processes, this paper presents a consideration of ideas, narratives, positions and actions relating to food, research and knowledge construction. The authors believe this paper to be an important addition to debates around how arts based and participatory methods might improve the processes, impact and contribution of food research. The paper presents a collaborative effort between academics, researchers and civil society organisations (CSOs) all of whom are concerned with improving research, learning and engagement in relation to food. The paper concludes with recommendations and suggestions on how academics and CSOs might use these methods as part of their research and/or practice

Digital storytelling as a reflective practice tool in a community of professionals

This exploratory study is based on an ethnographic research about a group of food safety professionals (physicians, veterinarians, biologists, chemists, nutritionists and prevention technicians) that try to exchange information and solve critical work issues communicating their experiences in the form of digital stories. In fact they convey more detailed context than textual and verbal stories, facilitating tacit knowledge elicitation and reflective practices. The digital storytelling process helped the community to reach a higher level of awareness about their specific professional competencies and critical work issues, fostering high levels of commitment and motivation, transforming the community in a true Community of Practice