| Building Urban Narratives: Collaborative Site-Seeing and Envisioning in the MR Tent | | BIBAK | Web Page | 1-42 | |
| Ina Wagner | |||
| The focus of this paper is on studying mixed teams of urban planners,
citizens and other stakeholders co-constructing their vision for the future of
a site. The MR Tent provides a very specific collaborative setting: an assembly
of technologies brought outdoors onto the site of an urban project, which
offers vistas onto the site as well as a multiplicity of representations of the
site to work with, in different media and taken from different perspectives.
The prime focus of this paper is on the complex narratives participants
co-constructed in three participatory workshops, with the aim to understand how
the core aspects of the MR Tent -- spatiality, representation and haptic
engagement -- shape these narratives. Main findings of this research concern:
how the design of the multi-layered space of the MR-Tent supports spatial
story-telling; how the different representations of the site of an urban
project offer the opportunity to choreograph a 'site-seeing' that helps
participants understand the site and plan interventions; how the 'tangibles' in
the MR-Tent encourage a different way of contributing to a shared project and
'building a vision'. Keywords: Collaboration; Mixed reality; Multimodal analysis; Participation;
Representation; Spatiality; Tangible user interface; Urban planning | |||
| Pursuing Leisure: Reflections on Theme Park Visiting | | BIBAK | Web Page | 43-79 | |
| Abigail Durrant; David S. Kirk; Steve Benford; Tom Rodden | |||
| In this paper, we present the theme park as a novel commercial setting and
distinct cultural ecology for CSCW research, presenting challenges to
technology designers interested in supporting cultural visiting activities. We
report findings from an empirical field study of theme park visiting by groups.
Our account focuses on how visitors encountered the theme park, and how they
worked with or "geared in" to what the park provided in order to pursue leisure
activities to their own ends. We further demonstrate that, whilst theme park
visiting features thrilling and fun activities, it also features the prosaic
concerns of planning, parenting and money that connect it to ordinary social
life. As such, we present the theme park as a setting in which work and leisure
are intertwined as concerns of both visitors and the park, for producing and
consuming theme park experience. We have focussed on the work of visiting
groups to pursue leisure, and their combined use of park-provided and personal
technologies in various "trajectories of interaction" within the park. Our
findings point to considerations for the design of services that connect with
park-provided and personal technologies to support group visiting, in theme
parks and related settings. Keywords: theme parks; cultural visiting; visitor experience; leisure; tourism;
ubiquitous computing; souvenirs | |||
| Social Infrastructures as Barriers and Foundation for Informal Learning: Technology Integration in an Urban After-School Center | | BIBAK | Web Page | 81-103 | |
| Louise Barkhuus; Robert Lecusay | |||
| In this paper we explore the relationship between social learning
environments and the technological ecologies that practitioners, learners, and
researchers develop to sustain them. Through an examination of ethnographic
research conducted at an urban after-school learning program we show how
social, technological and power infrastructures influence learning and
interaction in this setting. Adopting a holistic approach we examine how
technologies are integrated into activities in this program to support the
learning of the after-school youth. We emphasize both positive and negative
infrastructures that contribute to the learning environment and discuss how
identifying these infrastructures are one of the first steps towards
understanding and informing technology design in informal learning settings. Keywords: education; children; learning technologies; ethnography | |||
| "Video in Qualitative Research", Christian Heath, Jon Hindmarsh and Paul Luff | | BIB | Web Page | 105-107 | |
| Behzod Sirjani | |||
| Knowledge Management in Practice: A Special Issue | | BIB | Web Page | 109-110 | |
| Carla Simone; Mark Ackerman; Volker Wulf | |||
| Doing Business with Theory: Communities of Practice in Knowledge Management | | BIBAK | Web Page | 111-162 | |
| Norman Makoto Su; Hiroko N. Wilensky; David F. Redmiles | |||
| We explore how the notion of communities of practice (CoPs) was translated
and popularized from its original inception by Lave and Wenger in 1991. We
argue that the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), a spin-off of Xerox
PARC, proved instrumental in enrolling CoPs into the knowledge management (KM)
discipline. IRL objectified, packaged, and made a business out of CoPs. CoPs in
KM are now a formalized process coupled with technological artifacts to build
groups of people who effectively share knowledge across boundaries. Drawing
from participant observations, archival documents, and interviews with KM
practitioners in the aerospace industry as well as key players of IRL, our
research seeks to unveil the invisible history that the popularization of a
theory can often obscure. We argue that CoPs provide a case study for
understanding how abstract concepts in science are strategically and
subconsciously reified, or made objects of inquiry, and appropriated by actors.
