Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

FESTivE: an information system method to improve product designers and environmental experts information exchanges

Effective collaboration between product designers and environmental experts is an important driver for the ecodesign practice in industry. This paper investigates the principal functions required for such an e ective collaboration and aims at facilitating them. Product designers should be able to integrate the environmental parameters into their activities, and to exchange information dynamically with the environmental expert whenever needed during the design process. Therefore, the IT system should be in itself dynamic and exible to the integration of new concepts (knowledge, software). Recent developments in Model Driven Engineering (MDE) are showing some interesting results to gain exibility and dynamism in the IT system. Combining software interoperability using model federation based on MDE with the speci city of ecodesign practice in industry this paper proposes the FESTivE method for Federate EcodeSign Tool modEls. Experimented in two different industrial contexts the practical feasibility of FESTivE has been validated with practitioners. Results on the e ects of using FESTivE in industry shows that product designers and environmental experts are more equipped to anticipate and to respond to each other's needs at each stage of the design process of product or service

The Need for Systems Development Capability in Design Science Research – Investigating the Role of An Innovation Lab as Part of The Academy

Information systems as an artefact-oriented discipline require a strong interaction between researches, developers and users regarding, design of, development of, and the study of the use of digital artefacts in social settings. During latter years performing research in a design science research spirit has gained increasing interest. In larger scale design research endeavours access to systems development capabilities becomes necessary. Such a unit, an InnovationLab, was established in 2006 in a university setting in Sweden. In this paper we are investigating the five years of experience from running this InnovationLab. Our findings point to an innovation lab being valuable for research in general and especially for design science research. However, in order to balance the business of an innovation lab it will be necessary to provide services for other stakeholders (such as administrative units, teachers, and students) as means for developing systems development capability aimed for supporting researchers

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd

Study on the Competency in Human Resources for Successful Completion of Construction Projects

Competence in this report means the ability of a person to carry out responsibilities and to perform job to a recognized standard on a regular basis. Competence involved a combination of technical and thinking skills (intelligences), knowledge and experience, and may include a willingness to undertake specified job activities and performed in accordance with agreed standards, rules and procedures. The purpose of this research is to study the competency in human resource for successful completion of construction projects and how competencies are defined based on different work group of the construction team. This research paper will focus into five main parts related to competency. From the literature review, the researcher will identify some of the competency criteria of stakeholders that are crucial in successfully completing a construction projects. Based on those criteria discussed, the researcher will then look into the Critical Success Factor (CSF) of a construction project in terms of competency in human resources. Semi-structured interviews and survey questionnaires will be used as the tools to carry out this study. These survey questionnaires will be distributed to lists of developers, architects, engineers, and contractors both through online and offline (hardcopy) method. These papers will also presents the findings of a survey aimed for identifying some of the factors contributing to employee incompetency in construction projects. It also identifies the problems cause by incompetency in a construction project. This report also explores some of the ways to overcome employee incompetency in the construction project. It is hoped that these findings will be one of reference guide for developers, engineers, architects and contractors in an efforts to improve competency of employees and enhance the performance of the construction industry

IDR : a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary design in technology enhanced learning

One of the important themes that emerged from the CAL’07 conference was the failure of technology to bring about the expected disruptive effect to learning and teaching. We identify one of the causes as an inherent weakness in prevalent development methodologies. While the problem of designing technology for learning is irreducibly multi-dimensional, design processes often lack true interdisciplinarity. To address this problem we present IDR, a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary techno-pedagogical design, drawing on the design patterns tradition (Alexander, Silverstein & Ishikawa, 1977) and the design research paradigm (DiSessa & Cobb, 2004). We discuss the iterative development and use of our methodology by a pan-European project team of educational researchers, software developers and teachers. We reflect on our experiences of the participatory nature of pattern design and discuss how, as a distributed team, we developed a set of over 120 design patterns, created using our freely available open source web toolkit. Furthermore, we detail how our methodology is applicable to the wider community through a workshop model, which has been run and iteratively refined at five major international conferences, involving over 200 participants

