scholarly journals The Advent of Digital Productivity Assistants: The Case of Microsoft MyAnalytics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Winikoff ◽  
Jocelyn Cranefield ◽  
Yevgeniya Li ◽  
Alexander Richter ◽  
Cathal Doyle

Modern digital work environments allow for great flexibility, but can also contribute to a blurring of work/life boundaries and technostress. An emerging class of intelligent tools, that we term Digital Productivity Assistant (DPA), helps knowledge workers to improve their productivity by creating awareness of their collaboration behaviour and by suggesting improvements. In this revelatory case study, we combine auto-ethnographic insights with interview data from three organisations to explore how one such tool works to influence collaboration and productivity management behaviours, using the lens of persuasive IS design. We also identify barriers to DPAs’ effective use as a partner in personal productivity management.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Winikoff ◽  
Jocelyn Cranefield ◽  
Yevgeniya Li ◽  
Alexander Richter ◽  
Cathal Doyle

Modern digital work environments allow for great flexibility, but can also contribute to a blurring of work/life boundaries and technostress. An emerging class of intelligent tools, that we term Digital Productivity Assistant (DPA), helps knowledge workers to improve their productivity by creating awareness of their collaboration behaviour and by suggesting improvements. In this revelatory case study, we combine auto-ethnographic insights with interview data from three organisations to explore how one such tool works to influence collaboration and productivity management behaviours, using the lens of persuasive IS design. We also identify barriers to DPAs’ effective use as a partner in personal productivity management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Okkonen

Maintaining performance in digital ubiquitous work environment is increasingly dependent on the quality of physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomics of work. Since digital work environment is the reign of most knowledge workers, there is a need to elaborate the study of work ergonomics by devoting attention to the issue of information ergonomics. In health care digitalisation has affected operation model thoroughly. It has affected how information is recorded, managed and distributed. Novel service models powered by digital channels offer now ways to practice professions as well as there are several outcomes regarding the whole service area. This paper is a summary of four research projects on how digitalisation affects knowledge work and how working is (re)shaped by sociotechnical work environments with reflection to eHealth. The conclusion in the paper underlines the digital transformation shaping the lives of knowledge workers. Discussion on how sociotechnical reshapes both individual and organisations, not to mention extended organisations. As the working practices as well as conventions and norms dictate the daily flow people have developed digital coping strategies. Paper also discusses the future of information ergonomics research in health care as way to find normative result for enhancing work in sociotechnical environment. technical environment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 153465012199089
Author(s):  
Mailae Halstead ◽  
Sara Reed ◽  
Robert Krause ◽  
Monnica T. Williams

Current research suggests that ketamine-assisted psychotherapy has benefit for the treatment of mental disorders. We report on the results of ketamine-assisted intensive outpatient psychotherapeutic treatment of a client with treatment-resistant, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of experiences of racism and childhood sexual abuse. The client’s presenting symptoms included hypervigilance, social avoidance, feelings of hopelessness, and intense recollections. These symptoms impacted all areas of daily functioning. Psychoeducation was provided on how untreated intergenerational trauma, compounded by additional traumatic experiences, potentiated the client’s experience of PTSD and subsequent maladaptive coping mechanisms. Ketamine was administered four times over a 13-day span as an off-label, adjunct to psychotherapy. Therapeutic interventions and orientations utilized were mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP). New skills were obtained in helping the client respond effectively to negative self-talk, catastrophic thinking, and feelings of helplessness. Treatment led to a significant reduction in symptoms after completion of the program, with gains maintained 4 months post-treatment. This case study demonstrates the effective use of ketamine as an adjunct to psychotherapy in treatment-resistant PTSD.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110266
Author(s):  
Neil Argent ◽  
Sean Markey ◽  
Greg Halseth ◽  
Laura Ryser ◽  
Fiona Haslam-McKenzie

This paper is concerned with the socio-spatial and ethical politics of redistribution, specifically the allocation of natural resources rents from political and economic cores to the economic and geographical peripheries whence the resource originated. Based on a case study of the coal seam gas sector in Queensland's Surat Basin, this paper focuses on the operation of the Queensland State Government's regional development fund for mining and energy extraction-affected regions. Employing an environmental justice framework, we critically explore the operation of these funds in ostensibly helping constituent communities in becoming resilient to the worst effects of the ‘staples trap’. Drawing on secondary demographic and housing data for the region, as well as primary information collected from key respondents from mid-2018 to early 2019, we show that funds were distributed across all of the local government areas, and allocated to projects and places primarily on a perceived economic needs basis. However, concerns were raised with the probity of the funds’ administration. In terms of recognition justice, the participation of smaller and more remote towns and local Indigenous communities was hampered by their structural marginalisation. Procedurally, the funds were criticised for the lack of local consultation taken in the development and approval of projects. While spatially concentrated expenditure may be the most cost-effective use of public monies, we argue that grant application processes should be open, transparent and inclusive, and the outcomes cognisant of the developmental needs of smaller communities, together with the need to foster regional solidarity and coherence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 5826
Author(s):  
Evangelos Axiotis ◽  
Andreas Kontogiannis ◽  
Eleftherios Kalpoutzakis ◽  
George Giannakopoulos

