Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Existing research on synchronous remote working in CSCW has highlighted the troubles that can arise because actions at one site are (partially) unavailable to remote colleagues. Such ‘local action’ is routinely characterised as a nuisance, a distraction, subordinate and the like. This paper explores interconnections between ‘local action’ and ‘distributed work’ in the case of a research team virtually collocated through ‘MiMeG’. MiMeG is an e-Social Science tool that facilitates ‘distributed data sessions’ in which social scientists are able to remotely collaborate on the real-time analysis of video data. The data are visible and controllable in a shared workspace and participants are additionally connected via audio conferencing. The findings reveal that whilst the (partial) unavailability of local action is at times problematic, it is also used as a resource for coordinating work. The paper considers how local action is interactionally managed in distributed data sessions and concludes by outlining implications of the analysis for the design and study of technologies to support group-to-group collaboration.

In computer-mediated group communication, anonymity enables participants to post controversial comments without risking accusations of improper behavior. While this may encourage more open and frank discussion, it diminishes accountability. In addition, anonymous comments are perceived as weaker than non-anonymous comments. We propose a communication protocol that allows a user to send a strong message to the group without having to assume sole individual responsibility. The system posts an anonymous comment, and then calls for supporters. When sufficient numbers of supporters have been gathered, the system reveals the names of all supporters as a round-robin signature. This prevents the originator from being identified. We describe the implementation of this protocol in a text-based chat system, and report our experience operating it at two technical conferences.

The service provider-customer relationship, although not perhaps considered a typical collaborative relationship, is clearly collaborative work. However, such work is constrained by the very (service) nature of the relationship. Customer-service provider interaction can be characterised as interaction at the boundaries of organisations, each of which is likely to have their own workflows and orientations. Many service organisations attempt to facilitate this interaction by configuring their customers, using standardised forms or applications. In this way they bring the customers workflow into line with their own. In this paper we describe field work examining one particular service relationship; that between print shops and their customers. A notable feature of print shop-customer relationships is that customers prepare the material that the print shop then prints. This makes the standardization of workflows difficult, particularly within the service relationship. Technologies exist which aim to automate and standardize the workflow from customers to print shops. However, they have, up to now, largely failed to live up to their promise, leaving print shops to adopt ad hoc solutions. This paper describes the hidden work that the print shops do to make the service relationship work.

This paper approaches heterogeneity and heterogeneous technology as assets, rather than limitations, in the development of computer supported cooperative work. We demonstrate how heterogeneous technologies sustain teachers’ and students’ school work by presenting four different prototypes (the HyConExplorer, the eCell, the iGame- Floor and the eBag) that complement one another because they offer different functionalities and are, at the same time, designed with the wholeness of school activities, particularly group-based ones, in mind. Thus, they provide teachers and students with a broad range of IT support to aid them in and outside of the classroom. We take the school domain as our point of departure, but argue that the focus on heterogeneous technologies is applicable for the general area of CSCW.

This paper examines the empirical findings of a study of the work and cooperation taking place within and between the home help service and home health care in a Swedish county. The aim is to explore the current context for the design and development of IT tools that may facilitate cooperation and coordination in elderly care at home. The focus of the study is the use of a tool, a binder, which collects material considered as important to sustain cooperation between and within the two services. The paper illustrates concrete aspects of how different types of material is utilised and how the actual use of the binder reveals both advantages and disadvantages. Through focusing on the binder, aspects that are crucial to consider also when designing IT tools are made visible. These aspects include the need to support the integration of home care information and the importance of assisting asynchronous communication through the facilitation of informal information. It is also necessary to consider the mobile nature of the home care work, and the importance of a patient-centric view that promotes information sharing between the heterogeneous network of actors involved in the home care process, including the care receiver and relatives.

The notion of Common Information Spaces (CIS) is extensively used as a framework to analyse cooperative work. Drawing on recent contributions to the discourse on CIS, this paper develops a perspective on how information is shared in heterogeneous contexts. We study the introduction of an electronic nursing plan in the psychogeriatric ward at the University Hospital of North Norway. The plan was expected to improve information sharing among the healthcare practitioners and in that sense contribute to their CIS. However, although the nursing plan was regularly updated, it was less used in practice than initially expected. We suggest that this can be ascribed to the temporal and evolving character of both medical information and work. Drawing on the notion of trajectories, we elaborate on these findings and develop a perspective on CIS, emphasising its situated, temporal and negotiated character.

Mobile technology has turned the traditionally collective activity of enjoying music into an often private one. New technologies such as wireless ad hoc networks have the potential to re-connect listeners who are now separated by headphones. We report on a field study of Push!Music, a novel mobile music sharing system. Push!Music allows both manual and automatic sharing of music between users through ad hoc wireless networking, and also provides a social awareness of other users nearby. The system was used by 13 subjects for three weeks. In post-study interviews, we identified four categories of results: social awareness, sharing music with friends, sharing music with strangers, and sharing automatically. Based on this, we present implications for design that can be applied not only to mobile music sharing systems, but to mobile media sharing in general: Allow division into active and passive use; enhance the awareness of who, where and when; support reciprocity; and finally, support identity and impression management.

This paper exploits ethnographic findings to build on and elaborate Grinter et al’s 2005 study of “the work to make the home network work”. We focus particularly on the work involved in setting up and maintaining home networks, which we characterize as ‘digital housekeeping’. Our studies reveal that it is through digital housekeeping that the home network is ‘made at home’ or made into an unremarkable and routine feature of domestic life. The orderly ways in which digital housekeeping ‘gets done’ elaborate a distinct ‘social machinery’ that highlights some important implications for the continued development of network technologies for the home. These include a requirement that designers take existing infrastructure into account and pay considerable attention to how future technologies may be incorporated into existing routines. The preoccupation of household members with making the home network transparent and accountable so that it is available to practical reasoning suggests designers should also consider the development of dedicated management interfaces to support digital housekeeping.

There is a growing interest in technologies for supporting individuals to manage their accessibility for interruptions. The applicability of these technologies is likely to be influenced by social relationships between people. This paper describes an experiment that examines interplay between a working relationship of an interruptor and an interruptee and two different system approaches to handle interruptions. We tested how system behaviour and the social relationship between the actors influence their interruption behaviours. Our results are consistent with prior research on the importance of relational benefit to understanding interruption. We found that interruptors were far more likely to be considerate of interruptees' activities, when they both shared a common goal. We have extended those findings by showing that interruptees display similar behaviours to those presented by interruptors. The results regarding the systems’ influence show a clear trend towards the positive effect of the Automatic system on peoples’ interruption behaviours which is based on: (i) visible interruption costs, (ii) social tension and (iii) system preference. We think that the results of this experiment translated into design implications can prove helpful in informing the design of computer–mediated solutions supporting interruption handling.

While investigating the resistance to the electronic triage system, ETRIAGE, at the emergency department of British Columbia Children’s Hospital, we revisit the wellknown CSCW-debate about THE COORDINATOR concerning the politics of standardized categories. Examining the history as well as the design of ETRIAGE, we reveal four basic assumptions about triage work in emergency departments, which are reflected in the design of the ETRIAGE application and related to the managerial agenda of controlling costs in hospitals. We find that ETRIAGE has an embedded surveillance-capability, which challenges the professional authority of nurses’ work and removes discretion from the individual. We argue that the resistance towards ETRIAGE should be understood in terms of experienced nurses’ disputing the assumptions about their professional practice that are embodied within such systems rather than general resistance to change or resistance to technology.