Dissolving boundaries: social technologies and participation in design

Abstract: The emphasis on participation in social technologies challenges some of our traditional assumptions about the role of users and designers in design. It also exposes some of the limitations and assumptions about design embedded in our traditional models and methods. Based on a review of emerging practice we present four perspectives on design in the context of social technologies. By presenting this âlay of the landâ, we seek to contribute to ongoing work on the nature of participation and design in the context of social technologies. We draw particular attention to the ways in which roles and responsibilities in design are being reassigned and redistributed. As traditional boundaries between design and use and designer and user dissolve, design is becoming more public. In the context of social technologies design is moving out into the wild

Designing an End User Participation and Involvement Assistant for Continuous IS Development

The nature of information system provision has changed as the business models of software firms are continually changing towards software-as-a service and platform-as-a-service solutions. Involving end users in a continuous development of such information systems promises to increase the overall system’s success. The conceptualization and actual realization of the user involvement concept is subject of ongoing research. Based on a systematic literature review, we identified three implications of this research that are relevant for the development of an information technology based assistant for user participation and involvement. In this paper, we introduce our Design Science Research project on the theory grounded design of a user participation and involvement assistant. We aim to enable end users to provide meaningful feedback to the developers during their actual system use. Moreover, the assistant will enable developers to effectively analyze the vast amount of complex end user feedback

An Approach to Addressing the Usability and Local Relevance of Generic Enterprise Software

Designing for usability and locally relevant features for end-users in generic ‘product’ or ‘packaged’ enterprise software projects is challenging. On the generic level, designers must aim at supporting variety, which is contradictory to the specificity needed to make user interfaces usable, and functionality relevant to end-users within specific organizational contexts. Also, addressing these concerns during the implementation of generic software is difficult due to limitations in the design flexibility of the software, time and resource constraints, possible maintenance issues following customization, and a lack of design methods appropriate for the context of software implementation. Reporting from an ongoing Action Design Research project following a global generic health software, this paper conceptualizes a Generic Software Design Lab that aims to equip design on the level of software implementation with flexibility, tools, and methods to efficiently localize generic software. By conceptualizing the approach and discussing how it works to strengthen implementation-level designers’ ability to address usability and local relevance, the paper contributes with learnings to research and practice related to design, development, and implementation of generic software

Making Usable Generic Software. A Matter of Global or Local Design?

Usability is widely acknowledged as a desirable trait of software, referring to how usable it is to a specific set of users. However, when software is developed as generic packages, aimed at supporting variety, designing user interfaces with sufficient sensitivity to use-contexts is a challenge. Extant literature has documented this challenge and established that solving usability-related problems are difficult, both during software development and implementation. Adding to this discussion, this paper contributes by developing a framework to analyze what characterizes usability-related design of generic software. This includes two levels of design; generic-level and implementation-level, and two types of design; design for use and design for design. We apply this conceptual framework on an empirical case based on an ongoing action research project where a global generic health software is implemented in a large state in India. From the analysis we argue that attempts to strengthen usability of generic software require a holistic intervention, considering design on both ‘global’ and ‘local’ level. Of particular importance is how usable the generic software and other design-resources are when implementers are customizing the software. We coin this aspect of design as meta-usability, which represent what we see as an avenue for further research

Distributed Development to Enable User Participation: Multilevel design in the HISP network

Through the study of a long term, globally targeted effort to design health information systems in the Global South, we explore challenges to distributed participation within and across countries, and describe efforts at addressing these. Networked action research projects can enable pooling of resources, skills, best practices and tools, and cross-country collaboration does not have to preclude local ownership, as illustrated by the case material in this article. We highlight specifically the need for circulation of people, artefacts, and standards, to both support local practices and foster the capacity of all stakeholders to take active part in the design and implementation of information systems. The deep effects of global technological change call for a multilevel approach bridging local implementations with global research and participatory design efforts and co-evolution of standardised tools

Fostering Continuous User Participation by Embedding a Communication Support Tool in User Interfaces

This paper critically reviews previous IS literature on user participation and argues that the literature is mainly empirically or normatively oriented and lacks design research on developing system prototypes in order to foster continuous user participation. It then contributes to the current research by introducing a system prototype, a communication tool that enables users to participate while using their application systems in their work contexts. The prototype provides different communication channels for supporting user-designer communications and knowledge sharing among users with respect to application usage. When integrated in the interface of an application system, the tool can help to adapt and redesign the application. The initial evaluation of the communication tool within the context of an application system indicates its usefulness and usability

Community participatory design in the information systems development process in Africa: a systemic literature review

