Human-Centered vs. User-Centered Approaches to Information System Design

Despite continuing debates about the user emphasis in HCI, new design approaches, such as interaction design, continue to focus on humans as technology users, constraining the human-centeredness of design outcomes. This paper argues that the difference between user focus and a human-centered focus lies in the way in which technology is designed. The emphasis on problem closure that is embedded in current approaches to designing information systems (IS) precludes an examination of those issues central to human-centered design. The paper reviews recent approaches to user-centered IS design and concludes that these methods are targeted at the closure of technology-centered problems, rather than the investigation of suitable changes to a system of humanactivity supported by technology. A dual-cycle model of human-centered design is presented, that balances systemic inquiry methods with human-centered implementation methods. The paper concludes with a suggestion that IS design should be viewed as a dialectic between organizational problem inquiry and the implementation of business process change and technical solutions

Managing Boundary-Spanning Cognition Through Emergent Problem-Framing in Enterprise Systems Design

This paper presents findings from a study of the co-design of business processes and IT systems at the enterprise level. The findings suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of boundary-spanning design that is driven by a series of coordinating representations of the design problem-structure. These become more complicated as the design proceeds, adding new perspectives and dimensions to prior representations, and calling upon salient surface-structures that are helpful in conceptualizing the context of design. This finding challenges the notion of design as the exploration of deep organizational structures or as goal-driven design

The Sociomateriality Of Boundary-Spanning Enterprise IS Design

The paper uses and extends upon a sociomaterial view of organizational IS by relating this to modalities of sensemaking across boundaries and levels of framing in managing the meaning of IS performativity. Data from a field study of Enterprise IS redesign at a US University are analyzed from an actor-network perspective to reveal a genealogy of IS design evolution. Three modalities of sociomaterial design - boundary objects, bridging operations and conscription devices – are examined at multiple levels of design-framing, to understand the emergence of enterprise IS redesign, its political alignment and associated business processes. The result is a conceptual framework which explains how the meanings attached to an enterprise IS emerges are temporally emergent in practice, demonstrating interactions between levels of sensemaking which create unexpected consequences for IS users and exposing backstage negotiations that enable the meaning of an IS design to be managed in practice

Co-operative information system design : how multi-domain information system design takes place in UK organisations

The thesis focussed on the need to understand the nature of design processes in innovative, multi-domain, organisational information systems design. A cross-disciplinary, interpretive investigation of organisational IS design was based upon multiple literatures: information system development and methodologies, human-computer interaction, situated action, social psychology, psychology of programming, computer-supported co-operative work, computer science, design 'rationale' and organisational behaviour. Three studies were performed: 1. A case study of a user-centred design project, employing grounded theory analysis. 2. A postal survey of IS development approaches in large UK companies. 3. A longitudinal field study, involving participant observation over a period of 18 months in a cross-domain design team, employing ethnography, discourse analysis and hermeneutics. The main contributions of this research were to provide rich insights into the interior nature of IS design activity, situated in the context of the organisation (a perspective which is largely missing from the literature); to provide conceptual models to explain the management of meaning in design, and design framing activity; to produce a social action model of organisational information system development which may form the basis for communicating the situated nature of design in teaching; and to suggest elements of a process model of design activity in multi-domain, organisational information system development. The implications of the research findings for IS managers and developers are also considered a significant contribution to practice. Detailed findings from these studies relate to: I. Disparities between the technology-centred view of organisational IS development found in the literature and the business and organisation-based approaches reported in the survey. 2. The role of pre-existing 'investment in form' in shaping the meaning of design processes and outcomes for other team members and its implications for the management of expertise and for achieving double-loop leaming. 3. The detailed processes by which design is framed at individual and group levels of analysis. These findings indicated a mismatch between "top down" models of organisational IS design and observed design "abstraction" processes, which were grounded in concrete analogies and local exemplars; this finding has significant implications for organisational design approaches, such as Business Process Redesign. 4. The distributed nature of group design, which has implications for achieving a 'common vision' of the design and for the division of labour in design groups. Intersubjectivity with respect to process objectives may be more critical to design success than intersubjectivity with respect to the products of design. - 5. The political nature of design activity: it was concluded that an effective design process must manage conflict between the exploration of organisational possibilities and influential, external stakeholders' expectations of efficiency benefits. 6. Design suffers from legitimacy problems related to the investigation of a "grey area" between explicit system design goals and boundary and emergent definitions of design goals and target system boundaries; this issue needs to be managed both internally to the design-team and externally, in respect of stakeholders and influential decision-makers. It is argued that the situated nature of design requires the teaching of design skills to be achieved through simulated design contexts, rather than the communication of abstract models. It is also suggested that the findings of this thesis have implications for knowledge management and organisational innovation. If organisational problem-investigation processes are seen as involving distributed knowledge, then the focus of organisational learning and innovation shifts from sharing organisational knowledge to accessing distributed organisational knowledge which is emergent and incomplete

