Tomas Lindroth

Breadcrumbs of interaction: situating personal information management

The area of Personal Information Management (PIM) primarily deals with how to store, retrieve and share files and other interactional artifacts. According to previous research there is a lack of field studies of actual PIM practices, especially mobile practices. In this article we present findings from an ethnographical study of wireless practice of laptop computers. The study reports on the role of historical interaction resources in a mobile PIM practice as well as the contextual effects on PIM. The findings reveal a PIM-practice highly connected to use situations not always departing from manipulating files and folders, which has been a focus in many previous studies. Designers are encouraged to explore the situated intimate and immediate design space found to be of great importance for the use of these so called Breadcrumbs of Interaction.

Co-creation and Fine-Tuning of Boundary Resources in Small-Scale Platformization

Most research on platform innovation studies the phenomena from a distance due to lack of access. This paper reports from within an action research case of platform development in a small-scale context. The case is based on a regional business initiative with the goal to establish an arena for mobile commerce and stimulate local industry growth. It was conducted in collaboration between researchers and third-party developers. The article shows how the initial phases of platformization are characterized by socio-technical arrangements, co-creation of boundary resources and intimate knowledge communication. The paper contributes to platform research by acknowledging a small-scale context for platform research. It further develops distributed tuning of boundary resources into an intimate fine-tuning process that we illustrate is valid for a small-scale context.

Laptops in classroom interaction: Deconstructing the networked situation

The screen, as part of networked technologies such as phones, tablets and laptops is at present a debated subject as it affects how people behave in meetings, lectures and other social gatherings. As these networked technologies attract attention and mediates interaction during physical social gatherings, they also change how we perceive and define what a situation is. In this article we focus on the different types of screen related interactions identified in a higher education classroom. Since these networked technologies are commonplace at university campuses it is important to describe their effects on everyday situations such as lectures. While a range of studies have raised questions regarding the negative effects of multitasking, screen peeking and other laptop related side effects this article emphasise the situational impact of student-laptop interaction. The contribution emphasises on the computer mediated interaction with both other students, external others as well as a range of digital resources. The research thus aims at providing educators and researchers with a model to advance their understanding of the laptoped and networked situation.