Elements of a Theory of Design Artefacts: a contribution to critical systems development research. PhD Thesis.

The thesis emphasises material mediation in design, use and research by introducing the concept of design artefacts as a unifying perspective. This concept is based on a dialectical materialist approach comprising activity theory as a general perspective (mainly Engestrøm), and specifically the notion of primary, secondary and tertiary artefacts (Wartofsky). This background is complemented with the notion of boundary objects (Star), as mediators in boundary zones. Systems development is understood as a zone where heterogeneous praxes meet to change a given praxis through the construction and introduction of new (computer) artefacts; this zone is mediated by design artefacts, which make different sense to the various praxes (boundary objects). Four main themes are addressed by the thesis: Firstly, the notion of design artefacts as an integrating perspective on systems development research and praxis, is introduced and developed. Secondly, a uniform notion of development tying use and design together, is discussed in relation to designing for development in use, and in relation to the notion of design as the transformation of artefacts. Thirdly, a pragmatic philosophy of science based on the understanding of theories as design artefacts, is proposed. Fourthly, the issue of innovation and creativity, together with the role of the individual is programmatically pointed to

Computer Applications as Mediators of Design and Use

The present report constitutes together with 21 submitted papers the author's doctor's dissertation. This dissertation summarizes an understanding of computers as the materials that we shape in design, on the one hand, and the artifacts that we use, in work and other everyday activities on the other. The presented work is primarily methodological and design-oriented, i.e. it is concerned with changing computer applications and with understanding them as changing and as part of change

FCAIR 2012 Formal Concept Analysis Meets Information Retrieval Workshop co-located with the 35th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2013) March 24, 2013, Moscow, Russia

International audienceFormal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a mathematically well-founded theory aimed at data analysis and classifiation. The area came into being in the early 1980s and has since then spawned over 10000 scientific publications and a variety of practically deployed tools. FCA allows one to build from a data table with objects in rows and attributes in columns a taxonomic data structure called concept lattice, which can be used for many purposes, especially for Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval. The Formal Concept Analysis Meets Information Retrieval (FCAIR) workshop collocated with the 35th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2013) was intended, on the one hand, to attract researchers from FCA community to a broad discussion of FCA-based research on information retrieval, and, on the other hand, to promote ideas, models, and methods of FCA in the community of Information Retrieval

Information support for the sense-making activities of managers

This thesis addresses the problem of how computer technologies and associated systems can be used effectively to provide information, in particular organisational performance information, to support managers in their strategic activities, with particular reference to managers in public, professional bureaucracies such as universities. The objective of the thesis is to answer the following questions: 1. What do different disciplines and bodies of knowledge cwrently say about this problem? 2. Is there a theoretical approach that can provide a holistic, contextual and dynamic understanding of this problem? 3. Can this theory be used to develop a holistic, contextual and dynamic model of the problem? 4. Can the model provide guidelines or methodologies that can be of general use to real organisations faced with this problem? The approach taken is one of a qualitative, interpretive epistemology and the theoretical basis is that of the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) based on the work of the Russian psychologists Vygotsky (1978) and Leontiev (1981). Following a review of the literature, a study was conducted of five projects aimed at the provision of information to management at a single site. This study used the historical research methodology of Mason et al (1997). From this study a new holistic model was developed of the use of computer technologies and associated systems in providing information to support managers in their strategic activities. This model is contrasted with a model of the same problem based on the current literature. A framework, derived from the model, is presented. The new model and framework were applied to a project concerning the creation of a prototype enterprise information system for research output performance in a university. This project, guided by the model, captured the imagination of management and is a significant improvement on previous attempts, thus verifying the validity of the model and the CHAT approach

