Susanne Bødker

When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges

This paper surveys the current status of second generation HCI theory, faced with the challenges brought to HCI by the so-called third wave. In the third wave, the use context and application types are broadened, and intermixed, relative to the focus of the second wave on work. Technology spreads from the workplace to our homes and everyday lives and culture. Using these challenges the paper specifically addresses the topics of multiplicity, context, boundaries, experience and participation in order to discuss where second wave theory and conceptions can still be positioned to make a contribution as part of the maturing of our handling of the challenges brought on by the third wave.

Constructing common information spaces

This paper investigates an important, yet under-researched topic in CSCW, namely shared, or common, information spaces. Precisely what is meant by this term, however, is not always obvious. We provide some background to work in the area, and then proceed to examine features of such spaces through examples. The work involved in both putting information in common, and in interpreting it, has often not been sufficiently recognized. We show how, in various ways, it often requires added work to place items in common, and open up the question of how this might affect use of the WWW, often seen as the ultimate common information space. While there is still a need for further elaboration of many dimensions of the concept, and linkage to related ideas, we believe that the issues raised by this exploration are of importance to the CSCW field.

Scenarios in user-centred design—setting the stage for reflection and action

Abstract This paper discusses three examples of use of scenarios in user-centred design. Common to the examples are the use of scenarios to support the tensions between reflection and action, between typical and critical situations, and between plus and minus situations. The paper illustrates how a variety of more specific scenarios emphasising, e.g. critical situations, or even caricatures of situations are very useful for helping groups of users and designers being creative in design. Emphasising creativity in design is a very different view on the design process than normally represented in usability work or software/requirement engineering, where generalising users’ actions are much more important than, in this paper, the suggested richness of and contradiction between actual use situations. In general the paper proposes to attune scenarios to the particular purposes of the situations they are to be used in, and to be very selective based on these purposes.

Cooperative design: techniques and experiences from the Scandinavian scene

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the concept of cooperative design. It what discusses system development should achieve and how it should take place. Computer applications that are created for the workplace need to be designed with full participation from the users—both from a democratic point of view and to insure that competencies central to the design are represented in the design group. Full participation requires training and active cooperation, not just token representation in meetings or on committees. The term cooperative design is used to designate such cooperation between users and designers. However, to users, designing a new computer application is a secondary activity whereas for designers it is their primary work. This means that the designers should know how to set up the process and need to make sure that everyone gets something out of the interaction. The cooperative design approach begins by creating an environment in which users and designers can actively consider the future use situation. It is a process where users and designers do not have to wait until the final act to know if the application will fit the practice of the users.

From implementation to design: tailoring and the emergence of systematization in CSCW

In this paper, we look at how people working in a governmental labor inspection agency tailor their shared PC environment. Starting with standard off-the-shelf software, the tailors adapt that software to the particular workplace in which they are embedded, at the same time that they modify and extend the practices of that workplace. Over time, their adaptations and the tailoring processes themselves become structured and systematized within the organization. This tendency toward systematization is in part a response to the requirement that the results of tailoring be sharable across groups of users. Our study focuses on several dimensions of the work of tailoring: construction, organizational change, learning, and politics. We draw two kinds of lessons for system development: how better to support the work of tailors, and how system developers can learn from and cooperate with tailors.

Complex mediation

This article has its starting point in a large number of empirical findings regarding computer-mediated work. These empirical findings have challenged our understanding of the role of mediation in such work; on the one hand as an aspect of communication and cooperation at work and on the other hand as an aspect of human engagement with instruments of work. On the basis of previous work in activity-theoretical and semiotic human—computer interaction, we propose a model to encompass both of these aspects. In a dialogue with our empirical findings we move on to propose a number of types of mediation that have helped to enrich our understanding of mediated work and the design of computer mediation for such work.

From usability lab to “design collaboratorium”: reframing usability practice

This paper presents an exploratory process in which three industrial usability groups, in cooperation with HCI researchers, worked to reframe their own work practice. The usability groups moved beyond a classical usability setting towards a new way of working which we have coined the Design Collaboratorium. This design collaboratorium is a design approach that creates an open physical and organizational space where designðers, engineers, users and usability professionals meet and work alongside each other. At the same time the design collaboratorium makes use of event-driven ways of working known from participatory design. Some of these working methods are well-documented from literature but adapted to the needs of the particular project, others are new. This paper illustrates how it is posðsible to reframe usability work and it discusses the new usability competence required.

Computer support for cooperative design (invited paper)

Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design — the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program — the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.

Cooperation in massively distributed information spaces

Common information spaces are often, implicitly or explicitly, viewed as something that can be accessed in toto from one (of many) location Our studies of wastewater treatment plants show how such massively distributed spaces challenge many of the ways that CSCW view common information spaces. The studies fundamentally challenge the idea that common information spaces are about access to everything, everywhere Participation in optimisation is introduced as an important feature of work tied to the moving around in physical space. In the CSCW literature, peripheral awareness and at a glance overview are mostly connected with the coordination of activities within a control room or in similar co-located circumstances. It is concluded that this focus on shoulder to shoulder cooperation has to be supplemented with studies of cooperation through massively distributed information spaces.

Introduction to the special issue on practice-oriented approaches to sustainable HCI

Since Bleviss seminal paper [Blevis 2007] in 2007, environmental sustainability has established itself as a mainstream concern for HCI. After an initial flurry of excitement about the potential for existing HCI techniques, such as persuasive computing and interaction design, to contributemeaningfully to increasing sustainability, we have begun to recognize that the complexity and apparent intractability of working towards sustainability is providing serious challenges to current HCI ways of approaching problems. For example, some are working to deepen the engagement between HCI and established approaches of environmental psychology [Froehlich et al. 2010] and behavioral theory [Hekler et al. 2013] in order to develop more rigorous methods and theoretical connections for pursuing sustainability. Others are deploying and evaluating eco-feedback technologies at a scale not yet common in HCI [Erickson et al. 2013] to get a better sense of their effects and potentialities. Thus, sustainability is becoming not simply a problem that HCI can contribute to solving, but also an opportunity to understand the limits of HCI as it is currently constituted and to develop new possibilities for the discipline.