This reification of a "soft" science blurs the line between theory and
technology. Keywords: aerospace; communities of practice; knowledge management; science &
technology studies; sociology of scientific knowledge | |||
| The Trouble with 'Tacit Knowledge' | | BIBAK | Web Page | 163-225 | |
| Kjeld Schmidt | |||
| The development and maintenance of organized cooperative work practices
require, as an integral feature, what can loosely be termed 'didactic
practices' or 'mutual learning' (giving and receiving instruction, advice,
direction, guidance, recommendation, etc.). However, such didactic practices
have not been investigated systematically in CSCW. Michael Polanyi's notion of
'tacit knowledge' vs. 'explicit knowledge', which plays a key role in the area
of Knowledge Management, would seem to offer an obvious framework for
investigating didactic practices in CSCW. But as argued in this article, the
notion of 'tacit knowledge' is a conceptual muddle that mystifies the very
concept of practical knowledge. The article examines the historical context in
which the notion of 'tacit knowledge' was devised, the purpose for which it was
formulated, its original articulation, and the perplexing ways in which it has
been appropriated in Knowledge Management. In an attempt to gain firm ground
for our research, the article towards the end offers a general analysis of the
concept of 'knowledge', informed by the work of Gilbert Ryle and Alan White.
Overall, the article argues that a framework based on the notion of 'tacit
knowledge', or on similar conceptions devoted to categorizations of kinds of
knowledge, impairs the for CSCW essential focus on actual work practices:
instead of focusing on forms of symbolism, what is required is to focus on
uncovering the logics of actual didactic practices in cooperative work. Keywords: knowledge; practice; knowledge management | |||
| Affording Mechanisms: An Integrated View of Coordination and Knowledge Management | | BIBAK | Web Page | 227-260 | |
| Federico Cabitza; Carla Simone | |||
| In this paper we question the separation between technologies that support
information and handle the ordered flow of work and technologies that support
knowledge management. On the basis of observational studies and initiatives of
participatory prototype design that we performed in the hospital domain and
other cooperative work settings, the paper proposes a unified view of these
high-level functionalities through the notion of Affording Mechanism. In order
to clarify the implications for design, the paper discusses the relationships
between knowledge and representations; the role of artifacts that are used in
activities where knowledge is allegedly "produced, shared and consumed"; and
finally the notion of affordance and its dynamics. In very general terms, an AM
consists of an artifact and of dynamic relationships between the context of use
and the artifact's affordances, expressed in terms of simple if-then
constructs. The affordances conveyed through and by the artifact are modulated
in order to evoke a "positive" reaction in the actors who use these augmented
artifacts and to support knowledgeable behaviors apt to the situation.
Moreover, the paper illustrates a prototypical technology through examples
derived from the studies mentioned above, and discusses the kind of support
this application provides in the light of an unusual interpretation of what it
might mean to "manage" knowledge through computer-based technology. Keywords: affording mechanism; Hospital work; Affordance; dynamic affordance;
coordination mechanism; Knowledge artifact; ProDoc | |||
| Bridging Artifacts and Actors: Expertise Sharing in Organizational Ecosystems | | BIBAK | Web Page | 261-282 | |
| Volkmar Pipek; Volker Wulf; Aditya Johri | |||
| We synthesize findings from longitudinal case studies examining work
practices in three different organizations and propose analytical and
methodological frameworks to guide the design and implementation of
technologies for expertise and knowledge management. We appropriate the concept
of ecosystem to argue that we can create active and useful solutions for
knowledge management through a focus on interaction between two mutually
intertwined elements of an ecosystem -- artifacts and actors. We show that in
expertise and knowledge sharing systems domain knowledge and technological
knowledge are complementary and we present evidence that small solutions can
have far reaching effects. Finally, we make a case for full integration of IT
developers as an element of expertise sharing ecosystem. Keywords: knowledge management; expertise sharing; case studies; IT ecosystems; CSCW | |||
| Beyond Expertise Seeking: A Field Study of the Informal Knowledge Practices of Healthcare IT Teams | | BIBAK | Web Page | 283-315 | |
| Patricia Ruma Spence; Madhu Reddy | |||
| CSCW has long been concerned with formal and informal knowledge practices in
organizations, examining both the social and technical aspects of how knowledge
is sought, shared, and used. In this study, we are interested in examining the
set of activities that occur when co-located knowledge workers manage and
resolve issues by seeking, sharing, and applying their informal knowledge.
