Configuration Management in Collaborative Writing

Configuration management (CM) is a cooperative task, and needs both technical and organizational support. It is one of the most important disciplines enabling efficient and consistent use of share

FACILITATING CO-CONSTRUCTION BY SOCIAL PRACTICE DESIGN: A CASE OF GEODISTRIBUTED EMPLOYEES FACING THE DESIGN OF MODEL-BASED ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

This paper describes the experiences of practicing social practice design (SPD) activities with user groups, in geographically distributed, collaborating manufacturing companies, struggling with the introduction of model based enterprise systems. Within a European project, we observed and routinely analyzed ongoing development and assessment work of model based technologies and methodologies, in these companies. Based on an ethnographic study of Modelling sessions and Validation sessions, we performed an in depth analysis of people semantic and pragmatic perspectives (a necessary and needed ‘second step back’), and identified core disconnects on modelling concept use and language, and on motivations and goals, between technology designers – modellers - and domain experts – users - clearly hindering project progress -. These disconnects were addressed with user groups in the form of SPD sessions (‘second order’ activities), which consisted mostly in a series of design game and scenario-building workshops, enriched by open conversations and perspective sharing and comparison. The paper describes how these SPD sessions facilitated the creation of sense making and trust, enabling participants to engage and learn, and to act as change agents in the project, opening the way to co-construction of solutions with other actors. Observations of Modelling and Validation sessions showed that participants could not automatically build on a deep understanding of modelling and its trade-offs; they adopted the representational conventions they had learned to use. Lack of sense making and lack of co-construction were observed, along with lack of facilitation for genuinely participative conditions. Modeller-guided Modelling sessions showed no appropriation of object decomposition and relationship structures by domain experts, nor contribution from users to leadership in the modelling process; only imposition of hierarchical structures by modellers, in the midst of a cloud of mistrust and suspicion. Validation sessions of the model-based approach showed that ‘common’ users do not perceive the value of the approach, as they have not been helped to gain a conceptual understanding of modelling, of the tradeoffs of abstractions, and of how a model may productively interact with work practices. In this distributed project, different concepts of various user groups all conflicted with modellers’ concept. The SPD facilitation interventions helped participants in stepping back from the “official view” of the work process created in the course of the project, and in focussing more on their own experiences, opening up for creativity. SPD events were grounded in the belief that, when it comes to one’s own things, people with no special knowledge of the issues to be discussed can contribute something valuable, especially on those matters that they perceive as problems for themselves; it was impressive to witness how people with no management perspective can engage in strategy development within a very short time. The methods were easy enough to adopt without much preparation and rich enough to stimulate learning and valuable insights; people felt comfortable and not at risk at being judged. Participants expressed how important the experience of working creatively on solving “real problems” had been for them. We can understand this also as a result of the longitudinal character of our SPD engagement with people in the project, which had provided us with good knowledge about work practices, potentials and problems on the one hand, allowed trust building on the other hand

Innovation im Mobilitätssharing – Einsatz von partizipativen Methoden

Mobilitätssharing-Modelle sind einer der zentralen Mobilitätstrends des 21. Jahrhunderts. Allerdings gibt es in der praktischen Umsetzung – v.a. von free-floating Systemen – noch Verbesserungsbedarf, da es häufig zu längeren Stehzeiten und einer ungünstigen Verteilung der Fahrzeuge im Stadtgebiet kommt. Es ist wichtig, Nutzerinnen- und Nutzerbedürfnisse und ihr Mobilitätsverhalten zu verstehen, damit Anreizmechanismen –bzw. im engeren Sinne „Nudges“ – möglichst wirkungsvoll implementiert werden können. Nudging bedeutet so viel wie ‚schubsen‘ oder ‚anstoßen‘ und beschreibt die Beeinflussung der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer beigleichzeitigen Verzicht auf die Verwendung von Ge- oder Verboten bzw. monetären Anreizen. Das Projekt REBUTAS (kurz für „Entwicklung eines reaktiven Buchungs- und Tarifsystem für free-floatingFahrzeug-Sharingdienste“) hat zum Ziel, die Auslastung der elektrifizierten Fahrzeuge und die Kundinnen- und Kundenbindung zu verbessern. Es setzt verstärkt auf den Einsatz von innovativen Methoden aus dem Bereich der Co-Creation. Ein Co-Creation-Prozess verlangt kooperationsunterstützende Methoden, die einerseits der Akquirierung relevanter Daten und andererseits einer gemeinsamen Generierung innovativer Lösungsansätze bzw. deren Akzeptanz durch ihre Nutzerinnen und Nutzer helfen. Beispiel hierfür sind u.a. Design-Games. Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab die ausgewählte Methode näher zu erläutern und die darausgewonnen „Nudges“ bzw. Anreize darzustellen. Darüber hinaus wird ein erster Überblick zur Integration und Umsetzung in den Feldtests gegeben

