Context-Based Workplace Awareness: Concepts and Technologies for Supporting Distributed Awareness in a Hospital Environment

Abstract. Maintaining an awareness of the working context of fellow co-workers is crucial to successful cooperation in a workplace. For mobile, non co-located workers, however, such workplace awareness is hard to maintain. This paper investigates how context-aware computing can be used to facilitate workplace awareness. In particular, we present the concept of Context-Based Workplace Awareness, which is derived from years of in-depth studies of hospital work and the design of computer supported cooperative work technologies to support the distributed collaboration and coordination of clinical work within large hospitals. This empirical background has revealed that an awareness especially of the social, spatial, temporal, and activity context plays a crucial role in the coordination of work in hospitals. The paper then presents and discusses technologies designed to support context-based workplace awareness, namely the AWARE architecture, and the AwarePhone and AwareMedia applications. Based on almost 2 year' deployment of the technologies in a large hospital, the paper discuss how the four dimension of context-based workplace awareness play out in the coordination of clinical work

Niveles de Narrativa Corporativa de la Responsabilidad Social

Las organizaciones tienen la necesidad de narrarse como socialmente responsables y sustentables a través de sus estrategias de comunicación. Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo identificar las características cualitativas de los primeros cinco niveles de la Teoría de la Motivación de la Narrativa Social. La base metodológica consistió en el desarrollo de entrevistas con expertos en ciencias de la comunicación para identificar los aspectos cualitativos y realizar una vinculación con las dimensiones de la Triple Rendición de Cuentas. Se encontró que la sola presencia y uso de los conceptos “responsabilidad social” y “sustentabilidad”, no generan una narrativa comprobable y confiable sobre la intención de la organización de acreditarse así

Can Automated Smart-Homes increase Energy Efficiency and Grid Flexibility? - A Case Study of Stavanger, Norway investigating barriers and justice implications -

Artificial intelligence (AI) advocates deem it essential for the energy transition. Such a complex and penetrative set of technologies that impact everyday lives must be implemented cautiously. This thesis examines barriers to the diffusion of AI-based, automated smart homes at the household and industry scales. It examines an AI system that acts as an intermediary between households, electricity distribution companies and energy producers for domestic energy efficiency and grid flexibility. The thesis focuses on the ethical and justice implications of AI. It draws on a case study of Stavanger in Norway to investigate how AI can fairly enable energy efficiency and grid flexibility. The methods used include a small questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews, and secondary research. Grounded theory is used to theorise barriers for households, qualitative content analysis identifies barriers for industry, and findings are also interpreted through an energy justice lens. The findings reveal multi-layered barriers and justice concerns related to the diffusion of automated smart-homes. The main barriers for households include functionality, saturation, and data management. For industry, barriers relate to economic, technical, regulatory, and market aspects. Justice and ethical implications linked with AI in the energy context are identified in terms of distributive, procedural and recognition streams of energy justice. The thesis argues that economic incentives, supportive policies, and an enabling market to involve actors are necessary to enable complex AI systems feasible for smart grids. For consumers, technologies must target a wide range of lifestyles and preferences for sufficient market saturation to make AI systems viable. Moreover, ethical AI requires a combination of regulations anchored in energy policies and the development and operationalisation of internal guidelines. The thesis concludes that while AI can aid transitions to low-carbon societies, failure to account for the humans involved and affected by its roll-out risks doing more harm than good

Framing the User Experience in Mobile Newsmaking with Smartphones

Mobile handheld devices are changing the practices of newsmaking, the roles of journalists and readers in it, and the published news in profound ways. The activity of mobile newsmaking aims at a tangible outcome, the news, which are consumed by an audience. Relatively little research exists in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) that explores what is user experience of mobile systems in goal-oriented creative activity in organizational settings and especially in the natural contexts of use. This thesis addresses this gap by focusing on user experience, which arises when smartphones are used in mobile newsmaking to create and publish online and print news in the newspaper industry. This thesis has two main goals. First, it aims to gain a holistic understanding of user experience in mobile newsmaking with smartphones from the viewpoint of mobile reporters as users. Second, it explores how mobile and location-based assignments assigned by the newsroom can support cooperative newsmaking. This thesis contains nine scientific publications based on twelve case studies. The research approach of the studies is primarily qualitative. Seven of the studies included the usage of a mobile service client for newsmaking in the mobile context of use. Two of the twelve studies concentrated on reader participation in newsmaking as a form of mobile crowdsourcing. The rest of the studies focused on professional use. Over one hundred participants participated in the studies, of which a majority were students of visual journalism with prior work experience in journalism. The empirical findings are synthesized in the thesis summary. The model of user experience in mobile newsmaking with smartphones and the process model for mobile assignment-based processes summarize the thesis work on user experience and cooperative processes. User experience in mobile newsmaking is constructed in a process of using the mobile system in a goal-oriented and creative activity in the mobile context of use. The activity of mobile newsmaking consists of several subactivities starting from encountering a newsworthy event to the publishing of the news. It may include mobile reporter’s cooperation with others, who are in the field or in the newsroom. The constructed model of user experience has seven main components: user, system, the context of use, tangible outcome, descriptive attributes, overall evaluative judgments, and consequences. The model emphasizes the characteristics of the tangible outcome of system use (news material, news) as a fourth component that can contribute to user experience in addition to the characteristics of the user, system and the context of use. User’s experienced quality of the system is described by verbally expressible descriptive attributes divided to four components. The components of the descriptive attributes are the quality of the outcome (technical and content-based quality) and the perceived impacts (benefits and costs) that complement instrumental (pragmatic) and non-instrumental (hedonic) qualities from prior models of user experience. Ease-of-use, speed, light weight, small-size, unobtrusiveness, reliability, connectivity, controllability, being always along, and multifunctionality are key attributes for positive user experience. For users, pride of the outcome, fit with needs, motivations and goals, feeling of being in control, mastery of the system and activity, and the fit of the system to user’s role and situation are important. The process model for mobile assignment-based processes illustrates the coordination and cooperation related information and communication needs of the mobile reporter and the newsroom at differenct phases of newsmaking. The constructed models and synthesized results can aid academics and practitioners when designing, studying, and evaluating solutions for mobile work that can be complex, cooperative and creative and which aims at a perceivable or tangible outcome. They can also aid in recognizing the critical success factors of the solutions for different types of users and circumstances of the context of use. Further, results can aid when selecting and planning ICT solutions for media organizations and when planning the related editorial processes, workflows, and work roles. Finally, the constructed models can be used and validated in future research in other fields of mobile work and crowdsourcing