Informal knowledge seeking involves more than identifying the expert who has
the knowledge or accessing the knowledge through physical artifacts. It also
involves working with that expert to identify and apply the appropriate
knowledge to the particular situation. However, our understandings of how
people collaboratively work together to find, share and apply this knowledge
are less well understood. To investigate this phenomenon, we conducted a field
study of how professionals in three IT teams of a regional hospital managed and
resolved IT issues. These knowledge workers used various collaborative
practices such as creation of ad-hoc teams and the use of email to identify,
share, and use informal knowledge to resolve IT issues. In addition, particular
team practices such as how issues are assigned affected these knowledge
activities. Our findings highlight how informal knowledge activities are
affected by a variety of implicit and sometimes subtle features of the
organization and that organizational knowledge management systems should
support informal knowledge seeking activities and collaboration amongst the
knowledge sharers. Keywords: knowledge seeking; informal knowledge; collaboration; IT teams; knowledge
management systems; healthcare; qualitative research; team practices;
organizational work | |||
| Exploring Appropriation of Enterprise Wikis: A Multiple-Case Study | | BIBAK | Web Page | 317-356 | |
| Alexander Stocker; Alexander Richter; Patrick Hoefler; Klaus Tochtermann | |||
| The purpose of this paper is to provide both application-oriented
researchers and practitioners with detailed insights into conception,
implementation, and utilization of intra-organizational wikis to support
knowledge management and group work. Firstly, we report on three case studies
and describe how wikis have been appropriated in the context of a concrete
practice. Our study reveals that the wikis have been used as Knowledge Base,
Encyclopedia and Support Base, respectively. We present the identified
practices as a result of the wiki appropriation process and argue that due to
their open and flexible nature these wikis have been appropriated according to
the users' needs. Our contribution helps to understand how platforms support
working practices that have not been supported by groupware before, or at least
not in the same way. Secondly, three detailed implementation reports uncover
many aspects of wiki projects, e.g., different viewpoints of managers and
users, an investigation of other sources containing business-relevant
information, and perceived obstacles to wiki projects. In this context, our
study generates a series of lessons learned for people who intend to implement
wikis in their own organizations, including the awareness of usage potential,
the need for additional managerial support, and clear communication strategies
to promote wiki usage. Keywords: knowledge management; knowledge sharing; social software; wiki; enterprise
wiki; web 2.0 | |||
| Collective Intelligence in Organizations: Tools and Studies: Introduction | | BIB | Web Page | 357-369 | |
| Antonietta Grasso; Gregorio Convertino | |||
| Productive Interrelationships between Collaborative Groups Ease the Challenges of Dynamic and Multi-Teaming | | BIBAK | Web Page | 371-396 | |
| Tara Matthews; Steve Whittaker; Thomas P. Moran; Sandra Y. Helsley; Tejinder K. Judge | |||
| Work organization and team membership is highly complex for modern workers.
Teams are often dynamic as personnel change during a project. Dynamic team
members have to be actively recruited and personnel changes make it harder for
participants to retain group focus. Workers are often members of multiple
groups. Though prior work has identified the prevalence of multi-teaming and
dynamic teams, it has been unable to explain how workers cope with the
challenges the new style of work should cause. This paper systematically
characterizes the modern organizational landscape from an individual
perspective, by studying how people typically organize work across their
multiple collaborative groups. A unique contribution of our work is to examine
the interrelationships between the collaborative groups individuals typically
participate in. We introduce the notion of a collaboration profile to
characterize these interrelations. We expected workers to be overburdened by
contributing to multiple teams often with shifting personnel. However, we found
that multi-teaming involves productive interrelationships between collaborative
groups that ease some of the documented challenges of dynamic teams, such as
goal setting, recruiting, and group maintenance. We define a typology that
describes the various types of collaborative groups workers participate in, and
provide examples of productive interrelations between collaborations. In
characterizing interrelations between collaborations, we provide detailed
examples of how people exploit resources across their different collaborations
to address the problems of working in multiple dynamic teams. Keywords: collaboration types; collaborative work; multi-teaming; interrelations;
office; teams; workplace | |||
| The Management and Use of Social Network Sites in a Government Department | | BIBAK | Web Page | 397-415 | |
| John Rooksby; Ian Sommerville | |||
| In this paper we report findings from a study of social network site use in
a UK Government department. We have investigated this from a managerial,
organisational perspective. We found at the study site that there are already
several social network technologies in use, and that these: misalign with and
problematize organisational boundaries; blur boundaries between working and
social lives; present differing opportunities for control; have different
visibilities; have overlapping functionality with each other and with other
information technologies; that they evolve and change over time; and that their
uptake is conditioned by existing infrastructure and availability. We find the
organisational complexity that social technologies are often hoped to cut
across is, in reality, something that shapes their uptake and use. We argue the