Answering questions about archived, annotated meetings

Retrieving information from archived meetings is a new domain of information retrieval that has received increasing attention in the past few years. Search in spontaneous spoken conversations has been recognized as more difficult than text-based document retrieval because meeting discussions contain two levels of information: the content itself, i.e. what topics are discussed, but also the argumentation process, i.e. what conflicts are resolved and what decisions are made. To capture the richness of information in meetings, current research focuses on recording meetings in Smart-Rooms, transcribing meeting discussion into text and annotating discussion with semantic higher-level structures to allow for efficient access to the data. However, it is not yet clear what type of user interface is best suited for searching and browsing such archived, annotated meetings. Content-based retrieval with keyword search is too naive and does not take into account the semantic annotations on the data. The objective of this thesis is to assess the feasibility and usefulness of a natural language interface to meeting archives that allows users to ask complex questions about meetings and retrieve episodes of meeting discussions based on semantic annotations. The particular issues that we address are: the need of argumentative annotation to answer questions about meetings; the linguistic and domain-specific natural language understanding techniques required to interpret such questions; and the use of visual overviews of meeting annotations to guide users in formulating questions. To meet the outlined objectives, we have annotated meetings with argumentative structure and built a prototype of a natural language understanding engine that interprets questions based on those annotations. Further, we have performed two sets of user experiments to study what questions users ask when faced with a natural language interface to annotated meeting archives. For this, we used a simulation method called Wizard of Oz, to enable users to express questions in their own terms without being influenced by limitations in speech recognition technology. Our experimental results show that technically it is feasible to annotate meetings and implement a deep-linguistic NLU engine for questions about meetings, but in practice users do not consistently take advantage of these features. Instead they often search for keywords in meetings. When visual overviews of the available annotations are provided, users refer to those annotations in their questions, but the complexity of questions remains simple. Users search with a breadth-first approach, asking questions in sequence instead of a single complex question. We conclude that natural language interfaces to meeting archives are useful, but that more experimental work is needed to find ways to incent users to take advantage of the expressive power of natural language when asking questions about meetings

The use of education for sustainability websites for community education in Chile

An increasing recognition of the impact of human activity on the natural environment has oriented attention to the role of education for sustainability (EfS) as a means to create more ecologically literate and sustainable societies. One premise is that socio-ecological sustainability issues and challenges are immediate and locally rooted. This calls for educational interventions that promote participative action by local communities, recognizing that adults in those communities need to engage in action and change towards sustainability. In relation to this, current evidence indicates that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Internet have the potential not only to promote teaching and learning for EfS, but also to increase knowledge, and promote attitude and behaviour change of individuals and the broader community. In addition, sustainability issues are interrelated with other social dimensions with inherent complexity. Similarly, the design, implementation and use of ICT in education bring together learning and technology in complex ways. To address these types of educational contexts, both the ICT and EfS literature support a holistic and systems thinking approach. This suggests that developing a theoretical framework that informs the development of EfS websites, based on a systems thinking approach, might be an effective way to enhance ecological literacy, and action competence for socio-ecological sustainability at the community level. Within this context, this PhD research study aimed to investigate the use of Internet websites for community EfS in Chile. A theoretical model for the design and development of EfS websites aimed at the community and non-formal level was developed based on literature from EfS, systems thinking, ICT, and community education. This model was trialled in an authentic context in Chile, through the design and build of an EfS website addressing the ecological sustainability issues of a lake, and its impact on the local community and visitors. Key considerations of this model relate to a deep understanding of the local, social and cultural characteristics and needs of the target community, and associated sustainability issues; the use of culturally meaningful ICT affordances such as multimedia, Web 2.0, and social networking tools; and the inclusion of EfS pedagogical considerations and strategies for learning, such as promoting ecological literacy, critical thinking and action competence through knowledge integration and challenging beliefs. Within a naturalistic paradigm, using an interpretive methodology, and following an activity theory analytical framework, the evaluation of the use of the EfS website by 24 local participants was conducted through the following research design. Firslty participants were administered a pre-intervention questionnaire, which assessed participants’ prior knowledge related to ICT use, and to local sustainability issues. Immediately after they were invited to visit and browse the EfS website for a period ranging between 10 to 20 minutes. Following participants’ use of the EfS website, a post-intervention interview explored participants’ perceptions, understanding change, and motivations to take action. Finally, a follow-up online survey assessed participants’ change in understanding, actions, and adoption of sustainable living principles, based on revisits to the EfS website during a period of five weeks, five months after their first visit. Findings indicate that EfS websites are culturally shaped tools with the potential for facilitating transformative understanding processes, and empowering community members in engaging in action and participation towards socio-ecological sustainability at the local community level. A key aspect of the successful use of EfS websites for community education is to achieve meaningfulness and relevance through the website on local community members. Different considerations from the theoretical model appeared to have contributed in to the achievement of such relevance in the Chilean community addressed in this study. These are fully presented and explored in the coming chapters. The expected contribution of this study is to inform the literature on the effective use of ICT to enhance practice of EfS at the community level