Participatory design (PO) pertains to the different ways of incorporating ideas and acts of organisational members in designing, developing and evaluating an Information Systems (IS) artefact. The context of this study is community organisations in African settings participating in the designing and developing of an IS artefact. The study traces and synthesises findings from 95 articles on community PO in Information Systems Development in Africa. It argues that community PO consists of vast diverse constructs and implementations. This produced and reproduced concept is formulated in five major themes of: conceptualisations; ethics; standards; checks and balances and approaches; and perspectives and methodologies of PD. The themes constitute the possible ways of classifying PO research and practice in African settings. The results demonstrate that there is a wide belief that participation is one of the vital ingredients necessary for successful designing of IS artefacts for human development. However, the different elements involved in PO involve much discussion on what is known and needs to be known about PO and how to achieve the desired results by PD. The study uses Critical Research philosophy to pay special attention to the behavioural and attitudinal arguments of the different PO practices on community organisations. The researcher found Design Science (OS) principles that centre on devising an artefact as appropriate to frame this work. In sum, through the use of Critical Research and a OS lens, the researcher found that community participation is important in designing a useful IS artefact, but treacherous if misunderstood and inappropriately implemented

Simulation-based support for integrated design of new low-energy office buildings

This thesis reports on four years of research with the aim to contribute to the implementation of low-energy office buildings with high quality of indoor environment and good total economy. Focus has been on the design decisions made in the early stages of the building design process. The objective is to contribute to a development where simulations of building energy performance and indoor environment is used for generating an input to the overall building design process prior to any actual form giving of the building. This input should be considered as one of several similar inputs from other building design disciplines (structural, fire, architecture etc.) to the integrated building design process. The research therefore revolves around the hypothesis that parametric analyses on the energy performance, indoor environment and total economy of rooms with respect to geometry and characteristics of building elements and services can be used to generate a useful input to the early stage of an integrated building design process. To pursue a corroboration of this hypothesis, a method for making informed decisions when establishing the input to the overall building design process is proposed. The method relies on the use of building simulation to illustrate how design parameters will affect the energy performance and the quality of the indoor environment prior to any actual design decision. The method is made operational in a simple building simulation tool capable of performing integrated performance predictions of energy consumption, thermal indoor environment, indoor air quality, and daylight levels. The tool has been tested extensively throughout the four year period of this project. The feedback from these tests has been used to develop the operability and usability of the tool. The end result is a tool which, with minor reservations, has proved to be operational and useful in the design of low-energy office buildings with good indoor environment. The conducted research is reported in the main body of this thesis and in three papers for scientific journals. An abstract of these is given in the following. Article I The early stages of building design include a number of decisions which have a strong influence on the performance of the building throughout the rest of the process. It is therefore important that designers are aware of the consequences of these design decisions. This paper presents a method for making informed decisions in the early stages of building design to fulfil performance requirements with regard to energy consumption and indoor environment. The method is operationalised in a program that utilises a simple simulation program to make performance predictions of user-defined parameter variations. The program then presents the output in a way that enables designers to make informed decisions. The method and the program reduce the need for design iterations, reducing time consumption and construction costs, to obtain the intended energy performance and indoor environment. Paper published in Energy and Buildings 42 (7) (2010), 1113-1119. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.02.002 Article II A method for simulating predictive control of building systems operation in the design stage is presented. The predictive control method uses building simulation based on weather forecasts to predict whether there is a future heating or cooling requirement. This information enables the thermal control systems of the building to respond proactively to keep the operational temperature within the thermal comfort range with the minimum use of energy. The method is assuming perfect weather prediction and building modelling because of the design situation. The method is implemented in an existing building simulation tool. A test case featuring an office located in Copenhagen, Denmark, shows that the suggested method reduces the energy required for heating and ventilation compared to more conventional control systems, while improving thermal comfort for building occupants. The method furthermore automates the configuration of buildings systems operation. This eliminates time consuming manual configuration of building systems operation when using building simulation for parametric analyses in the design phase. Applied Energy 88 (2011) 4597–4606. doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.05.053 Article III Increasing requirements for energy performance in new buildings mean the cost of incorporating energy-saving in buildings is also increasing. Building designers thus need to be aware of the long-term cost-effectiveness of potential energy-conserving measures. This paper presents a simplified and transparent economic optimisation method to find an initial design proposal near the economical optimum. The aim is to provide an expedient starting point for the building design process and more detailed economic optimisation. The method uses the energy frame concept to express the constraints of the optimisation problem, which is then solved by minimising the costs of conserving energy in all the individual energy-saving measures. A case example illustrates how the method enables designers to establish a qualified estimate of an economically optimal solution. Such an estimate gives a good starting point for the iterative design process and a more detailed economic optimisation. Furthermore, the method explicitly illustrates the economic efficiency of the individual building elements and services enabling the identification of potentials for further product development. Paper published in Renewable Energy 38(1) (2012) 173-180. doi:10.1016/j.renene.2011.07.01