idea of a single, central social network site for supporting cooperative work
within an organisation will hit the same problems as any effort of
centralisation in organisations. Fostering collective intelligence in
organisations is therefore not a problem of designing the right technology but
of supporting work across multiple technologies. We argue that while there is
still plenty of scope for design and innovation in this area, an important
challenge now is in supporting organisations in managing what can best be
referred to as a social network site 'ecosystem'. Keywords: Fieldwork; Government; Organisations; Public administration; Social network
sites; Web2.0 | |||
| Contested Collective Intelligence: Rationale, Technologies, and a Human-Machine Annotation Study | | BIBAK | Web Page | 417-448 | |
| Anna De Liddo; Ágnes Sándor; Simon Buckingham Shum | |||
| We propose the concept of Contested Collective Intelligence (CCI) as a
distinctive subset of the broader Collective Intelligence design space. CCI is
relevant to the many organizational contexts in which it is important to work
with contested knowledge, for instance, due to different intellectual
traditions, competing organizational objectives, information overload or
ambiguous environmental signals. The CCI challenge is to design sociotechnical
infrastructures to augment such organizational capability. Since documents are
often the starting points for contested discourse, and discourse markers
provide a powerful cue to the presence of claims, contrasting ideas and
argumentation, discourse and rhetoric provide an annotation focus in our
approach to CCI. Research in sensemaking, computer-supported discourse and
rhetorical text analysis motivate a conceptual framework for the combined human
and machine annotation of texts with this specific focus. This conception is
explored through two tools: a social-semantic web application for human
annotation and knowledge mapping (Cohere), plus the discourse analysis
component in a textual analysis software tool (Xerox Incremental Parser: XIP).
As a step towards an integrated platform, we report a case study in which a
document corpus underwent independent human and machine analysis, providing
quantitative and qualitative insight into their respective contributions. A
promising finding is that significant contributions were signalled by authors
via explicit rhetorical moves, which both human analysts and XIP could readily
identify. Since working with contested knowledge is at the heart of CCI, the
evidence that automatic detection of contrasting ideas in texts is possible
through rhetorical discourse analysis is progress towards the effective use of
automatic discourse analysis in the CCI framework. Keywords: collective intelligence; discourse; human annotation; knowledge mapping;
machine annotation; learning; sensemaking; network visualization; social
software; social annotation | |||
| Enabling Large-Scale Deliberation Using Attention-Mediation Metrics | | BIBAK | Web Page | 449-473 | |
| Mark Klein | |||
| Humanity now finds itself faced with a range of highly complex and
controversial challenges -- such as climate change, the spread of disease,
international security, scientific collaborations, product development, and so
on -- that call upon us to bring together large numbers of experts and
stakeholders to deliberate collectively on a global scale. Collocated meetings
can however be impractically expensive, severely limit the concurrency and thus
breadth of interaction, and are prone to serious dysfunctions such as
polarization and hidden profiles. Social media such as email, blogs, wikis,
chat rooms, and web forums provide unprecedented opportunities for interacting
on a massive scale, but have yet to realize their potential for helping people
deliberate effectively, typically generating poorly-organized, unsystematic and
highly redundant contributions of widely varying quality. Large-scale
argumentation systems represent a promising approach for addressing these
challenges, by virtue of providing a simple systematic structure that radically
reduces redundancy and encourages clarity. They do, however, raise an important
challenge. How can we ensure that the attention of the deliberation
participants is drawn, especially in large complex argument maps, to where it
can best serve the goals of the deliberation? How can users, for example, find
the issues they can best contribute to, assess whether some intervention is
needed, or identify the results that are mature and ready to "harvest"? Can we
enable, for large-scale distributed discussions, the ready understanding that
participants typically have about the progress and needs of small-scale,
collocated discussions?. This paper will address these important questions,
discussing (1) the strengths and limitations of current deliberation
technologies, (2) how argumentation technology can help address these
limitations, and (3) how we can use attention-mediation metrics to enhance the
effectiveness of large-scale argumentation-based deliberations. Keywords: Deliberation; Metrics; Argumentation | |||
| The CSCW Journal Turns 20 | | BIB | Web Page | 475-484 | |
| Kjeld Schmidt | |||
| Who's Got the Data? Interdependencies in Science and Technology Collaborations | | BIBAK | Web Page | 485-523 | |
| Christine L. Borgman; Jillian C. Wallis; Matthew S. Mayernik | |||
| Science and technology always have been interdependent, but never more so
than with today's highly instrumented data collection practices. We report on a
long-term study of collaboration between environmental scientists (biology,
ecology, marine sciences), computer scientists, and engineering research teams
as part of a five-university distributed science and technology research center
devoted to embedded networked sensing. The science and technology teams go into
the field with mutual interests in gathering scientific data. "Data" are
constituted very differently between the research teams. What are data to the
science teams may be context to the technology teams, and vice versa.