Ambient Assisted Living: Scoping Review of Artificial Intelligence Models, Domains, Technology, and Concerns

Background: Ambient assisted living (AAL) is a common name for various artificial intelligence (AI)—infused applications and platforms that support their users in need in multiple activities, from health to daily living. These systems use different approaches to learn about their users and make automated decisions, known as AI models, for personalizing their services and increasing outcomes. Given the numerous systems developed and deployed for people with different needs, health conditions, and dispositions toward the technology, it is critical to obtain clear and comprehensive insights concerning AI models used, along with their domains, technology, and concerns, to identify promising directions for future work. Objective: This study aimed to provide a scoping review of the literature on AI models in AAL. In particular, we analyzed specific AI models used in AАL systems, the target domains of the models, the technology using the models, and the major concerns from the end-user perspective. Our goal was to consolidate research on this topic and inform end users, health care professionals and providers, researchers, and practitioners in developing, deploying, and evaluating future intelligent AAL systems. Methods: This study was conducted as a scoping review to identify, analyze, and extract the relevant literature. It used a natural language processing toolkit to retrieve the article corpus for an efficient and comprehensive automated literature search. Relevant articles were then extracted from the corpus and analyzed manually. This review included 5 digital libraries: IEEE, PubMed, Springer, Elsevier, and MDPI. Results: We included a total of 108 articles. The annual distribution of relevant articles showed a growing trend for all categories from January 2010 to July 2022. The AI models mainly used unsupervised and semisupervised approaches. The leading models are deep learning, natural language processing, instance-based learning, and clustering. Activity assistance and recognition were the most common target domains of the models. Ambient sensing, mobile technology, and robotic devices mainly implemented the models. Older adults were the primary beneficiaries, followed by patients and frail persons of various ages. Availability was a top beneficiary concern. Conclusions: This study presents the analytical evidence of AI models in AAL and their domains, technologies, beneficiaries, and concerns. Future research on intelligent AAL should involve health care professionals and caregivers as designers and users, comply with health-related regulations, improve transparency and privacy, integrate with health care technological infrastructure, explain their decisions to the users, and establish evaluation metrics and design guidelines. Trial Registration: PROSPERO (International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews) CRD42022347590; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42022347590This work was part of and supported by GoodBrother, COST Action 19121—Network on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living

State of the Art of Audio- and Video-Based Solutions for AAL

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed

Understanding Complex Coordination Processes in Health Care

This paper identifies and analyses complex coordination processes at radiolog

Wohnen und Neue Medien – Technikfolgenabschätzung des Einsatzes Neuer Medien im Tätigkeitsbereich gemeinnütziger Wohnbauträger. Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für wirtschaftliche Angelegenheiten, Abteilung Wohnbauforschung, sowie der BUWOG, der Neuen Heimat/GEWOG und der WAG Linz

Die vorliegende Studie analysiert die Einsatzbedingungen und die Entwicklungspotentiale Neuer (elektronischer) Medien für die Außenkommunikation von GBV mit ihren Kunden, Professionisten und Behörden. Aufbauend auf einer Ist-Zustandsanalyse der Kommunikationsfelder der GBV, der unterschiedlichen technischen Möglichkeiten und einer Mieterbefragung, in der die Ausstattung mit und die Einstellung zu Neuen Medien erhoben wurde, wurden die Entwicklungsoptionen und möglichen Folgen aus juridischer, sozialer und ökonomischer Sicht analysiert