Anne-Laure Fayard

Photocopiers and Water-coolers: The Affordances of Informal Interaction

There has been increasing recognition of the importance of informal interactions in organizations, but research examining the effects of the physical environment on informal interaction has produced contradictory results and practical attempts to control the level of informal interaction by design have been marked by unintended consequences. Drawing on a qualitative study of informal interactions observed in photocopier rooms in three organizations, this paper builds on the work of ecological psychologist James Gibson to develop a theory of the affordances of informal interaction. The affordances of an environment are the possibilities for action called forth by it to a perceiving subject. Research on affordances has typically focused on the affordances of individual behavior. We introduce the notion of social affordances and identify the social and physical characteristics that produce the propinquity, privacy, and social designation necessary for an environment to afford informal interactions. The theory of social affordances provides a lens through which to reinterpret the conflicting results of previous studies and to reexamine the seemingly simple water-cooler around which the organization gathers.

Reinventing the familiar: exploring an augmented reality design space for air traffic control

This paper describes our exploration of a design space for an augmented reality prototype. We began by observing air traffic controllers and their interactions with paper flight strips. We then worked with a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and controllers over a period of a year to brainstorm and prototype ideas for enhancing paper flight strips, We argue that augmented reality is more promising (and simpler to implement) than the current strategies that seek to replace flight strips with keyboard/monitor interfaces. We also argue that an exploration of the design space, with active participation from the controllers, is essential not only for designing particular artifacts, but also for understanding the strengths and limitations of augmented reality in general.

Learning in Online Forums

Information and communication technologies afford different levels and types of support for learning networks. We draw on our studies of video-conferenced classrooms, group discussion spaces, and online communities to suggest a framework for understanding how learning networks can benefit from various e-learning venues. We show how the design of computer-mediated environments influence the kinds of learning processes that are likely to unfold as business professionals interact with one another across time and space barriers. The extent to which participants experience these types of learning depends upon how the electronic environments are structured and, more importantly, on how participants manage their interaction processes. Though all venues provide access to distributed social resources, some settings are more effective than others in addressing the specific learning needs of knowledge workers.

Affordances for practice

This paper argues that Gibsons concept of affordance inserts a powerful conceptual lens for the study of sociomateriality as enacted in contemporary organizational practices. Our objective in this paper is to develop a comprehensive view of affordances that builds upon the existing conceptualizations in the psychology, human-computer interaction, sociology and information systems literatures and extend them in three important ways. First, we show that taking an integrative interpretation of affordance as dispositional and relational, rather than the standard unidimensional interpretation, provides a theoretical articulation of how the material and the social influence each other. Second, we propose to broaden the focus from the affordances of technology to the affordances for practice provided jointly by technology and organizing. This means considering social affordances alongside technological affordances. Finally, we argue that the best way to integrate the study of social and technological affordances is not to stretch Gibsons original concept to include the social but rather to complement it with a sociological concept that fits it neatly: Bourdieus idea of habitus. Our claim is that the concepts of affordance and habitus complement and complete each other. Affordance offers a useful way of thinking about how practice is patterned by the social and physical construction of technology and the material environment and habitus offers a useful way of thinking about how practice is patterned by social and symbolic structures. We describe how affordances and habitus may be used together to provide a theoretical apparatus to study practice as a sociomaterial entanglement, thus adding to the methodological toolkit of scholars embracing a sociomaterial perspectives. This paper suggests that Gibsons concept of affordance can provide a powerful conceptual lens for the study of sociomateriality as enacted in contemporary organizational practices.It proposes, instead of the usual unidimensional interpretation, a dualistic interpretation of affordance, as both dispositional and relationg.It complements the concept of affordance with Boudieus concept of habitus for a full understanding of social and technological affordances.

Enacting language games: the development of a sense of ‘we-ness’ in online forums

A sense of ‘we‐ness’– enacted through collective identity and culture – is both crucial in online, remote contexts, and particularly difficult to develop in such settings. Using Wittgensteins concept of language games, we examine how participants of two online forums construct collective identity and culture through their discursive practices. We suggest a strong performative interpretation of the notion of language games, i.e. members of a community produce a sense of we‐ness through their participation in the language game while also defining their expected behaviours and actions. We illustrate how the notion of language games offers an approach for researching and analysing the emergence of collective identity and culture in online forums.

