Wally Smith

A case study of co-ordinative decision-making in disaster management

A persistent problem in the management of response to disasters is the lack of coordination between the various agencies involved. This paper reports a case study of inter-agency co-ordination during the response to a railway accident in the UK. The case study examined two potential sources of difficulty for coordination: first, poorly shared mental models; and, second, a possible conflict between the requirements of distributed decision-making and the nature of individual decision-making. Interviews were conducted with six individuals from three response agencies. Analysis of reported events suggested that inter-agency co-ordination suffered through a widespread difficulty in constructing a reflexive shared mental model; that is, a shared mental representation of the distributed decision-making process itself, and its participants. This difficulty may be an inherent problem in the flexible development of temporary multi-agency organizations. The analysis focused on a distributed decision over how to transport casualties from an isolated location to hospital. This decision invoked a technique identified here as the progression of multiple options, which contrasts with both recognition-primed and analytical models of individual decisionmaking. The progression of multiple options appeared to be an effective technique for dealing with uncertainty, but was a further source of difficulty for inter-agency co-ordination.

Incorporating a knowledge perspective into security risk assessments

Purpose – Many methodologies exist to assess the security risks associated with unauthorized leakage, modification and interruption of information used by organisations. This paper argues that these methodologies have a traditional orientation towards the identification and assessment of technical information assets. This obscures key risks associated with the cultivation and deployment of organisational knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to explore how security risk assessment methods can more effectively identify and treat the knowledge associated with business processes.Design/methodology/approach – The argument was developed through an illustrative case study in which a well‐documented traditional methodology is applied to a complex data backup process. Follow‐up interviews were conducted with the organisations security managers to explore the results of the assessment and the nature of knowledge “assets” within a business process.Findings – It was discovered that the backup process depended, in...

Theatre of Use A Frame Analysis of Information Technology Demonstrations

Demonstrations are a universal form of technical exchange in the world of information technology (IT), but they get almost no mention in its practical guides and theoretical accounts. To understand their structure, role and status better, an interview study was carried out with experienced practitioners focusing on commercial presentations of software to large organizations. Drawing on Goffmans frame analysis, the present-day IT demonstration is seen in relation to other members of a broader class of technoscientific displays, particularly those of pre-20th century science epitomized by the famous performances of Boyle, Faraday and others. The focus of the account here is on how demonstrations are experienced by participants and what this might reveal about the manner of knowledge production that they make possible. Following a dramaturgical metaphor, the IT demonstration is understood as a Theatre of Use in which a possible sociotechnical system is represented dramatically through the actions of the demonstrator interacting with the technology. What comes to be known through the performance is seen to be multiply-framed and to encompass various ways of knowing.

I Love All the Bits: The Materiality of Boardgames

This paper presents findings from a study of boardgamers which stress the importance of the materiality of modern boardgames. It demonstrates that materiality is one of four significant factors in the player experience of tabletop gaming and describes four domains of materiality in boardgaming settings. Further, building on understanding of non-use in HCI, it presents boardgames as a unique situation of parallel use, in which users simultaneously engage with a single game in both digital and material, non-digital environments.

Lend me some sugar: borrowing rates of neighbouring books as evidence for browsing

There is more to choosing a book than simply keyword searching. Browsing is a fundamental part of the information seeking process, and one that information seekers profess to value, though it has attracted little study. This dearth of research is undoubtedly in part because browsing is nebulous and difficult to quantify. In this paper we use a large circulation dataset from an academic library consortium to examine whether books in the library stacks are loaned in clusters, with a view firstly to confirming the existence of book browsing that has been reported anecdotally, and secondly to quantifying its impact on loan patterns.

Things you don't want to know about yourself: ambivalence about tracking and sharing personal information for behaviour change

Technologies that facilitate the collection and sharing of personal information can feed peoples desire for enhanced self-knowledge and help them to change their behaviour, yet for various reasons people can also be reluctant to use such technologies. This paper explores this tension through an interview study in the context of smoking cessation. Our findings show that smokers and recent ex-smokers were ambivalent about their behaviour change as well as about collecting personal information through technology and sharing it with other users. We close with a summary of three challenges emerging from such ambivalence and directions to address them.

SmartGardenWatering: experiences of using a garden watering simulation

SmartGardenWatering is an innovative software tool that advises gardeners on watering schedules and watering use. In this paper we investigate how expert and novice gardeners respond to advice from this piece of computer software. Do they readily accept it and adapt their activities accordingly, or do they override it with their own local knowledge? We describe the project to develop the simulation, including the design of the user interface, and a study of 20 gardeners using the tool. The focus of the study was to identify factors in the design of the software that influence how well it might intervene in ongoing gardening practice. The findings focus on what brings confidence or a lack of trust in the underlying horticultural model and its application to a particular garden. Finally, we consider how these findings might inform ongoing development of the software.

Transnationalism, Indigenous Knowledge and Technology: Insights from the Kenyan Diaspora

Our paper investigates how current digital technologies are sufficient, or insufficient, in supporting Kenyan transnationals in practising indigenous knowledge. We first outline a view of indigenous knowledge, and then apply it to a study of diaspora Kenyans living in Australia. The findings are framed as nine techniques for sustaining displaced practising of indigenous knowledge. These appropriations suggest directions for technology innovation, providing design considerations for technologies that translate, formulate and support indigenous knowledge in transnational contexts.

Designing paper disasters: an authoring environment for developing training exercises in integrated emergency management

Abstract: Discussion-based exercises are a prevalent form of training in emergency management, aimed at improving coordinative decision making between the various agencies involved in disaster response. In each exercise, small multi-agency groups of decision makers discuss potential courses of action within a fictitious disaster scenario presented as a textual narrative supported by visual materials. We present a cognitive engineering analysis of the problem of designing disaster scenarios for effective discussion-based exercises. The analysis was carried out through the development of a pilot authoring environment to establish and address the requirements of a training organisation in the UK. The pilot authoring environment embodies a simple theoretical model of the exercise process in which facts of a disaster scenario afford discussion of pertinent issues which are elicited by considerations fed to trainees. This representational scheme allows the authoring environment to complement and extend authors’ mental models of exercises, and thereby enhance five aspects of authoring: rationalisation; continuity of rationale; evolution; adaptability; and the integration of evaluation feedback.

What people talk about when they talk about quitting

As part of an ongoing project to explore the design of behaviour-change technology for smoking cessation, we analysed a successful community who come together on the popular Reddit website to discuss quitting and to encourage each others quit attempts. We found that users remain anonymous but identify according to their quit stage. We examined the form and content of posts, finding that narratives about people and events are more common than other rhetorical forms. Many speak of ongoing struggles with quit attempts. Our analysis reveals forms of sociality spontaneously enacted in a self-managed community of quitters. We compare our results with earlier work on social media and behaviour change.