Reimagining the role of IL: Sustaining information literacy futures

In this keynote panel conversation we embrace the conference theme as a foundational principle; that is, that information literacy (IL) is essential to combatting mis/dis information in today’s Global Information Society. For us, information literacy, irrespective of the stance or paradigms we adopt, is intrinsically associated with critical thinking and the ability to discern wisely in the information universe. There will be many examples of this in action as this conference progresses over the next two days. Accepting these premises leads us to the important question of how we maximise the impact of the information literacy endeavour. Since its inception, and labelling by Paul Zurkowski in 1974, this has been achieved through contextualising IL to make it meaningful to the widest possible range of stakeholders. Today we will: a) Provide a recent example of contextualisation in the form of ‘Informed Research’. Bringing IL to the research community seems an easy and obvious intention, yet has remained challenging to realise. The potential for IL impact in this space has, been strengthened through the development of the Informed Research Framework, which we discuss as an example of innovation in contextualising IL originating from the work of our team. b) Explore the recent re-emergence of the concept of Information Literacy as a discipline, which has been made possible as a consequence of the ongoing contextualisation of IL over the last almost 50 years. This need for contextualisation has driven ongoing research, scholarship, policy formation and training since the inception of the idea; and has also driven the ongoing reimagining of a response to the question – how do we communicate the relevance and import of IL? These matters have been the subject of recent conversations initiated by a new group focussed on ILIAD (IL Is A Discipline). We conclude that it remains essential for IL Professionals to be at the vanguard of combatting mis/dis information through conveying trusted conventions around information sharing and knowledge construction. We see informed research as pivotal to the process of conveying IL as a discipline to the broader community, establishing disciplinarian is itself a research process. As a discipline embodying transdisciplinarity, information literacy is realised through contextualisation across diverse walks of life and is critical in addressing the contemporary global issues that affect us all. The IL Stakeholder community will no doubt continue these conversations throughout the conference. We look forward to many illuminating debates around contextualization, disciplinarity and the role of IL in securing, discerning, and wisely using information into our global futures

