The role of boundary objects in the co-evolution of design and use: the KMP project experimentation

Nowadays, it is widely recognized that an ICT tool cannot be built without knowing who will use it and what they will do with. In this perspective, Human-Computer Interaction community (Carroll, 1990; Jarke, Tung Bui and Carroll, 1998; Young and Barnard, 1987; Young and al., 1989) developed a scenario-based approach contrasting with the traditional information system design. The scenario describes an existing or envisioned system from the perspective of one or more users and includes a narration of their goals, plans and reactions (Rosson and Carroll, 2002). As a result, design is founded on the use of scenarios as a central representation for the analysis and design of use. The scenario-based design appears to be a first step in the integration of users in the design of ICT tool. However, we would like to underline in this paper a more active role of users in the design process. According to Orlikowski (2000) while a technology can be seen to have been constructed with particular materials and inscribed with developers' assumptions and knowledge about the world at a point in time, it is only when this technology is used in recurrent social practices that it can be said to structure user's action. The use of technology in recurrent social practices must be considered because how technological properties will for the moment be used or appropriate is not inherent or predetermined. Finally, this approach leads us to dissociate the designers' world from the users' world. In this perspective, the design project is the result of the co-evolution and the convergence of both worlds: on the one hand, the world of design and a first integration of users by scenarios; on the other hand, the world of users where innovation is the art of interesting an increasing number of allies who will make the world of design stronger and stronger. The objective of this paper is to understand the mechanisms of interaction between the world of design and that of users i.e. between loops of co-design and loops of uses. Indeed, according to Akrich, Callon and Latour (1988) we adopt a whirlwind model of innovation. In this perspective, “innovation continuously transforms itself according to the trials to which it is submitted i.e. of the “interessements” tried out » (Akrich and al., 2002: 7). We will demonstrate that the key success of an innovation depends on the co-evolution and convergence of design and use around boundary objects developed during this process (see Figure 1). More specifically, we will show the role of boundary objects on the integration and on the involvement of users in the design process. In order to do so, we carried out an empirical research – the Knowledge Management Platform project - located in the scientific park of Sophia Antipolis (Alpes-Maritimes, France), focusing on the Telecom Valley® (TV) association which gathers the main actors of the Sophia Antipolis Telecom cluster. Indeed, the KMP project aims to build a semantic web service of competencies in order to enhance exchange and combination dynamics of knowledge within the Telecom cluster thanks to an interactive mapping of competencies. This paper will comprise three parts: Based on the researches of Akrich, Callon and Latour (1988), Hatchuel and Mollet (1986), Orlikowski (2000), Romme and Endenburg (2006) we will identify and analyse in a first part the process of design. The combination of these approaches leads us to distinguish the design' world from the users' world. In this perspective, the success of an innovation may be explained by the co-evolution and the convergence of these two worlds. In this process, we suggest that boundary objects play a key role in the convergence of these two worlds. We will present in a second part the empirical study of the KMP project within the TV network. The KMP project involved researchers from socio-economic sciences (GREDEG Laboratory, UNSA-CNRS, Rodige and Latapses teams), cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence (INRIA, Acacia team), telecommunications (GET) and users (TV) for a total force of 187 men per month for a two-year period (2003-2005). At this present time this project is being set up in a pre-industrialization phase, supported by TV and the PACA region. Here, we will analyse the specific process of design experimented by KMP. Finally, the third part discusses the role of boundary objects in the KMP experimentation. In this part, we will show the evolution of boundary objects during the loops of design. More specifically, the focus will be on the emergence of compromises between designers and users, their materialisation in boundary objects and finally their evolution during the design' process.boundary objects, IS development, actor network theory

Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks

Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results

An Approach to Agent-Based Service Composition and Its Application to Mobile

This paper describes an architecture model for multiagent systems that was developed in the European project LEAP (Lightweight Extensible Agent Platform). Its main feature is a set of generic services that are implemented independently of the agents and can be installed into the agents by the application developer in a flexible way. Moreover, two applications using this architecture model are described that were also developed within the LEAP project. The application domain is the support of mobile, virtual teams for the German automobile club ADAC and for British Telecommunications

Prototyping the recursive internet architecture: the IRATI project approach

In recent years, many new Internet architectures are being proposed to solve shortcomings in the current Internet. A lot of these new architectures merely extend the current TCP/IP architecture and hence do not solve the fundamental cause of these problems. The Recursive Internet Architecture (RINA) is a true new network architecture, developed from scratch, building on lessons learned in the past. RINA prototyping efforts have been ongoing since 2010, but a prototype on which a commercial RINA implementation can be built has not been developed yet. The goal of the IRATI research project is to develop and evaluate such a prototype in Linux/OS. This article focuses on the software design required to implement a network stack in Linux/OS. We motivate the placement of, and communication between, the different software components in either the kernel or user space. The first open source prototype of the IRATI implementation of RINA will be available in June 2014 for researchers, developers, and early adopters

High performance network function virtualization for user-oriented services

The Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm proposes to transform those network functions today running on dedicated and often closed appliances (e.g., firewall, wan accelerator) into pure software images, called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), which can be consolidated and executed on high-volume standard servers. In this context, this dissertation focuses on the possibility of enabling each single end user (and not only network operators) to set up network services by means of NFV, allowing him to custoimize the set of services that are active on his Internet connection. This goal mainly requires to address flexibility and performance issues. Regarding to the former, it is important: (i) to support services including both network (e.g., firewall) and cloud (e.g., storage server) applications; (ii) to allow the user to define the service with an intuitive and high-level abstraction, hiding infrastructure-layer details. Instead, with respect to performance, multiple software-based services operating on the user's traffic should not introduce penalties in the user’s Internet experience. This dissertation solves the above issues by proposing a number of improvements in the context of Network Function Virtualization, both in terms of high level models and architectures to define and instantiate network services, and in terms of mechanisms to efficiently interconnect VNFs. Experimental results demonstrate that the goal of allowing end users to deploy services operating on their own traffic is feasible without impacting the Internet experience

Nurturing the Accumulation of Innovations: Lessons from the Internet

The innovations that became the foundation for the Internet originate from two eras that illustrate two distinct models for accumulating innovations over the long haul. The pre-commercial era illustrates the operation of several useful non-market institutional arrangements. It also illustrates a potential drawback to government sponsorship – in this instance, truncation of exploratory activity. The commercial era illustrates a rather different set of lessons. It highlights the extraordinary power of market-oriented and widely distributed investment and adoption, which illustrates the power of market experimentation to foster innovative activity. It also illustrates a few of the conditions necessary to unleash value creation from such accumulated lessons, such as standards development and competition, and nurturing legal and regulatory policies.

Transportable Applications Environment (TAE) Plus: A NASA user interface development and management system

The transportable Applications Environment Plus (TAE Plus), developed at the NASA Goddard Space FLight Center, is a portable, What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) user interface development and management system. Its primary objective is to provide an integrated software environment that allows interactive prototyping and development of graphical user interfaces, as well as management of the user interface within the operational domain. TAE Plus is being applied to many types of applications, and what TAE Plus provides, how the implementation has utilizes state-of-the-art technologies within graphic workstations, and how it has been used both within and without NASA are discussed