To choose or not to choose: exploring Australians` views about internet banking

This paper explores Australian domestic customers\u27 choices with regard to Internet banking, examining why it is taken up by some Australians and not others. The constructivist conceptual framework and the grounded nature of the method enabled in-depth exploration of key issues not undertaken before by the mainly positivist studies. The purposeful sample of 32 participants was selected to represent the major categories of people relevant to the research. Everett Rogers\u27 famous analysis of \u27diffusion of innovations\u27 was one theoretical framework used to illuminate the findings; the other was digital divide factors in relation to banking choices. The findings include 1) that the major motivation for people to adopt Internet banking is convenience, closely linked to time savings and ease of accessibility, as well as confidence and skill in Internet use; and 2) that, at the time of the study, digital divide factors were playing an important part in banking choices.<br /

in Knowledge-Creating Contexts: The Role of User-Centred Design

Examining communities in all their meanings, the paper locates User-Centred Design (UCD) in the amplified scope of approaches to Information Systems Design (ISD). Culture in communities is explained in structurational terms, in which human action and social structure (including ICT) interact to produce and reproduce the social patterning that both supports and constrains action. The widening of the spectrum of ISD approaches has paralleled the supplementing or superseding of Fordist methods of production by knowledge-based production. The transition to an ICT world characterised by personal computing and the Internet is identified as key threshold (referred to as the PC/I or Personal Computing/Internet threshold) necessitating the development of user-centric concepts alongside more established technocentric approaches. Noting the diversity of understandings in UCD, the paper proposes an approach to consider the wider relationship of tasks and community cultures. The aim is to explore the feasibility of a participative and reflexive design, resulting in design practices that are an emergent property of community culture. The research is based on case studies in the cultural institutions ’ sector, and one of the cases is outlined. Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contac

Adoption of online databases in public libraries : an Australian case study

The project on which this article is based set out to evaluate—using an interpretivist/ constructivist framework—the content, usability, and use of the four online databases that were introduced into Victorian public libraries under the Gulliver Program. The grounded nature of the method enabled the discovery of key issues that were not always related to the quality of the databases themselves. Since Everett Rogers’ famous analysis of the diffusion of innovations appeared to have explanatory value in this context, his theory was used to illuminate the findings. This was despite the fact that an individual was not involved in this case but rather the State Library of Victoria making a decision to adopt an innovation on behalf of the public libraries of Victoria. The researchers believed that Rogers’ framework could be used to shed light on why both staff and library patrons were slow in accepting or adopting online databases for their information seeking. The conclusion is that training is the principal way in which this situation could be changed.Published versio