Resources for situated actions

In recent years, advances in software tools have made it easier to analyze interactive system specifications, and the range of their possible behaviors. However, the effort involved in producing the specifications of the system is still substantial, and a difficulty exists regarding the specification of plausible behaviors on the part of the user. Recent trends in technology towards more mobile and distributed systems further exacerbates the issue, as contextual factors come in to play, and less structured, more opportunistic behavior on the part of the user makes purely task-based analysis difficult. In this paper we consider a resourced action approach to specification and analysis. In pursuing this approach we have two aims - firstly, to facilitate a resource-based analysis of user activity, allowing resources to be distributed across a number of artifacts, and secondly to consider within the analysis a wider range of plausible and opportunistic user behaviors without a heavy specification overhead, or requiring commitment to detailed user models.We acknowledge with thanks EPSRC grant EP/F01404X/1 and FCT/FEDER grant POSC/EIA/56646/2004. Michael Harrison is grateful to colleagues in the ReSIST NoE (www.resit-noe.org)

The social consequences of minor innovations in construction

Innovation studies in construction focus on a desire to increase economics and efficiency at a large scale. This has resulted in a skewed perspective that sees only major corporations with substantial R&D resources, complex projects, or national interests at the heart of innovation. By adopting anthropological methods, it becomes possible to examine the two aims of this paper: to demonstrate that an accumulation of minor innovations can have significant consequences; and to show that these are inherently social rather than purely economic. Results come from fieldwork studying the improvisatory house-building practices of the Kelabit people of rural Borneo, tracing changes to the technologies used for roofing and foundations, and describes how these are mutually entangled with new social structures. The conclusion is that we should think more broadly about the forms and effects of innovation in construction, and recognise the significance of improvisation at the level of the individual or small group

Interviewing objects: Including educational technologies as qualitative research participants

This article argues the importance of including significant technologies-in-use askey qualitative research participants when studying today’s digitally enhancedlearning environments. We gather a set of eight heuristics to assist qualitativeresearchers in ‘interviewing’ technologies-in-use (or other relevant objects),drawing on concrete examples from our own qualitative research projects. Ourdiscussion is informed by Actor-Network Theory and hermeneuticphenomenology, as well as by the literatures of techno-science, media ecology,and the philosophy of technology

Exploring the design space for situated glyphs to support dynamic work environments

This note offers a reflection on the design space for a situated glyph - a single, adaptive and multivariate graphical unit that provides in-situ task information in demanding work environments. Rather than presenting a concrete solution, our objective is to map out the broad design space to foster further exploration. The analysis of this design space in the context of dynamic work environments covers i) information affinity - the type of information can be presented with situated glyphs, ii) representation density - the medium and fidelity of information presentation, iii) spatial distribution - distribution granularity and placement alternatives for situated glyphs, and finally iv) temporal distribution - the timing of information provision through glyphs. Our analysis has uncovered new problem spaces that are still unexplored and could motivate further work in the field