Antonietta Grasso

Diffusing information in organizational settings: learning from experience

Recommender systems selectively circulate information enriched with comments and feedback based on peoples experience. These systems filter information in a semi-automatic and high-quality way in order to support a community during their work or leisure practices. However recommender systems are usually separate tools that require a degree of effort to be used, both when receiving information and to insert new feedback. In this paper we present our informal experiences with the use of multiple user interfaces (interactive large screen, email, paper and PDA) as means to improve the diffusion of information through an organizational unit and to improve access to information stored within an existing recommender system

Distributed Coordination and Workflow on the World Wide Web

This paper describes WebFlow, an environment thatsupports distributed coordination services on theWorld Wide Web. WebFlow leverages the HTTP Webtransport protocol and consists of a number of toolsfor the development of applications that require thecoordination of multiple, distributed servers.Typical applications of WebFlow include distributeddocument workspaces, inter/intra-enterprise workflow,and electronic commerce. In this paper we describe thegeneral WebFlow architecture for distributedcoordination, and then focus on the environment fordistributed workflow.

Supporting Communities of Practice with Large Screen Displays

In the foreseeable future large screen displays will be affordable and consequently widely available in work organisations. Several projects have started to investigate what kinds of information are most usefully presented by large screen displays and in which ways. This research is part of a larger effort concerning Ambient Displays, but here we focus on the visual presentation of information in work settings. Starting from communication needs in work organisations, we identify Communities of Practice as a relevant organisational group to address, and present a system for supporting them. On the basis of our experience and experience found in the literature we analyse design choices that can alleviate the cost of using these systems. Furthermore, context-sensitiveness may provide additional ways of improving the cost/benefit ratio.

Collective Intelligence in Organizations: Tools and Studies

Web 2.0 tools are penetrating into organizations after their successful adoption in the consumer domain (e.g., social networking; sharing of photos, videos, tags, or bookmarks; wiki-based editing). Some of these new tools and the collaborative processes that they support on the large scale are often referred to as Collective Intelligence (CI). The workshop brings together leading researchers and designers who are studying or developing CI tools aimed at workers in organizations. The goal is to further articulate the emerging research agenda for this new CSCW area and define new observed forms of CI in organization. Studies of communities, CI tools, and new methods are discussed. Author Keywords

The practical indispensability of articulation work to immediate and remote help-giving

This paper argues that the design of remote help-giving systems should be grounded in articulation work and the methodical ways in which help-givers and help-seekers coordinate their problem solving activities. We provide examples from ethnographic studies of both immediate and remote help-giving to explicate what we mean by articulation work and to tease out common and characteristic methods involved in help-seeking and the giving of expert advice. We then outline how emerging technologies might best be used to support articulation work in the design and development of systems for remote troubleshooting of devices with embedded computing capabilities.

Augmenting paper to enhance community information sharing

Paper is traditionally considered as a major gap between the physical and electronic worlds, especially after the many attempts that have failed to attain a completely digital world. Paper based artifacts have many affordances that people want to continue to exploit. The work presented here is part of the Campiello project. It describes how the existing paper artifacts in use during the visits to cultural and tourist towns as well as artefacts used for local communities can be extended in order to become a bridge instead of a barrier to the richness of the digital world. After an introduction that describes the Campiello system and the principles that have driven its functionality, a complete design and the current implementation is presented. Finally, we discuss Paper Interface issues and survey the existing approaches in the field.

Campiello— new user interface approaches for community networks

Existing community networks have a broad agenda of using technology to foster social objectives of community cohesion, enhanced education and strong democracy. They are intended to advance social goals such as building community awareness, encouraging involvement in local decision making, or developing economic opportunities in disadvantaged communities [Schuler94].Given these objectives, the availability and modality of access can be considered a major issue, because only a broad participation to the community network activities can sustain their growth and wealth. However the experience so far demonstrate that the common user base is mainly composed by computer literate, accessing the network because the already have a PC at home or at the workplace. In fact from the technology point of view community networks are based on large bulletin boards and the main user interface is usually PC-based (proprietary application), a Web browser.In this paper we briefly present some ideas from the EU funded project Campiello. Campiello (Esprit Long Term Research Project 25572) started in September 1997 and will last until August 2000. The main point in the Campiello approach is, that the community network access will be broadly extended into the real places through new interface metaphors (paper, large screen displays) and not only be accessible from Home PCs. This greater penetration and connection with real life should support a user base truly representative of the community and possibly open the community to more interactions with external members.

Designing Technology as an Embedded Resource for Troubleshooting

In this paper we describe a number of technologies which we designed to provide support for customers troubleshooting problems with their office devices. The technologies aim to support both self-conducted and expert-supported troubleshooting and to provide a seamless route from one type of support to another. The designs are grounded in the findings of an ethnographic study of a troubleshooting call centre for office devices. We examine the properties of different assemblies of people, resources, technologies and spaces to inspire design for the different troubleshooting situations. Through our fieldwork and our technology envisionments we uncovered a number of dislocations between various aspects of the troubleshooting assemblies: (1) a physical dislocation between the site of the problem and the site of problem resolution; (2) a conceptual dislocation between the users’ knowledge and the troubleshooting resources and (3) a logical dislocation between the support resources and the status of the ailing device itself. The technologies that we propose attempt to address these dislocations by embedding the troubleshooting resources in the device itself, thus harmonizing the various elements and capturing, where possible, the haecceities—the ‘just thisness’—of each particular troubleshooting situation.

Who can claim complete abstinence from peeking at print jobs

While systems supporting communities of practice in work organizations have been shown to be desirable many, if not all, are decoupled from daily work practices and tools. This hinders a wide collection of data about their activities, because of the additional effort that is required from the users. Therefore a pre-requisite for a system aiming at making visible the community activity is the non-intrusive collection of data about the activities that are carried on in a workplace. We present a range of personal document management services that support the construction of a collective memory of user print activities. We have internally tested the system and verified that it successfully provided personal benefit, thereby ensuring that the system receives sufficient usage for the shared memory to be useful. The system also successfully addressed privacy concerns and effectively provided large data sets about document related activities. Finally it provided information able to trigger new or to reinforce existing informal exchanges in communities of practice at a convenient moment; the print action.

Form digitization in BPO: from outsourcing to crowdsourcing?

This paper describes an ethnographic study of an outsourced business process - the digitization of healthcare forms. The aim of the study was to understand how the work is currently organized, with an eye to uncovering the research challenges which need to be addressed if that work is to be crowdsourced. The findings are organised under four emergent themes: Workplace Ecology, Data Entry Skills and Knowledge, Achieving Targets and Collaborative Working. For each theme a description of how the work is undertaken in the outsourcers Indian office locations is given, followed by the implications for crowdsourcing that work. This research is a first step in understanding how crowdsourcing might be applied to BPO activities. The paper examines features specific to form digitization - extreme distribution and form decomposition - and lightly touches on the crowdsourcing of BPO work more generally.