Capturing Practices of Knowledge Work for Information Systems Design

Despite abundant tools and systems claiming support for knowledge work, many have failed to be accepted by users. Designing information systems (ISs) for knowledge work is a challenging task, but results on how knowledge work is actually performed is scarce and so are instruments that help to translate results into artefacts useful for IS design. This paper takes the perspective of work practices and proposes an approach to collaboratively study and analyze practices of knowledge work. The approach uses stereotypes of users, called personas, in order to inform IS design activities. The persona concept is enriched with respect to behaviour concerning practices of knowledge work. Furthermore, a procedure for selecting primary personas out of a set of personas is suggested based on cluster analysis. The approach is illustrated with the case of a collaborative ethnographically-informed study of seven organizations in four European countries. The proposed approach is the more suitable, the more innovative, big and diverse the project, the planned product, the developers and the target group are. User-centered design activities benefit from personas by reduced effort for involving end-users and a continuous focus on characteristics of critical users and their way of performing practices of knowledge work

Do You Understand Our Understanding? Personas as Hermeneutic Tools in Social Technology Projects

Personas, prevalent in information systems design and implementation, are often positioned as aesthetic creations imitating technology “end users”. As such, there is an inherent assumption that end user outcomes can be known prior to technology usage in practice. This assumption, however, becomes problematic in malleable end user software (MEUS) contexts, in which concrete usage is unknowable a priori. Through an auto-ethnographic account of a unique case of a small consultancy, the Ripple Effect Group, attuned to the nature of MEUS, we explore a novel approach to personas in social technology projects. We turn to the work of Gadamer (1975) to outline two distinct views of “mimesis” for contrasting the dominant portrayal of personas in the literature compared to our empirical context. Our paper challenges conventional thinking surrounding personas, and offers a practical approach, and preliminary theorizing, for personas as hermeneutic tools to convey meaning for those involved in MEUS projects

Un enfoque basado en simplicidad para el diseño de aplicaciones móviles sensibles al contexto

La introducción de cada vez más aplicaciones móviles en la vida diaria de las personas indica la necesidad de proporcionar interfaces de usuario sencillas de usar. Este trabajo introduce un enfoque basado en Simplicidad para el diseño de aplicaciones móviles sensibles al contexto. En primer lugar, define un conjunto de guías para proporcionar simplicidad. En segundo lugar introduce un rol Simplificador que tiene el objetivo de detectar las complejidades de los diseños de manera objetiva y proveer soluciones a dichos problemas. Asimismo, en tercer y último lugar introduce un conjunto de patrones de diseño de interfaz de usuario de aplicaciones móviles sensibles al contexto. De esta forma, este conjunto de patrones trata de proporcionar el conocimiento suficiente que permita la simplificación de interfaces de este tipo de aplicaciones.Muñoz Julve, P. (2011). Un enfoque basado en simplicidad para el diseño de aplicaciones móviles sensibles al contexto. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/15594Archivo delegad

Sistema Inteligente de Apoio ao Coach

O coaching é um processo que permite ajudar um ou mais indivíduos a definirem e saberem como concretizar os seus objetivos, sejam eles pessoais ou profissionais. Atualmente, existe um interesse e procura crescente de pessoas com experiência nesta área (designados por coaches) por parte de empresas, equipas desportivas, escolas e outras organizações, com a finalidade de obter um maior rendimento. De forma a ajudar os intervenientes no processo, este documento demonstra a necessidade de existir uma ferramenta de apoio que permite aos coaches gerirem melhor a sua atividade profissional. A pesquisa e estudo efetuados procuram responder a este caso, desenvolvendo um sistema informático inteligente de apoio ao coach dotado de uma interface centrada no utilizador. Antes de iniciar o desenvolvimento de um sistema inteligente é necessário realizar e apresentar um levantamento do estado da arte, mais concretamente sobre a interação homem-computador, modelação do perfil de utilizador e processo de coaching, que apresenta os fundamentos teóricos para a escolha da metodologia de desenvolvimento adequado. São apresentadas posteriormente as fases constituintes do modelo de desenvolvimento de interfaces escolhido, a engenharia de usabilidade, que se inicia com uma análise detalhada, permitindo de seguida uma estruturação dos conhecimentos obtidos e a aplicação de linhas de orientação estipuladas, finalizando com testes de utilização e respetivo feedback dos utilizadores. O protótipo desenvolvido distingue utilizadores com diferentes características, através de uma classificação por níveis e permite gerir todo o processo de coaching efetuado a outras pessoas ou ao próprio utilizador. O facto de existir uma classificação dos utilizadores faz com que a interação entre sistema e utilizadores seja diferente e adaptada às necessidades de cada um. O resultado dos testes de utilização com um caso prático e dos questionários efetuados permite detetar se o modelo foi bem-sucedido e funciona corretamente e o que é necessário alterar no futuro para facilitar a interação e satisfazer as necessidades de cada utilizador.Coaching is a process that helps one or more individuals to know how to define and achieve their goals, whether personal or professional. Nowadays, there is an increasing interest and demand for people with experience in this area (called coaches) from businesses, sports teams, schools and other organizations, in order to obtain a greater performance. In order to help those involved in the process, this document shows the need for a support tool that allows coaches to better manage their professional activity. The research and study conducted seek to meet this need, developing an intelligent computer system to support the coach enhanced with a user-centered interface. Before starting the development of an intelligent system it is necessary to conduct a survey of the state of the art, more specifically on human-computer interaction, user profile modeling and the coaching process, which presents the theoretical foundations for the choice of the appropriate development methodology. The constituent phases of the selected interfaces development model, usability engineering, are then presented, starting with a detailed analysis, allowing then a structuring of the acquired knowledge and an application of the laid down guidelines, concluded with user testing and feedback from respective users. The developed prototype distinguishes users with different characteristics through tiers and allows them to manage the whole process of coaching made either to someone else or to the user himself. The fact that there is a user classification makes the interaction between the system and the user different and adapted to the needs of each user. The result of usability testing with a case study and questionnaires conducted allows to detect if the model was successful and works properly and what is required to change in the future to facilitate interaction and meet the needs of each user

