Elaine Ferneley

Resist, comply or workaround? An examination of different facets of user engagement with information systems

This paper provides a summary of studies of user resistance to information technology and identifies workaround activity as an understudied and distinct, but related, phenomenon. Previous categorisations of resistance have largely failed to address the relationships between the motivations for divergences from procedure and the associated workaround activity. This paper develops a composite model of resistance/workaround derived from two case study sites. We find four key antecedent conditions derived from both positive and negative resistance rationales and identify associations and links to various resultant workaround behaviours, providing supporting chains of evidence from the two case studies.

Usability metric for mobile application: a goal question metric (GQM) approach

Many usability guidelines have been created in numerous areas and mobile devices application is included as well. However, there is not much published works in relation to the usability guidelines that comes up together with metric. Although a number of measurement models (e.g. The Metric for Usability Standard in Computing [MUSiC]) have been produced for evaluating usability, they are not focusing on mobile application. This paper will make an attempt to review the existing measurement models and will further explain the development of usability metric using GQM approach. Further research will firstly develop a set of usability guidelines for mobile application which will be used to develop a metric for usability measurement.

The use of animated agents in e-learning environments: an exploratory, interpretive case study

There is increasing interest in the use of animated agents in e-learning environments. However, empirical investigations of their use in online education are limited. Our aim is to provide an empirically based framework for the development and evaluation of animated agents in e-learning environments. Findings suggest a number of challenges, including the multiple dialogue models that animated agents will need to accommodate, the diverse range of roles that pedagogical animated agents can usefully support, the dichotomous relationship that emerges between these roles and that of the lecturer, and student perception of the degree of autonomy that can be afforded to animated agents.

An investigation into extracting and analysing stories

Purpose – The use of storytelling as a knowledge elicitation tool has attracted much attention in recent years, yet there is limited literature on how to illicit or stimulate the story. This paper aims to find appropriate research instruments that stimulate storytelling and morph vocalised individual narratives into multifaceted stories that provide an insight into the emotions, politics and “life” of organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an in depth case‐study approach undertaken within the UK Fire and Rescue emergency service and uses the concept of storytelling as a research instrument to elicit highly contextualized knowledge from knowledge holders. The intention is not to attempt to find an objective truth but rather to stimulate discursive openness.Findings – The paper demonstrates that the developed story elicitation technique can stimulate storytelling and story creation. The research provides a simple formalism for structuring story elicitation and analysis.Research limitatio...

Covert End User Development: A Study of Success

End User Development (EUD) of system applications is typically undertaken by end users for their own, or closely aligned colleagues, business needs. EUD studies have focused on activity that is small scale, is undertaken with management consent and will ultimately be brought into alignment with the organisation’s software development strategy. However, due to the increase pace of today’s organisations EUD activity increasing takes place without the full knowledge or consent of management, such developments can be defined as covert rather than subversive, they emerge in response to the dynamic environments in which today’s organisations operate. This paper reports on a covert EUD project where a wide group of internal and external stakeholders worked collaboratively to drive an organisation’s software development strategy. The research highlights the future inevitability of external stakeholders engaging in end user development as, with the emergence of wiki and blog-like environments, the boundaries of organisations’ technological artifacts become increasingly hard to define.

The Reality of Rhetoric in Information Systems Adoption: A Case Study Investigation of the Uk National Health Service

The UK National Health Service is undergoing a tremendous IS -led change, the purpose of which is to create a service capable of meeting the demands of the 21st century. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which persuasive discourse, or rhetoric, influences and affects the adoption of information systems within the health sector. It seeks to explore the ways in which various actors use rhetoric to advance their own agendas and the impact this has on the system itself. As such, the paper seeks to contribute to diffusion research through the use of a case study analysis of the implementation of an Electronic Single Patient Care Record system within one UK Health Service Trust. The findings of the paper suggest that rhetoric is an important and effective persuasive tool, employed by system trainers to coax users into not only adopting the system but also using the system in a predefined manner.

Effective elicitation and dissemination of situated knowledge: exploration of an agent based approach

The paper has focused on the issue of collaborative working through knowledge sharing. Various types of knowledge repository have been identified which have largely failed to be supported by traditional information and communication technologies. This paper addresses the capture, storage and dissemination of situated knowledge, recognising the need for both cultural and technological change if this valuable organisational asset is to be appropriately exploited. The use of an intelligent agent-based collaborative information retrieval tool known as Casmir has been explored as a means to address this complex area. A commercial domain (automotive manufacturer) has been used to illustrate its likely potential. Specifically, the aim of the illustration has been to develop a methodology for the articulation and dissemination of context based situated knowledge and the use of Casmir to push knowledge into the user domain. In order to evaluate the tool 50 naive users were set a specific, collaborative information retrieval task. The results of the user evaluation are presented. Phase one of the evaluation focused on serendipitous information discovery and showed a clear increase in precision of information retrieved over time. Phase two of the evaluation required a qualitative evaluation of the software from the users. The results of the phase two evaluation indicated that the collaborative information retrieval functionality of the tool was regarded as beneficial, especially in supporting group working in an informal manner. In conclusion, the work presented shows that the synergistic use of the software tool in a situated knowledge domain is a meaningful way forward in the battle to support the dissemination and exploitation of situated knowledge.