Bonnie A. Nardi

NetWORKers and their Activity in IntensionalNetworks

Through ethnographic research, we document therise of personal social networks in theworkplace, which we call intensionalnetworks. Paradoxically, we find that the mostfundamental unit of analysis forcomputer-supported cooperative work isnot at the group level for many tasks andsettings, but at the individual level aspersonal social networks come to be more andmore important. Collective subjects areincreasingly put together through theassemblage of people found through personalnetworks rather than being constituted as teamscreated through organizational planning andstructuring. Teams are still important butthey are not the centerpiece of labormanagement they once were, nor are they thechief resource for individual workers. We drawattention to the importance of networks as mostCSCW system designs assume a team. We urge thatdesigners take account of networks and theproblems they present to workers.

Integrating communication and information through ContactMap

Visualizing personal social networks, the system allows users to model and arrange their own in maps of individual contacts and groups, along with the relationships among them.

Twinkling lights and nested loops: distributed problem solving and spreadsheet development

Abstract In contrast to the common view of spreadsheets as “single-user” programs, we have found that spreadsheets offer surprisingly strong support for cooperative development of a wide variety of applications. Ethnographic interviews with spreadsheet users showed that nearly all of the spreadsheets used in the work environments studied were the result of collaborative work by people with different levels of programming and domain expertise. We describe how spreadsheet users cooperate in developing, debugging and using spreadsheets. We examine the properties of spreadsheet software that enable cooperation, arguing that: (1) the division of the spreadsheet into two distinct programming layers permits effective distribution of computational tasks across users with different levels of programming skill; and (2) the spreadsheets strong visual format for structuring and presenting data supports sharing of domain knowledge among co-workers.

An ethnographic study of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development

In contrast to the common view of spreadsheets as “single-user” programs, we have found that spreadsheets offer surprisingly strong support for cooperative development of a wide variety of applications. Ethnographic interviews with spreadsheet users showed that nearly all of the spreadsheets used in the work environments studied were the result of collaborative work by people with different levels of programming and domain expertise. Cooperation among spreadsheet users was spontaneous and casual; users activated existing informal social networks to initiate collaboration.

Turning away from talking heads: the use of video-as-data in neurosurgery

Studies of video as a support for collaborative work have provided little hard evidence of its utility for either task performance or fostering telepresence, i.e. the conveyance of a face-to-face like social presence for remotely located participants. To date, most research on the value of video has concentrated on “talking heads” video in which the video images are of remote participants conferring or performing some task together. In contrast to talking heads video, we studied video-as-data in which video images of the workspace and work objects are the focus of interest, and convey critical information about the work. The use of video-as-data is intended to enhance task performance, rather than to provide telepresence. We studied the use of video during neurosurgery within the operating room and at remote locations away from the operating room. The workspace shown in the video is the surgical field (brain or spine) that the surgeon is operating on. We discuss our findings on the use of live and recorded video, and suggest extensions to video-as-data including its integration with computerized time-based information sources to educate and co-ordinate complex actions among distributed workgroups.

Beyond Models and Metaphors: Visual Formalisms in User Interface Design

A challenging problem for user interface research is the design of user interfaces for information-intensive applications in which the organization, display and manipulation of dense, complex data are important. From what vantage point can we approach the design of such interfaces, and what computational building blocks will support their development? Two popular schools of thought hold that mental models and metaphors provide useful points of departure for user interface design. Considering the literature of cognitive science, we evaluate each as a basis for the design of information-intensive interfaces, and evaluate a third, newer approach, that of visual formalisms. We compare the advantages and disadvantages of mental models, metaphors and visual formalisms, with particular attention to the practical solutions each provides to application developers.

Coda and Response to Christine Halverson

Many thanks to Christine Halverson for an incisive, original discussion of theorizing in CSCW. In reading Halverson’s discussion of activity theory and distributed cognition, I was struck by the common angst shared by all of us with theoretical inclinations who attempt to interest others in developing perspectives beyond seat of the pants analysis. As a community of designers and researchers, we teeter between wanting to just hunker down and get something done – design – and striving to find satisfying theoretical frames that help us understand more deeply what people and technology are about. This tension does not always resolve happily as the following poem by Tom Erickson reveals:

Spiritual life and information technology

the various ways in which we had had significant emotional and/or spiritual experiences during our work with (or through) technology. Several of us spoke of comfort during periods of personal grief, or deeply emotional support during times of trouble, afforded by email as a medium of communication. Others spoke of remaining not only in contact with others, but also in relationship and in community and perhaps even in communion with others. One person noted that even the experience of spiritual communion with nature could be deepened through online communication with other people who shared those values. Several people suggested it was sometimes easier to be supportive (or to be supported) at a distance. Indeed, the non-face-to-face nature of email or chat could be a spiritual comfort when grief or trouble was so intense that a person needed a respite from direct social contact, but still needed the support of others. One person emphasized the advantages of online anonymity for spiritual seekers—we think this means the ability to visit religious or spiritual places on the Web without having to make (or without refusing to make) a commitment, or to receive further communications. By contrast, other participants were equally convinced of the importance of knowing who was in each spiritual place online—of knowing, in effect, who was part of their interactions, relationships, and communities. One participant directly addressed the question of miracles in the online world. He noted that many religious faiths believe in direct Divine intervention in the physical world. Surely, he said, that could include Divine intervention to choose which messages we happen to see, or which sites happen to appear at the top of a list of search results, and so on. Nearly all of us described our spiritual and religious experiences in terms of text, and most of us referred quite clearly to communications with other people. Despite

Beyond models and metaphors: visual formalisms in user interface design

The user interface has both syntactic functions-supplying commands and arguments to programs-and semantic functions-visually presenting application semantics and supporting problem solving cognition. The authors argue that though both functions are important, it is time to devote more resources to the problems of the semantic interface. Complex problem solving activities, e.g. for design and analysis tasks, benefit from clear visualizations of application semantics in the user interface. Designing the semantic interface requires computational building blocks capable of representing and visually presenting application semantics in a clear, precise way. The authors argue that neither mental models not metaphors provide a basis for designing and implementing such building blocks, but that visual formalisms do. They compare the benefits of mental models, metaphors and visual formalisms as the basis for designing the user interface, with particular attention to the practical solutions each provides to application developers.<<ETX>>

ContactMap: using personal social networks to organize communication in a social desktop

________________________________________________________________________ Authors’ addresses: Steve Whittaker, ATT Quentin Jones, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA; Bonnie A. Nardi, Agilent Laboratories Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA; Michael Creech, BlueOak Software, Los Altos, CA, 94024, USA; Loren Terveen, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA; Ellen Isaacs, Izix.com Consulting, CA, 94002, USA; John Hainsworth, Princeton University, NJ, 08544, USA. Permission to make digital/hard copy of part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication, and its date of appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.