The Role of Practical Reasoning and Typification in Consumer Analytics Work: An Ethnomethodological Study

Traditional scholarship views quantitative people-categorization in the workplace—i.e. the use of big data to group consumers and categorize their cultures—as primarily a problem of technical and statistical optimization. By contrast, my thesis emphasizes a very different research dimension: namely, the role that practical reasoning plays as workers organize themselves locally to categorize and apply data-based groups. Drawing on the ethnomethodological understanding of practical reasoning, I focus on the way the locally organized talk accomplishes people-categorization as a self-contained activity. Specifically, I will argue that practical reasoning shapes the way workers, through their talk, combine technology, conversation, and everyday practice to render scenes as reasonable and accountable in their attempt to anticipate, understand, and apply consumer preferences, behaviors, and so on. To do this, analysts should go beyond standard empirical methods to adopt a more radically reflexive stance toward workplace discourse. Next, I will argue that the benefits of adopting such an interpretive methodological stance in this setting are threefold: first, this approach will help market researchers and design professionals rethink how they conduct market segmentation and persona development, two important techniques debated in academia, but used extensively in professional settings to design products, processes, and marketing plans. I will show that “practical” actors, through their locally organized practices, make and find in ordinary taken-for-granted ways “market segmentation” and “persona development” as reasonable ways of assembling the world of people-categorization in the workplace. Second, this approach broadens arguments about the “social life of methods” to include professions outside of the academy that apply statistical methods to big data, and to radically consider our relationship with technology. Furthermore, I will argue that part of understanding practical reasoning in the workplace includes identifying the hold that the unquestioned commitment to expanding technology has on discourse. For the latter, I adopt a radical interpretive perspective in order to reveal the irony of our focus on expanding our human powers through technology. To support my claims, I have divided my argument into four main sections, each one given its own chapter. Chapter 1 reviews how digital advertising workers combine big data about groups of people and their culture with other resources to build to a finished technical product. Chapter 2 outlines how these same workers rely on interpretive methods during the conceptual development of big data people segments. Chapter 3 demonstrates how analysts rely on interpretive methods and background expectancies during the process of accessing, extracting, and analyzing big data about groups of people and their culture. These methods can help professionals achieve a richer understanding of consumer culture, and consequently, can help them make better big-data application decisions throughout the design cycle. Chapter 4 takes a radical interpretive case study format and demonstrates how treating digital advertising worker dialogue as discourse reveals important methods for designers, for workers and for social inquirers. In this final Chapter, I show how a very particular example of a stretch of talk about a piece of technology can be examined as a cultural expression of the desire to expand human powers, and I show how the abstract idea of the desire to expand human powers can be critically addressed as a possibility and actualization in its own right. The analysis in Chapter 4 reveals the seen but unnoticed assumption embedded in the culture concerning the unquestioned commitment to expanding technology, which, it can be argued, has undermined our capacity to talk about purpose or point; instead, the talk takes for granted the assumption that there is only one purpose: expanding our human powers. The principle of expanding our human powers through technology does not just have to be assumed; it can and should be critically engaged. This engagement is accomplished by drawing on radical interpretive approaches to modernity, including Grant (1969), and Arendt (1958)

User-created personas: a four case multi-ethnic study of persona artefact co-design in pastoral and Urban Namibia with ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and San communities

A persona is an artefact widely used in technology design to aid communicational processes between designers, users and other stakeholders involved in projects. Persona originated in the Global North as an interpretative portrayal of a group of users with commonalities. Persona lacks empirical research in the Global South, while projects appearing in the literature are often framed under the philosophy of User-Centred Design –this indicates they are anchored in western epistemologies. This thesis postulates persona depictions are expected to differ across locales, and that studying differences and similarities in such representations is imperative to avoid misrepresentations that in turn can lead to designerly miscommunications, and ultimately to unsuitable technology designs. The importance of this problematic is demonstrated through four exploratory case studies on persona artefacts co-designed with communities from four Namibian ethnicities, namely ovaHerero, ovaHimba, Ovambo and San. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby results for each ethnicity materialise in different ways, recounts and storylines: romanticised persona archetypes versus reality with ovaHerero; collective persona representations with ovaHimba; individualised personas with Ovambo, although embedded in narratives of collectivism and interrelatedness with other personas; and renderings of two contradictory personas of their selves with a group of San youth according to either being on their own (i.e. inspiring and aspirational) or mixed with other ethnic groups (i.e. ostracised). This thesis advocates for User-Created Personas (UCP) as a potentially valid tactic and methodology to iteratively pursue conceptualisations of persona artefacts that are capable to communicate localised nuances critical to designing useful and adequate technologies across locales: Methodologies to endow laypeople to co-design persona self-representations and the results and appraisals provided are this thesis’ main contribution to knowledge