Giolo Fele

The use of video to document tacit participation in an emergency operations centre

This article explores the use of video in qualitative research. In particular, it focuses on the ways video recordings can be used to document cooperative work and tacit participation in a work setting. The article first presents previous research on participation framework, cooperation and multimodal interaction, then examines a single episode of interaction in a medical emergency call and dispatch centre. The article discusses aspects of coordination and collaboration emerging from the interaction between two people; a call taker and a dispatcher, working side by side during the managing of an emergency call. It explores the way in which social interaction can be studied even when there is no apparent correlation between different courses of action and how video can be used in order to reveal such subtle interaction work. The article finally examines the way in which video can document back stage practices that are central to much work practice but that are hidden from official documents.

From specifications to specific vagueness: how enterprise software mediates relations in engineering practices

Relying on an ethnography of software demonstrations given by members of the product development and sales division of a system engineering company to various industrial design engineers at different sites, the article identifies patterns of specific vagueness with reference to a software graphic modeling tool. A statement is vague to the extent that it has aspects that resist inquiries. In our fieldwork on software demonstrations, sales system engineers resisted inquiries specifically concerning (i) the amount of software functions, (ii) their range, and (iii) their degree of integration. The article discusses the role of software-specific vagueness in the transition of system engineering services to the international market of enterprise architecture. Contrary to expectations concerning engineering when it is viewed as a matter of logic, in the context of the enterprise architecture software market the establishment of a common ground of reference between sales system engineers and various sorts of design engineers does not rely on solving manufacturing problems. Rather, it relies on making problems specifically vague in order to allow both the specific use of the system for the purpose at hand in a particular industrial context and the vague solution that responds to the enterprise architecture markets logic.