Reflecting on the usability of research on culture in designing interaction

The concept of culture has been attractive to producers of interactive\ud systems who are willing to design useful and relevant solutions to users\ud increasingly located in culturally diverse contexts. Despite a substantial body of\ud research on culture and technology, interaction designers have not always been\ud able to apply these research outputs to effectively define requirements for\ud culturally diverse users. This paper frames this issue as one of understanding of\ud the different paradigms underpinning the cultural models being applied to\ud interface development and research. Drawing on different social science theories,\ud the authors discuss top-down and bottom-up perspectives in the study of users‟\ud cultural differences and discuss the extent to which each provides usable design\ud knowledge. The case is made for combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives\ud into a sociotechnical approach that can produce knowledge useful and usable by\ud interaction designers. This is illustrated with a case study about the design of\ud interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya

High-Tech Urban Agriculture in Amsterdam : An Actor Network Analysis

The agriculture and horticulture sector in the Netherlands is one of the most productive in the world. Although the sector is one of the most advanced and intense agricultural production systems worldwide, it faces challenges, such as climate change and environmental and social unsustainability of industrial production. To overcome these challenges, alternative food production initiatives have emerged, especially in large cities such as Amsterdam. Some initiatives involve producing food in the urban environment, supported by new technologies and practices, so-called high-tech urban agriculture (HTUA). These initiatives make cultivation of plants inside and on top of buildings possible and increase green spaces in urban areas. The emerging agricultural technologies are creating new business environments that are shape d by technology developers (e.g., suppliers of horticultural light emitting diodes (LED) and control environment systems) and developers of alternative food production practices (e.g., HTUA start-ups). However, research shows that the uptake of these technological innovations in urban planning processes is problematic. Therefore, this research analyzes the barriers that local government planners and HTUA developers are facing in the embedding of HTUA in urban planning processes, using the city of Amsterdam as a case study. This study draws on actor-network theory (ANT) to analyze the interactions between planners, technologies, technology developers and developers of alternative food production practices. Several concepts of ANT are integrated into a multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions (MLP) to create a new theoretical framework that can explain how interactions between technologies and planning actors transform the incumbent social\u2013technical regime. The configuration of interactions between social and material entities in technology development and adoption processes in Amsterdam is analyzed through the lens of this theoretical framework. The data in this study were gathered by tracing actors and their connections by using ethnographic research methods. In the course of the integration of new technologies into urban planning practices, gaps between technologies, technology developers, and planning actors have been identified. The results of this study show a lacking connection between planning actors and technology developers, although planning actors do interact with developers of alternative food production practices. These interactions are influenced by agency of artefacts such as visualizations of the future projects. The paper concludes that for the utilization of emerging technologies for sustainability transition of cities, the existing gap between technology developers and planning actors needs to be bridged through the integration of technology development visions in urban agendas and planning processe

Towards an ontology of networked learning

Networked learning, conceived of as networks of people, informational resources and technologies, constitutes what has been termed a ‘highly interwined’ technology. In this paper we develop our earlier argument that sociotechnical networks can form the basis for a non-determinist theory of learning technology. Firstly, we argue that Kling et al’s sociotechnical interaction network (STIN) is compatible with a realist ontology, drawing on Fleetwood’s ‘ontology of the real’ and Lawson’s proposition of the social nature of the artefact in networks of ‘positioned practices’. This, we suggest, gives a more secure basis for the STIN concept, and provides a clear alternative to actor network theory (ANT)-based views of sociotechnical networks which do not distinguish between the influence of human and material agents. This also, we argue, provides an alternative way of anchoring concepts from the social informatics literature, often influenced by Giddens’ structuration theory, in ways that can help networked learning research. Secondly, we explore some potential implications of such an approach for theories of networked learning and learning more widely. In particular, we suggest a possible ontology of elements of learning technology. The use of the word ‘learning’ here is somewhat problematic, as it is routinely used rather loosely to describe changes at multiple levels but which are likely to have rather different underlying mechanisms. A more thorough ontology of learning technology would allow us to distinguish between these uses and identify potentially distinct mechanisms at play in different forms and levels of learning. Thirdly, we use this approach to explore how viewing learning technologies as sociotechnical networks helps to clarify our thinking about identities in social networking for personal, learning and professional purposes

Reducing energy demand: a review of issues, challenges and approaches

Most commentators expect improved energy efficiency and reduced energy demand to provide the dominant contribution to tackling global climate change. But at the global level, the correlation between increased wealth and increased energy consumption is very strong and the impact of policies to reduce energy demand is both limited and contested. Different academic disciplines approach energy demand reduction in different ways: emphasising some mechanisms and neglecting others, being more or less optimistic about the potential for reducing energy demand and providing insights that are more or less useful for policymakers. This article provides an overview of the main issues and challenges associated with energy demand reduction, summarises how this challenge is ‘framed’ by key academic disciplines, indicates how these can provide complementary insights for policymakers and argues that a ‘sociotechnical’ perspective can provide a deeper understanding of the nature of this challenge and the processes through which it can be achieved. The article integrates ideas from the natural sciences, economics, psychology, innovation studies and sociology but does not give equal weight to each. It argues that reducing energy demand will prove more difficult than is commonly assumed and current approaches will be insufficient to deliver the transformation required

Municipal transitions: The social, energy, and spatial dynamics of sociotechnical change in South Tyrol, Italy

With the aim of proposing recommendations on how to use social and territorial specificities as levers for wider achievement of climate and energy targets at local level, this research analyses territories as sociotechnical systems. Defining the territory as a sociotechnical system allows us to underline the interrelations between space, energy and society. Groups of municipalities in a region can be identified with respect to their potential production of renewable energy by means of well-known data-mining approaches. Similar municipalities linking together can share ideas and promote collaborations, supporting clever social planning in the transition towards a new energy system. The methodology is applied to the South Tyrol case study (Italy). Results show eight different spatially-based sociotechnical systems within the coherent cultural and institutional context of South Tyrol. In particular, this paper observes eight different systems in terms of (1) different renewable energy source preferences in semi-urban and rural contexts; (2) different links with other local planning, management, and policy needs; (3) different socio-demographic specificities of individuals and families; (4) presence of different kinds of stakeholders or of (5) different socio-spatial organizations based on land cover. Each energy system has its own specificities and potentialities, including social and spatial dimensions, that can address a more balanced, inclusive, equal, and accelerated energy transition at the local and translocal scale

An analytic framework to assess organizational resilience

Background: Resilience Engineering is a paradigm for safety management that focuses on coping with complexity to achieve success, even considering several conflicting goals. Modern socio-technical systems have to be resilient to comply with the variability of everyday activities, the tight-coupled and underspecified nature of work and the nonlinear interactions among agents. At organizational level, resilience can be described as a combination of four cornerstones: monitoring, responding, learning and anticipating. Methods: Starting from these four categories, this paper aims at defining a semi-quantitative analytic framework to measure organizational resilience in complex socio-technical systems, combining the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results: This paper presents an approach for defining resilience abilities of an organization, creating a structured domain-dependent framework to define a resilience profile at different levels of abstraction, to identify weaknesses and strengths of the system and thus potential actions to increase system’s adaptive capacity. An illustrative example in an anaesthesia department clarifies the outcomes of the approach. Conclusions: The outcome of the RAG, i.e. a weighted set of probing questions, can be used in different domains, as a support tool in a wider Safety-II oriented managerial action to bring safety management into the core business of the organization