7,508 research outputs found
Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies
This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have
been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers
and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of
computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more
recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that
have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper,
it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in
undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of
socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach
common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate
further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research,
design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development,
like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User
Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of
bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical
construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote
further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT
design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and
modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D.
Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded
Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title
"Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an
EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/
Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing
This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system â Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today.
Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffmanâs understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhanâs way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility.
While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in peopleâs everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like
Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds
This paper introduces âinfrastructural speculations,â an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the âlifeworldâ of artifactsâthe social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds
From Offshore Operation to Onshore Simulator: Using Visualized Ethnographic Outcomes to Work with Systems Developers
This paper focuses on the process of translating insights from a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)-based study, conducted on a vessel at sea, into a model that can assist systems developers working with simulators, which are used by vessel operators for training purposes on land. That is, the empirical study at sea brought about rich insights into cooperation, which is important for systems developers to know about and consider in their designs. In the paper, we establish a model that primarily consists of a âcomputational artifactâ. The model is designed to support researchers working with systems developers. Drawing on marine examples, we focus on the translation process and investigate how the model serves to visualize work activities; how it addresses relations between technical and computational artifacts, as well as between functions in technical systems and functionalities in cooperative systems. In turn, we link design back to fieldwork studies
Seeing ethnographically: teaching ethnography as part of CSCW
While ethnography is an established part of CSCW research, teaching and
learning ethnography presents unique and distinct challenges. This paper discusses a
study of fieldwork and analysis amongst a group of students learning ethnography as part
of a CSCW & design course. Studying the studentsâ practices we explore fieldwork as a
learning experience, both learning about fieldsites as well as learning the practices of
ethnography. During their fieldwork and analysis the students used a wiki to collaborate,
sharing their field and analytic notes. From this we draw lessons for how ethnography
can be taught as a collaborative analytic process and discuss extensions to the wiki to
better support its use for collaborating around fieldnotes. In closing we reflect upon the
role of learning ethnography as a practical hands on â rather than theoretical â pursuit
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