Interdependencies between the teams determine the ability to collect, use, and
manage data in both the short and long terms. Four types of data were
identified, which are managed separately, limiting both reusability of data and
replication of research. Decisions on what data to curate, for whom, for what
purposes, and for how long, should consider the interdependencies between
scientific and technical processes, the complexities of data collection, and
the disposition of the resulting data. Keywords: cyberinfrastructure; data curation; data practices; escience; scientific
collaboration, scientific software development; technology research; sensor
networks; environmental sciences | |||
| Collaboration in Translation: The Impact of Increased Reach on Cross-organisational Work | | BIBA | Web Page | 525-554 | |
| Gavin Doherty; Nikiforos Karamanis; Saturnino Luz | |||
| Coping with the increased levels of geographic and temporal distribution of work and the near ubiquitous accessibility of information fostered by today's networking technologies has been recognised as one of the greatest challenges facing CSCW research. This trend is reflected in the development of workflow-based tools which cross organisational boundaries, putting pressure on established coordination mechanisms aimed at articulating the work of teams that include co-located and remote members. In this paper, we explore these issues by analysing a localisation activity carried out across organisational boundaries where the pressures for increased distribution and accessibility of information manifest themselves quite clearly both in the way work is specified and locally articulated. We look at how the work is realised in practice, and present an analysis based on the coordination mechanisms, awareness mechanisms and communication flows which occur both inside and outside of the formal workflow-support tools. The analysis reveals a wide variety of informal communication, ad-hoc coordination mechanisms and bricolage activities that are used for local articulation and metawork. As well as providing a concrete illustration of the issues caused by increased distribution, beyond those inherent in the complexity of the work, the analysis reveals a number of opportunities for better supporting the work and for the successful integration of new technologies.Keywords Reach -- Coordination -- Awareness -- Fieldwork study -- Translation -- Organisational boundaries -- Localisation teamwork -- Workflow | |||
| Bridging Identity Gaps -- Supporting Identity Performance in Citizen Service Encounters | | BIBAK | Web Page | 555-590 | |
| Nikolaj Gandrup Borchorst; Brenda McPhail; Karen Louise Smith; Joseph Ferenbok; Andrew Clement | |||
| This paper explores in situ citizen service encounters in government
offices. Drawing upon ethnographically informed fieldwork in Canada and
Denmark, we discuss the challenges to supporting citizens in constructing and
performing identities in public service settings. Our data suggests that
citizens make use of at least three strategies in their attempts to perform the
appropriate identities needed to "fit within the system" in specific encounters
with government. There exists a strong correlation between citizens' ability to
perform identities that are compatible with the bureaucratic administrative
processes and the quality and swiftness of the service they receive. As we
bring to light in this paper, this "fitting in" with rigid bureaucratic
procedures and IT systems interestingly requires a substantial collaborative
effort between the receiver(s) of the service and a complex constellation of
surrounding stakeholders and intermediaries. This collaboration and the
performing of multiple identities raises challenges for the design of
e-government systems aimed at supporting physical and digital citizen service
provision, as well as issues regarding privacy, citizenship, and public service
quality. Lastly, we turn to a discussion of how the established identity gaps
can be addressed through design. Information and communication technologies as
well as face-to-face encounters have an important role to play in the building
of an interface to government. Here, it is paramount to consider the context in
which people and systems must function in order to meet the need for dynamic
identity performance. Keywords: citizen services; collaboration; identification; identity; privacy | |||
| "Cooperative Work and Coordinative Practices: Contributions to the Conceptual Foundations of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)", Kjeld Schmidt | | BIB | Web Page | 591-596 | |
| Maria Normark | |||
| "Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing", Paul Dourish & Genevieve Bell | | BIB | Web Page | 597-603 | |
| Eva Hornecker | |||