The Role of Users in Prototypical and Infrastructural Systems Design

This theoretical study examines the role of users in an infrastructural systems design. We analyzed different perspectives and used theories on infrastructure, long-term factors in infrastructure, and the role of users in infrastructural systems design. By doing this we demonstrated how prototypical design has been used in infrastructural systems design and how the users’ role has been taken into account. This study summarizes infrastructuring modes, purposes, activities, and methods and also offers both theoretical and practical contributions. First, we offer a new view on prototypical design as it is conceptualized for infrastructural systems design. Second, as a practical contribution, this study provides valuable knowledge to end users and domain and information systems practitioners, especially regarding how information systems artefacts can contribute to infrastructural design and vice versa

Sensemaking Practices in the Everyday Work of AI/ML Software Engineering

This paper considers sensemaking as it relates to everyday software engineering (SE) work practices and draws on a multi-year ethnographic study of SE projects at a large, global technology company building digital services infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Our findings highlight the breadth of sensemaking practices in AI/ML projects, noting developers' efforts to make sense of AI/ML environments (e.g., algorithms/methods and libraries), of AI/ML model ecosystems (e.g., pre-trained models and "upstream"models), and of business-AI relations (e.g., how the AI/ML service relates to the domain context and business problem at hand). This paper builds on recent scholarship drawing attention to the integral role of sensemaking in everyday SE practices by empirically investigating how and in what ways AI/ML projects present software teams with emergent sensemaking requirements and opportunities

User Participation in Infrastructuring: Exploring the Space for Action

This paper addresses the concept of participation in the context of design and transformation of a health information infrastructure. Recent work on transformation of health information infrastructures shows that bottom-up user-driven processes are preferred, however, the role of the user in infrastructuring remains under-researched. We investigate user representatives\u27 space for participation in design of an infrastructure, based on the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design. We take a user perspective to infrastructuring, investigating the work of user representatives (health workers) who engage in technology design, requiring engagement with local practices in shaping data practices. We have conducted a longitudinal case study on the design and development of a data platform for patient handover in a large Norwegian municipality. We contribute with an understanding of participation in the transformation of infrastructures as user representatives engage local organizations as both facilitators for their own design process, i.e. designers preparing and transforming their local services, as well as participants into design of the infrastructure, i.e. designers shaping technology. We contribute to literature on infrastructuring by showing how user representatives explore possbilities for action, shaping the infrastructuring process

Designing Solidarity Cryptocurrencies: Dialogic Tension Between Community-Centered and Techno-Centered Design Frames

While cryptocurrencies are related to profit-driven actors, communitarian movements have decades of experience with social-driven currencies, such as community currencies. This research investigates the meshing of these two disparate worlds that results in the design of a solidarity cryptocurrency, a phenomenon that connects the blockchain infrastructure of cryptocurrency to scaling the social perspective of community currencies. However, making the connection between these two technologies brings a new question to IS design: how can different frames from multiple social actors be integrated into designing a solidarity cryptocurrency infrastructure? We drew upon the design ethnography methodology and actively participated in designing a solidarity cryptocurrency to answer that question. Based on concepts from infrastructuring, a multi-relational and socio-technical approach to infrastructure designing, we propose that designing a solidarity cryptocurrency lies on a dialogic tension between techno-centered and community-centered frames, representing the relational process that emerges when connecting two disparate technologie

Nomadic Sharing: Information Infrastructures in the Sharing Economy

This research examined the role of information infrastructures in decentralized contexts of the sharing economy. The community studied was a group of nomadic workers known as digital nomads. An investigation of three online forums was conducted and elements of emergence and generativity were identified in the community’s patterns of sharing and access across information infrastructure.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Academic librarians’ Twitter practices and the production of knowledge infrastructures in higher education