Shared Understanding of the User Experience : A Case Study of Collaboration Between Developers and Designers

User experience has become vital for many software development projects but the software development methods and tools are not originally intended for it. Moreover, software development is fundamentally complex and an increasingly social profession. This shift towards designing for user experience as a diverse group has brought new challenges to software development. The objective of this study is to find how developers and designers form a shared understanding of the software system UX under development. Central theme are the activities of UX work: what are the methods in use (e.g. User-Centered Design, Agile) and how do they work in practice, that is, what kind of information developers and designers share and what kind of artifacts do they produce in collaboration. This study answers two research questions: (RQ1) How do developers and designers form a shared understanding of the software system UX under development; and (RQ2) What are the artifacts utilized in their collaboration. To answer the research questions, a single case study research was conducted by interviewing the employees of a Finnish startup company. The company develops enterprise resource planning software (ERP) for rental businesses. The results show that shared understanding of the UX is achieved with UX activities throughout the system’s lifecycle where the user participation is required from the beginning of new software development. Furthermore, the artifacts in combination with developers’ participation in some of the UX activities will convey the design intent to the implemented software

Design as a thing: how designers make up design as an object in human-centred design practices

Design as a thing: how designers make up design as an object in human-centred design practice

Research-practice interactions as reported in recent design studies: Still promising, still hazy

This study portrays recent research–practice connections found in 18 design research reports focusing on the creation of instructional solutions. Solutions in different stages of development varied greatly in duration, ranging from one lesson to a whole year curriculum, spanned all levels of education, many subjects (science, math, language, culture, teacher education, etc.). Close collaboration between researchers and practitioners was prominent in all of the 18 projects studied. Participants in primary and secondary education projects have quite distinct roles regarding the teaching and researching, but they design their instruction solutions often collaboratively. Nearly all projects reported on how designed solutions were anchored in research, either from literature or from in-house project data. All articles indicated that research fed (re-)design, but few specified how. Based on our findings, we call for increased research and reporting on the specific strategies employed by design research participants to facilitate the production of new theoretical understanding through design of instructional solution

An examination of the development process of hands-on educational exhibitions for children

Educational exhibition projects are very complex. During their development a verbal, two-dimensional communication is transformed into a three-dimensional communication. It is extremely difficult to protect the integrity of the original intended educational messages. Perhaps the most difficult messages to protect are those embodied in hands-on exhibits. There are few research studies of the exhibition development process and existing ones tend to be reflective accounts of past experiences. This research project was designed to reveal the nature of the exhibition development process as it happens and to explore how, when and why communications can go off-course during exhibition development. The aim of the study is to describe the educational exhibition development process more fully so that practitioners can take steps to protect the integrity of their intended communications during all stages of exhibition development. The researcher studied the process of exhibition development at four different organisations. The data was collected through participant observation and analysed using grounded theory methodology. The researcher identified three common patterns of fundamental functional behaviours across the stories: 1. Keeping on Track behaviours: how a team co-ordinates their activities in order to keep to a schedule. 2. Focus Issues: how a team focuses on their intended communication outcome. 3. Flexibility Opportunities: how a team copes with unforeseen situations. A further, deeper level of analysis considered how the three fundamental functional behaviours interacted to have an impact on the educational exhibition projects. It was found that the dimensions of exhibition development were likely to be impinged on by three constraints: 1. Process: How the process of exhibition development unwinds. 2. Team Functioning: How the team functions. 3. Resources: How resources, such as money, staff time, offices and workshops, are used. The development of educational exhibitions is driven by the fundamental functional behaviours of Keeping on Track, Focus Issues and Flexibility Opportunities. Throughout the development process these fundamental functional behaviours patterns are impacted upon in a dynamic manner by the three major constraints. This study provides a fuller description than previously the nature of the educational exhibition development process, thus enabling exhibition developers to manage such projects more effectively than previously. This can help to ensure and safeguard the educational impact of their exhibitions