2 research outputs found
Informing Collaborative Information Visualisation through an Ethnography of Ambulance Control
Abstract. An ethnographic analysis of an ambulance control centre is presented, specifically investigating the design of information displays and their practical use in this setting. The spatial distribution of the displays around the control room is described and its consequences for cooperative work drawn out. From these analyses, we make several suggestions for information visualisations in virtual environments, including a design concept of multiple displays coexisting within a 3D environment as an alternative to the notion of 'immersive ' information visualisation more commonly encountered. The paper closes with a reflection on the relationship between ethnographic analysis and system development that ou r work here exemplifies
Recommended from our members
Intensely distributed nanoscience: co-ordinating scientific work in a large multi-sited cross-disciplinary nanomedical project
This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis is concerned with the study of biomedical scientific research work that is intensely
distributed, i.e. socially distributed across multiple institutions, sites, and disciplines.
Specifically, this PhD probes the ways in which scientists co-operating on multi-sited crossdisciplinary
projects, design, use and maintain information-based resources to conduct and coordinate
their experimental activities. The research focuses on the roles of information
artefacts, i.e. the tools, media and devices used to store, track, display, and retrieve
information in paper or electronic format, in helping the scientists integrate their activities to
achieve concerted action.
To examine how scientists in globally distributed settings organise and co-ordinate their
scientific work using information artefacts, a multi-method multi-sited study informed by
different ethnographic perspectives was conducted focused on a large European crossdisciplinary
translational research project in nanodiagnostics. Situated interviews with project
scientists, participant observations and participatory learning exercises were designed and
deployed. From the data analysis, several abstractions were developed to represent how the
joined utilisations of key information artefacts support the co-ordination of experimental
activities. Subsequently, a framework was developed to highlight key interactional strategies
that need to be managed by experimenters when using artefacts to organise their work cooperatively.
This framework was then used as a guiding device to identify innovative ways to
design future digital interactive systems to support the co-ordination of intensely distributed
scientific work.
From this study, several key findings came to light. We identify the role of the experimental
protocol acts as a co-ordinative map that is co-designed dynamically to disseminate various
instantiations of experimental executions across sites. We have also shed light on the ways the
protocol, the lab book and the material log are used jointly to support the articulation of
scientific work. The protocol and the lab book are used both locally and across co-operating
sites to support four repeatability and reproducibility levels that are key to experimental
validation. The use of the local protocol / lab book dyads at each site is further integrated with that of a centralised material log artefact to enable a system of exchange of scientific content
(e.g. experimental processes, intermediate results and observations) and experimental
materials (both physical materials and key information). We have found that this integration
into a co-ordinative cluster supports awareness and the articulation of experimental activities
both locally and across remote labs. From this understanding, we have derived several
sensitising tensions to frame the strategies that scientific practitioners need to manage when
designing their multi-sited experimental work and technologists should consider when
designing systems to support them: (1) formalisation / flexibility; (2) articulability / local
appropriateness; (3) scrutiny / tinkering; (4) accountability / applicability; (5) traceability /
improvisation and (6) lastingness / immediacy. Lastly, based on these tensions, we have
suggested a number of implications for the design of interactive information artefacts that can
help manage both local and multi-sited co-ordination in intensely distributed scientific
projects