Ann Lantz

Meetings in a Distributed Group of Experts Comparing Face- to-Face, Chat and Collaborative Virtual Environments

This paper focuses on Collaborative Virtual Environments, and their potential to support work meetings for geographically distributed experts. The research question concerns the difference between face-to-face-, chat-, and CVE- meetings with regard to efficiency, communication process, problems with the technology, enjoyment and competence development. A small group of experts were observed during their natural work meetings. Six of the groups scheduled meetings were held three times in a chat environment and three times in a CVE. Results suggests that chat and CVE meetings are experienced as more task oriented than face-to-face meetings, and that avatars support turn taking and are enjoyable.

Heavy Users of Electronic Mail

A field study was conducted using a questionnaire and interviews concerning how electronic mail (E-mail) is used as a work tool for communication. The questionnaire, distributed electronically with ...

Accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities: a systematic search and review of empirical evidence

The purpose of this study was to identify and synthesize measures for accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities by seeking answers to the following research questions: What measures to make electronic communication accessible to people with cognitive disabilities are evaluated and reported in the scientific literature? What documented effects do these measures have? Empirical studies describing and assessing cognitive accessibility measures were identified by searches of 13 databases. Data were extracted and methodological quality was assessed. Findings were analyzed and recommendations for practice and research were made. Twenty-nine articles with considerable variations in studied accessibility measures, diagnoses, methods, outcome measures, and quality were included. They address the use of Internet, e-mail, telephone, chat, television, multimedia interfaces, texts and pictures, operation of equipment, and entering of information. Although thin, the current evidence base indicates that the accessibility needs, requirements, and preferences of people with cognitive disabilities are diverse. This ought to be reflected in accessibility guidelines and standards. Studies to systematically develop and recommend effective accessibility measures are needed to address current knowledge gaps.

User centered design—problems and possibilities: a summary of the 1998 PDC & CSCW workshop

The approaches in User-Centered Design (UCD) vary from Participatory Design (PD) to model-based engineering. No matter the approach, UCD is not the simple, clear-cut way to successful systems development as is sometimes made out. To discuss these issues the authors arranged a one-day workshop at the Participatory Design Conference (PDC’98) in Seattle on November 14, 1998 entitled “User Centered Design – Problems and Possibilities” [1]. The purpose of this workshop was to discuss the problems encountered in UCD in practice and possible solutions, focusing on case studies in real systems development projects. Ten position papers were accepted and the workshop gathered 16 participants from 7 different countries. The position papers are available on the workshop web site [1].

Design Versus design-From the Shaping of Products to the Creation of User Experiences

The concept of design in the context of human-computer interaction is discussed based on definitions from industrial design to the very practical problem of achieving usability in industrial projects in practice. Design is an important quality of a product that today has not been receiving enough attention when it comes to computerized artifacts. Design is also a process of creating the users experience of a system. This article focuses more on design as a creative process of communication than on a posteriori product quality aspects. The Scandinavian tradition has stressed the importance of users participating actively in a user-centered design process. The article defines and discusses user-centered design in light of the theories of communication as put forth by Herbert Clark (1996). Communication is identified as one of the key issues that needs to be addressed to achieve well-functioning user-centered design. The article discusses different terminology and gives examples from a theory on common ground. Finally, mock-ups, prototypes, and video are discussed as tools for facilitating communication and construction of common ground.

Does the Use of E-Mail Change Over Time?

Many empirical studies of the use of e-mail have been performed, but longitudinal studies are not common. In this article a longitudinal study is presented, with data collected during 1994, 1995, and 1998. The research question was as follows: How does the use of e-mail change over time concerning problems experienced with e-mail, the flow of messages, and time to handle mail (i.e., to send and receive a response)? Results show that the flow of messages was stable (sent mail per day) or doubled (received messages per day). Time to handle mail was stable over the 5 years, but the experienced amount of time to handle mail changed from not being sufficient to sometimes sufficient depending on the total work situation. Experienced problems with e-mail decreased during the 5-year study period. The time for respondents to reply to a message changed during this period from immediately to in a day or even a week. Respondents accepted not receiving replies to their own messages, but they used strategies to get answers to the most important messages.

