Designing Tailorable Technologies

Tailorable technologies are technologies that are modified by users in the context of their use and are around us as desktop operating systems, web portals, and mobile telephones. While tailorable technologies provide users with limitless ways to modify the technology, as designers and researchers we have little understanding of how this should affect design. In this paper we present principles from four designers to strengthen inquiry into tailorable technologies. We then apply the principles to the case of the design of a web portal. We conclude that designers need to more consciously build reflective and active design environments and gradients of interactive capabilities in order for technology to be readily modified in the context of its use

A Theory of Tailorable Technology Design

Tailorable technologies are a class of information systems designed with the intention that users modify and redesign the technology in the context of use. Tailorable technologies support user goals, intentions, metaphor, and use patterns in the selection and integration of technology functions in the creation of new and unique information systems. We propose a theory of tailorable technology design and identify principles necessary for the initial design. Following a Kantian style of inquiry, we identified four definitional characteristics of tailorable technology: a dual design perspective, user engagement, recognizable environments, and component architectures. From these characteristics, we propose nine design principles that will support the phenomenon of tailoring. Through a year-long case study, we refined and evidenced the principles, finding found that designers of tailorable technologies build environments in which users can both interact and engage with the technology, supporting the proposed design principles. The findings highlight a distinction between a reflective environment, where users recognize and imagine uses for the technology, and an active environment in which users tailor the technology in accordance with the imagined uses. This research contributes to the clarification of the role of theory in design science, expands the concept of possibilities for action to IS design, and proposes a design theory of a class of information systems for testing and refinement

On sharing and synchronizing groupware calendars under android platform

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Sharing a calendar of tasks and events is a cornerstone in collaborative group work. Indeed, the individual work of the members of the group as well as the group work as a whole need the calendar to guide their activity and to meet the deadlines, milestones, deliverables of a project, etc. Additionally the members of the group should be able to work both offline and online, which arises when members of the group use smartphones and can eventually run out of Internet connection from time to time, or simply want to develop some activities locally. In the former case, they should have access to the calendar locally, while in the later case they should access the calendar online, shared by all members of the group. In both cases they should be able to see eventually the same information, namely the local calendars of the members should be synchronized with the group calendar. For the case of smartphones under Android system, one solution could be using the Google calendar, however, that is not easily tailorable to collaborative group work. In this paper we present an analysis, design and implementation of group work calendar that meets several requirements such as 1) sharing among all of members of the group, 2) synchronization among local calendars of members and global group calendar, 3) conflict resolution through a voting system, 4) awareness of changes in the entries (tasks, members, events, etc.) of the calendar and 5) all these requirements under proper privacy, confidentiality and security mechanisms. Moreover, we extend the sharing of calendars among different groups, a situation which often arises in enterprises when different groups need to be aware of other projects' development, or, when some members participate in more than one project at the same time.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Tailorable Collaborative Learning System That Combines OGSA Grid Services and IMS-LD Scripting

This paper presents Gridcole, a new collaborative learning system that can be easily tailored by educators in order to support their own CSCL scenarios, using computing services provided by third parties in the form of OGSA grid services. Educators employ scripts in order to describe the sequence of learning activities and required tools, with standard IMS-LD notation. Thus, through the integration of coarse-grained tools, that may even offer supercomputing capabilities or use specific hardware resources, educators do not depend on software developers to easily configure a suitable environment in order to support a broad range of collaborative scenarios. An example of a learning scenario for a Computer Architecture course is described to illustrate the capabilities of Gridcole

Personalized Service-Oriented E-Learning Environments

6 pages, 4 figures.The social component of Web 2.0-related services is providing a new open and personal approach to how we expect things to solve problems in our information-driven world. In particular, students' learning needs require open, personal e-learning systems adapted to life-long learning needs in a rapidly changing environment. It therefore shouldn't be surprising that a new wave of ideas centered on pervasive systems has drawn so much attention. This article analyzes current trends in the evolution of e-learning architectures and describes a new architecture that captures the needs of both formal (instructor-led) and informal (student-led) learning environments.Spain’s Programa Nacional de Tecnologías de la Sociedad de la Información supported this research through projects TSI2005-08225-C07-01 and -02.Publicad

Ein Dokumentmodell für Kursdokumente in Webbasierten Virtuellen Lernumgebungen

aus der Einführung: 'Virtuelle Lernumgebungen ermöglichen Aus- und Weiterbildung unabhängig von Zeit und Raum, z.B. können Berufstätige während wie auch nach der Arbeitszeit Kurse über ihren PC mit Internetzugang absolvieren und dabei verteilte Lerngruppen und Projektteams bilden. Eine Vielzahl anderer Szenerien virtueller Lernumgebungen sind denkbar. Faktoren, die diese Entwicklung massiv unterstützen, sind der Verbreitungsgrad multimedialer PCs - ca. 7 Mio. Personen über 14 Jahren hatten 1998 in Deutschland beruflich oder privat Zugriff auf Onlinedienste bzw. das Internet - und insbesondere die Dynamik, mit der sich das Wissen in bestimmten Fachgebieten verändert und damit ständige berufliche Weiterbildung erfordert. Die Informations- und Multimediatechnik sind hierfür typische Beispiele. Dieser Entwicklung kann mit klassischen Lehrmethoden und -medien, z.B. Fortbildungsseminaren und dem Lehrbuch, nicht adäquat Rechnung getragen werden. Virtuelle Lernumgebungen bieten deshalb eine zeitgemäße Möglichkeit der kostengünstigen und effizienten Aus- und Weiterbildung

An analysis framework for CSCW systems

Software toolkits are under development to help construct applications that support group-working. Toolkit developers adopt different approaches to group-work support in order to tackle different issues and a toolkit is commonly characterised by the approach adopted. It is difficult to compare toolkits because of this lack of apparent commonality and it is difficult to decide which toolkits meet specific application requirements. [Continues.