Ina Wagner

Ordering Systems: Coordinative Practices and Artifacts in Architectural Design and Planning

In their cooperative effort, architects depend critically on elaborate coordinative practices and artifacts. The article presents, on the basis of an in-depth study of architectural work, an analysis of these practices and artifacts and shows that they are multilaterally interrelated and form complexes of interrelated practices and artifacts which we have dubbed ‘ordering systems’. In doing so, the article outlines an approach to investigating and conceiving of such practices.

Steps toward a typology for health informatics

In this paper we outline a typology, which will be useful for those engaged in the design and customization of information systems in healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic case studies conducted in six healthcare settings in two countries, the typology outlined here is intended to identify possible sources of local variability of health care work practices, which need to be accommodated in local configurations of generic information systems.

Moving Healthcare to the Home: The Work to Make Homecare Work

The paper discusses the work of care recipients, informal caregivers, and the larger networks that are involved in homecare work. It discusses different kinds of work, and also if all the tasks involved in homecare could and should be labeled work. Finally, the paper looks into what kinds of work is delegated to machines and how this affects the work performed by people. One of the main conclusions from this analysis is that seeing the many different kinds of work that go into making homecare work is a good basis for designing alternative solutions.

What is a participatory design result

In this paper we discuss what the result of a Participatory Design (PD) process is and how it can be described and evaluated. We look at several PD projects and discuss if they have a participatory result and how we know that it is participatory. We also ask if the users recognize their contribution, and if the designers have to take side. We also identify impediments to achieving a participatory result, looking at issues like: conflicting views that are difficult to voice, issues that are difficult to negotiate, how real-life complexities cannot be addressed in the project (or by the artifact). These issues are linked to earlier discussions on power and politics in PD. We conclude that achieving a participatory design result is important in PD and gives meaning and direction to PD processes.

Unpacking the Notion of Participation in Participatory Design

The paper explores what exactly it is that users participate in when being involved in participatory design (PD), relating this discussion to the CSCW perspective on collaborative design work. We argue that a focus on decision-making in design is necessary for understanding participation in design. Referring to Schön we see design as involving creating choices, selecting among them, concretizing choices and evaluating the choices. We discuss how these kinds of activities have played out in four PD projects that we have participated in. Furthermore, we show that the decisions are interlinked, and discuss the notion of decision linkages. We emphasize the design result as the most important part of PD. Finally, participation is discussed as the sharing of power, asking what the perspective of power and decision-making adds to the understanding of design practices.

Building Urban Narratives: Collaborative Site-Seeing and Envisioning in the MR Tent

The focus of this paper is on studying mixed teams of urban planners, citizens and other stakeholders co-constructing their vision for the future of a site. The MR Tent provides a very specific collaborative setting: an assembly of technologies brought outdoors onto the site of an urban project, which offers vistas onto the site as well as a multiplicity of representations of the site to work with, in different media and taken from different perspectives. The prime focus of this paper is on the complex narratives participants co-constructed in three participatory workshops, with the aim to understand how the core aspects of the MR Tent—spatiality, representation and haptic engagement—shape these narratives. Main findings of this research concern: how the design of the multi-layered space of the MR-Tent supports spatial story-telling; how the different representations of the site of an urban project offer the opportunity to choreograph a ‘site-seeing’ that helps participants understand the site and plan interventions; how the ‘tangibles’ in the MR-Tent encourage a different way of contributing to a shared project and ‘building a vision’.

CSCW and the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises a massive increase in interconnectivity between objects and spaces requiring some sense of cooperation and interaction between them. We suggest the explicit conceptualization of the cooperation between objects and spaces as cooperative work and explore some of the visions, analogies and exemplary illustrations of the IoT using key CSCW concepts: coordination mechanisms, differences across contexts, common information spaces, and awareness. The paper begins a reflection on how CSCW concepts and approaches can inform an understanding of the IoT from a social and practice perspective raising crucial questions for the design of these technologies in the future. An issue of paramount importance will be negotiating the boundaries between (networks of) objects and people, making them transparent, understandable and adaptable.

The Life and Death of Design Ideas

The paper explores the question why a design process ends up with a particular result. We analyze a collaborative design process where different stakeholders design an urban site using a participatory design tool. Our analysis is based on Schon’s view of design as a process of ‘seeing-moving-seeing’ combined with the concept of choice from Schutz. Analyzing the case provides an understanding of the ways in which ideas ‘move’ a design. We describe the dynamics of collaborative design work where design ideas are moved forward or deliberately blocked from being pursued further. We point to how design decisions are interlinked, making it possible to see how some design decisions are more important than others. Our analysis is narrative in character, but we also present a technique for visualizing the ‘life and death’ of design ideas.

Analyzing the politics of PD: a conceptual investigation

This workshop discusses power, participation and the politics of PD. We propose a set of concepts and related questions for analyzing and deliberating these issues on the basis of participants own experiences in PD projects. The conceptual framework we propose has been inspired by Schöns notion of design moves and by Alfred Schütz concept of choice. The PD experiences of workshop participants will be explored collaboratively with the aim of arriving at a deeper and more specific understanding of what the users participate in and how they can recognize their influence in the design result.

Decision-Making in Design

Decision-making is a complex matter, even more so in design, where every design move involves choices. In this chapter we aim at becoming more precise about how design is decision-making and what role design decisions play in design and in PD. In design – as in everyday life – we make choices and select among them. In design, this takes the form of making moves, seeing some of the effects of the moves, and acting accordingly by moving back or making a new move.