Medicine meets engineering in cooperative design of collaborative decision-supportive system

Researchers in Human-Computer Interaction have worked together with physicians to specify and create prototypes of a system to be used primarily during multi-disciplinary team meetings. Physicians will use the system to aggregate and present relevant patient information during discussions on diagnosis and treatment, and also to coordinate the cases during the patient care pathway. In this paper we present the cooperative design process and activities conducted within the project. The results are two-fold; we report on the progress of creating the decision-supportive system, and describe how the physicians experience the design process. The design activities have made the physicians reflect on: the lack or loss of patient information, how patient information can be improved, break-downs in their work process, how they learn from each other, and the design methodology itself.

Exploring the use of design pattern maps for aligning new technical support to new clinical team meeting routines

We propose the collaborative activity of mapping design patterns against stakeholder values as a viable method for grounding conceptual design of information and communication technology (ICT) services for heterogeneous sets of stakeholders. Preliminary experiences from designing a case book service for video-mediated gastro-medical team meetings are presented. A diverse set of stakeholders and the challenge to apply novel technologies in a demanding environment have placed more responsibility on the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) team to conceptualise new work practices and their expected effects than what traditional participatory design projects typically entail. By combining the methodologies of genre analysis and pattern languages, design pattern maps have been used to conceptualise solutions that span both work and interface aspects of the solution and that match declared values of the stakeholders concerned. A series of mapping sessions with different stakeholders helped the inter-disciplinary project team to better define, what stakeholder values called for what new work patterns and what kind of supporting interaction design patterns these new work patterns in turn called for.

User Participation When Users have Mental and Cognitive Disabilities

Persons with cognitive or mental disabilities have difficulties participating in or are excluded from IT development and assessments exercises due to the problems finding good ways to efficiently collaborate on equal terms. In this paper we describe how we worked closely together with persons that have mental and cognitive disabilities in order to test and develop methods for participation in assessments and in processes for developing, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products and services. More than 100 persons with mental and cognitive disabilities participated in the study (people with diagnoses such as depression, anxiety disorder, bipolarity, and schizophrenia). To explore the conditions for a more equal and fair participation we have developed and elaborated a set of methods, tools and approaches. By combining scientific research methods with well-established methods for empowerment and participation we have developed methods that are cost effective and that easily can be incorporated in existing processes. We believe that our approach have taken steps to implement possibilities for persons with mental and cognitive disabilities to take part where user participation is needed in order not to discriminate or exclude but also to improve the overall quality of the end result. The results clearly show that it is possible to include persons with mental and cognitive disabilities. A mixed method -- mixed tool approach can increase the possibility for participation. The results also show that the quality of the analysis phase increases if the collaborative approach is extended to also embrace the data analysis phase.

Interaction design in procurement: the view of procurers and interaction designers

Among those involved in human–computer interaction (HCI) and user-centred design (UCD) the idea of co-design mainly applies to the software developer organisation and the users. In mainstream HCI research and in the literature only a few attend to the co-creation that occurs between IT acquirers and either users or software developers. Interaction design is central when it comes to designing a system that shows a high degree of use quality; often the interaction designer is working at the IT department and thus is ‘owned’ by the developers. This paper describes a case study of how procurers and interaction designers view the procurement process, the intention being to inform and improve the way that co-design is performed among procurers and developers. The study is conducted in an organisation that chose to include the interaction design competence as part of the software acquisition organisation; we look at how different actors in the organisation view interaction design and how interaction design contributes to the software acquisition process. The interaction designers wish to work with more experienced procurers who know what they want. The procurers, on the other hand, want more control over the initial process, but are worried about how to present their requirements to the IT developers.