In recent years, academic librarians’ roles have increasingly encompassed practices of knowledge production, spurred in part by their role in supporting the creation and dissemination of university research outputs. Shifts in institutional trends have also seen librarians’ widespread adoption of Twitter to share information and encourage collaboration. There is little research, however, about relationships between knowledge production in HE and librarians’ Twitter practices. The few existing studies about librarians and Twitter tend to trivialise such work as promotional. This thesis investigates the mundane work and practical politics animating academic librarians’ practices of knowledge production via Twitter. Guided by a theoretical framework about knowledge infrastructures that posits that designing and maintaining infrastructure has concomitant effects on knowledge production, this multi-sited ethnography was informed by six librarians from one UK research-intensive university. Empirical data was generated from two rounds of interviews, Twitter activity diaries, Twitter Analytics data, a focus group and written follow-up questions. Research outcomes suggest that as academic librarians negotiate the promises (i.e., the perceived potential or possibilities) of Twitter, they engage in practices of knowledge production. Four main practices of librarians implicated in their knowledge production via Twitter include justifying Twitter work as efforts to contest stereotypes of librarians (Invisibility); grounding Twitter work in modern interpretations of librarian’s ‘traditional’ values (Roots); managing the multiple scales and ambiguous engagement of Twitter (Scale); and troubling institutional hierarchies to foster scholarly community, whilst spurring new vocational identities for librarians (Culturality). By building a holistic picture of librarians’ practices, the thesis contributes insights into new and devolved practices of knowledge production in HE, thus complicating depictions of university professional groups in the scholarly literature. The study furthermore suggests that drawing attention to quiet areas of work in the university helps demonstrate the fragility and contingency of practices in HE considered static or unassailable

DIY networking as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research on the hybrid city

DIY networking is a technology with special characteristics compared to the public Internet, which holds a unique potential for empowering citizens to shape their hybrid urban space toward conviviality and collective awareness. It can also play the role of a “boundary object” for facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and participatory processes between different actors: researchers, engineers, practitioners, artists, designers, local authorities, and activists. This position paper presents a social learning framework, the DIY networking paradigm, that we aim to put in the centre of the hybrid space design process. We first introduce our individual views on the role of design as discussed in the fields of engineering, urban planning, urban interaction design, design research, and community informatics. We then introduce a simple methodology for combining these diverse perspectives into a meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of related events with different structure and framing. We conclude with a short summary of a selection of these events, which serves also as an introduction to the CONTACT workshop on facilitating information sharing between strangers, in the context of the Hybrid City III conference

Participatory design and free and open source software in the not for profit sector – the Hublink Project.

This industry-based thesis undertakes a multifaceted and longitudinal exploration of the design and implementation of a Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) based information system in a consortium of small-scale community organisations. The research is centred on the design, production and implementation of a case management system with and for a group of nine not-for-profit organisations in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets who work as a consortium. The system, called Hublink, is based on the FLOSS framework Drupal. The system was designed during 2013 and has been in everyday use by those organisations since January 2014, acting as the consortium's primary information infrastructure. This research therefore encompasses both design and use. The design process was based on Participatory Design (PD) principles and methods. Because of the project's long-term nature, Hublink has been an exceptional opportunity to focus on the legacy of a PD process into the later stages of the software development life-cycle. This research has therefore been able to draw on themes that have emerged through real-world use and an extended collaboration and engagement. In this thesis I place the Hublink project description within literature covering Participatory Design, Community Informatics and Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), extending into infrastructuring, appropriation and end user development. Through a literature review and presentation of evidence collected during this research project, a clear argument emerges that relates the mutual learning outcomes of Participatory Design, with sustainability through infrastructuring activities, while also showing how the communities of practice of FLOSS projects create an infrastructure for not-for-profit organisations, enabling them to build sustainable systems that can meet their needs and accord with their values. The thesis argues that while Participatory Design strengthens the human element of infrastructure, FLOSS provides a complementary element of technical support, via the characteristics of generativity and extensibility, and their communities of practice. This research provides a deeply descriptive study that bridges design and use, centred on the core values of Participatory Design, contributing to the understanding and development of practices around sustainability and Participatory Design in the not-for- profit sector. The research offers a conceptual pathway to link FLOSS and Participatory Design, suggesting directions for future research and practice that enhance the connections between these two important areas of participatory production