Supporting higher degree research collaboration: a reflection

This paper demonstrates the application of a collaborative research framework (Gasson & Bruce, 2017) to the Higher Degree Research (HDR) journey. We propose that by positioning this as a collaborative research culture framework it will enable discussion about developing (building, sustaining and maintaining) healthy and productive collaborative research cultures. Both authors were invited to discuss research collaboration in different spaces. We established a way forward by discussing the critical elements of such collaboration. Out of this we built a framework (Gasson & Bruce, 2017). In the course of sharing this framework with colleagues it became clear that the productive discussion and issues lay around building and managing a sustainable collaborative research culture. We realized that evaluating the collaboration is easier (based on performance metrics), evaluating the culture is more difficult but also important. Further we noted that evaluation work to date has focussed on measurable outcomes associated with visible research activity and their outputs. This framework suggests that focus on the culture would be informing, enabling productive cultures to be established. This paper will provide a background as to why this is important and relevant to the current climate (Australian Government, 2015; Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, 2017; Department of Education and Training, 2017; McGagh et al, 2016); Productivity Commission, 2017; Watt, 2015) and describe the proposed culture framework. We then move on to a narrative reflection on the application of the initial collaborative research framework in two contexts and the ensuing discussions and issues that arose. This has led to our view that there is a need for a deliberate focus on the development of a collaborative research culture as an enabler of research productivity; this leads to consideration of the application of the collaborative research culture framework in the HDR context. We conclude the paper by raising key questions such as: What are the characteristics of a productive collaborative research culture? What puts a productive collaborative research culture in place? What puts a productive collaborative research culture at risk? How is a productive collaborative research culture measured and maintained? What is the role of research leaders in building, maintaining and sustaining productive collaborative research cultures? In moving the discussion into the HDR context our intention is to consider how to support students and their supervisory teams to respond optimally to the call for increased collaboration/end-user engagement. The proposed application of the culture framework moves discussion from evaluation, measurement and reporting on the impact of these engagements to the underpinning culture required to enable development of research collaborations. Development work involves a three stage approach starting with building, moving to maintaining and then sustaining based on a justification of the research collaboration’s productive measureable outcomes. Our view is that this development work sits with research leaders. To date these leaders have relied on intuition and modelling from past experience to inform their activity. However, with the increasing focus on collaborative research and its measurement a more systematic approach may be needed. This approach provides leaders with a cultural focused perspective. An example of the application of the framework is provided to demonstrate this

Participation Solicitation Design for Learner Engagement with Epistemic Objects and Situated, Collective Learning in Online Discussion Boards

This paper describes research examining how we may design effective affordances for contextually- and socially-situated learning in professional domain courses mediated via digital technology platforms. Online learning affordances do not simply offer technology-related mechanisms for student interaction, but also provide mechanisms that allow situated professional practice and contextual domain knowledge to be incorporated into a digitized version of experiential learning. We distinguish between online learning affordances as technology mechanisms that guide normative actions and affordances as participation solicitations that provide learners with targeted affordances for active engagement in socially-situated learning. Our analysis focuses on the domain-specific pattern sensitization that results from the joint creation of, and collective interactions with epistemic discussion objects and that leads to increased self-efficacy in active, experiential learning. The contribution is to demonstrate how solicitation-affordances complement technology affordances to support student engagement in interactive online learning, through examples of behavior and a framework for affordance configuration

Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Hybrid FOSS Community Innovation

FOSS communities are increasingly employing a hybrid model where free, open source software development is combined with commercial customer support to ensure community sustainability. This makes it difficult for peripheral users, who are not part of the core administrative or sponsoring organization to participate meaningfully. The paper presents a study of modes of Legitimate Peripheral Participation by users who attempt to introduce product feature innovations to hybrid FOSS communities. We identify eight modes of virtual peripheral participation by users, exploring the technology and social/community affordances, and the performativity and participation effects that these engender to move peripheral users towards core membership

Using Asynchronous Discussion Boards To Teach IS: Reflections From Practice

This study explores how student learning via asynchronous, threaded discussion boards may be managed successful. We examine the elements of course scaffolding on that affect student learning and engagement in discussion. We explore the role of the instructor in mediating learning. We base our findings on an analysis of 21 online courses in the IS domain, conducted by multiple instructors over a period of eight years. Our findings indicate that three aspects of course scaffolding impact learning outcomes: question structure, question focus, and the design of supporting materials. We also deconstruct the myth of the entertaining professor , concluding that, while students are more satisfied with courses where the professor is deemed to be entertaining – and thus more motivated to learn - this form of course mediation may actually impede deep learning

Collaborative Research Culture Framework V5

A framework is available for use in workshops, seminars and other publications to support discussion and professional development of researchers in relation to Collaboration. The framework supports mapping and evaluation of current network, planning for future networks and exploration of collaborative practices