Making culture visible: reflections on corporate ethnography

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect on the experience as corporate ethnographers working in (and for) a large, multinational company with a remit to study and articulate “the culture of the firm.” Design/methodology/approach – The research relied heavily on interviews and some (participant) observation carried out periodically – in North America, Europe and Asia – over an eight-year period. Findings – The authors discuss how the studies were produced, received, and occasionally acted on in the firm and the realization over time of the performativity of the work as both expressive and constitutive of firm’s culture. Research limitations/implications – The increasing entanglement in the organization raises questions regarding emic and etic perspectives and the possibility (or impossibility) of “enduring detachment” or “going native” and the associated, often unintended consequences of being both outsiders and insiders. Practical implications – The authors start with the premise th...

Video brainstorming and prototyping: techniques for participatory design

This tutorial is designed for HCI designers and researchers interested in learning specific techniques for using video to support a range of participatory design activities. Based on a combination of lectures, video demonstrations and hands-on exercises, the tutorial will give participants practical experience using video to observe users in laboratory and field settings, to analyze multimedia data, to explore and capture design ideas (video brainstorming), to simulate interaction techniques with users (Wizard-of-oz and video prototyping) and to present video-based design ideas to users and managers. Participants will gain experience shooting video and will address practical issues such as maintaining video archives and ethical issues such as obtaining informed consent. Although these video techniques are applicable in a variety of design settings, the emphasis here is on participatory design, using video as a tool to help users, researchers and designers gather and communicate design ideas.

How Nascent Occupations Construct a Mandate: The Case of Service Designers’ Ethos:

In this paper, we study the way that nascent occupations constructing an occupational mandate invoke not only skills and expertise or a new technology to distinguish themselves from other occupations, but also their values. We studied service design, an emerging occupation whose practitioners aim to understand customers and help organizations develop new or improved services and customer experiences, translate those into feasible solutions, and implement them. Practitioners enacted their values in their daily work activities through a set of material practices, such as shadowing customers or front-line staff, conducting interviews in the service context, or creating “journey maps” of a service user’s experience. The role of values in the construction of an occupational mandate is particularly salient for occupations such as service design, which cannot solely rely on skills and technical expertise as sources of differentiation. We show how service designers differentiated themselves from other competing occupations by highlighting how their values make their work practices unique. Both values and work practices, what service designers call their ethos, were essential to enable service designers to define the proper conduct and modes of thinking characteristic of their occupational mandate.

Interacting on a video‐mediated stage: The collaborative construction of an interactional video setting

Purpose – To explore the relevance of Goffmans theatrical metaphor to describe video‐mediated interactions.Design/methodology/approach – Grounded in four waves of observational data of MBA students interacting by videoconference in the context of a distributed course between Europe and Asia, with the students working in virtual teams on a consulting project.Findings – People in video‐mediated contexts adjust and evolve the well‐established routines we have developed for interacting in everyday communication in order to build a “stage” for interaction. The stage does not only refer to a spatial frame of reference, but that it also refers to a shared social context, a ”place” that participants collaboratively construct.Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on observations of MBA students, and not teams of professionals in an organization.Practical implications – The observations suggest that although people often blame the technology for frustrating or negative experiences and hoping for t...

Framing Innovation Opportunities While Staying Committed to an Organizational Epistemic Stance

This paper examines how an organization’s culture, and in particular its stance toward the pursuit of knowledge and innovation, matters when confronting new digitally enabled practices for generating novel insights. We draw on an in-depth interpretive study of how two innovation consulting firms encountered crowdsourcing for innovation. Our findings suggest that, although both organizations relied on a similar set of organizational arrangements in their daily consulting work, they enacted different positions vis-a-vis crowdsourcing: one firm further experimented with it, whereas the other rejected it altogether. These different positions emerged as organizational actors examined, framed, and evaluated crowdsourcing as an alternative for generating knowledge. To interpret these findings, we draw on philosophy of science and develop the concept of organizational epistemic stance, defined as an attitude that organizational actors collectively enact in pursuing knowledge. Our analysis suggests that when organ...