Ethnopharmacology experts face several challenges when identifying and retrieving documents and resources related to their scientific focus. The volume of sources that need to be monitored, the variety of formats utilized, and the different quality of language use across sources present some of what we call “big data” challenges in the analysis of this data. This study aims to understand if and how experts can be supported effectively through intelligent tools in the task of ethnopharmacological literature research. To this end, we utilize a real case study of ethnopharmacology research aimed at the southern Balkans and the coastal zone of Asia Minor. Thus, we propose a methodology for more efficient research in ethnopharmacology. Our work follows an “expert–apprentice” paradigm in an automatic URL extraction process, through crawling, where the apprentice is a machine learning (ML) algorithm, utilizing a combination of active learning (AL) and reinforcement learning (RL), and the expert is the human researcher. ML-powered research improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the domain expert by 3.1 and 5.14 times, respectively, fetching a total number of 420 relevant ethnopharmacological documents in only 7 h versus an estimated 36 h of human-expert effort. Therefore, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the researcher can boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the identification and retrieval of appropriate documents.


NanoEthics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Woodcock

AbstractDigital technology is playing an increasingly visible role in the organisation of many people’s work—as well as large parts of their lives more broadly. The concerns of emancipatory technology studies, or other critical accounts of technology, are often focused on finding alternative uses of technology. In many workplace contexts—from call centres to platform work—the imperatives of capital are deeply written into these technologies. Yet at the same time, many capitalist technologies are playing a key role facilitating emerging workers’ struggles. For example, in the case study examined here, Deliveroo drivers rely on communication technologies like WhatsApp to organise against algorithmic management. Drawing on an ongoing workers’ inquiry, this paper seeks to consider what a workerist approach to digital technology can add to these debates. The paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workers’ inquiry,” considering how this approach combines research with organising. The argument is divided into two main parts: first, the need for inquiries in digital work and the importance of these and second, how the process of inquiry and co-research (and the methods these involve) can be adapted and refined with digital technology. By starting the critique of technology from the workplace, this paper proposes a workerist account of how technologies can be destroyed or re-appropriated, starting from a reading of workers’ struggle.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 624
Author(s):  
Antonino Cirello ◽  
Tommaso Ingrassia ◽  
Antonio Mancuso ◽  
Vincenzo Nigrelli ◽  
Davide Tumino

The process of designing a sail can be a challenging task because of the difficulties in predicting the real aerodynamic performance. This is especially true in the case of downwind sails, where the evaluation of the real shapes and aerodynamic forces can be very complex because of turbulent and detached flows and the high-deformable behavior of structures. Of course, numerical methods are very useful and reliable tools to investigate sail performances, and their use, also as a result of the exponential growth of computational resources at a very low cost, is spreading more and more, even in not highly competitive fields. This paper presents a new methodology to support sail designers in evaluating and optimizing downwind sail performance and manufacturing. A new weakly coupled fluid–structure interaction (FSI) procedure has been developed to study downwind sails. The proposed method is parametric and automated and allows for investigating multiple kinds of sails under different sailing conditions. The study of a gennaker of a small sailing yacht is presented as a case study. Based on the numerical results obtained, an analytical formulation for calculating the sail corner loads has been also proposed. The novel proposed methodology could represent a promising approach to allow for the widespread and effective use of numerical methods in the design and manufacturing of yacht sails.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
P. Krishnamoorthy ◽  
C. Muthusamy

This paper aims to gift the results of a survey conducted to see the effective use of online Public Access Catalogs (OPAC) at the library of Jeppiaar Maamallan Engineering College in Chennai. The paper examines the result from a questionnaire based survey conducted at the library. 50 samples of the form were distributed in a random way between the employees of Jeppiaar Maamallan Engineering College in Chennai out of which 48 completed and valid questionnaires (96.00 %) were received for analysis. The information received from the respondents through these questionnaires was analyzed. Thus, the study clearly highlighted the requirement for associate degree education programme module for users to market the effective use of OPAC. An effort is formed through this study to gift the difficulties Janus-faced by users at engineering college libraries, in looking for data victimization OPAC. This paper provides helpful empirical proof for librarians and therefore the analysis community on the usage of OPAC in libraries of engineering colleges. The results of this study are going to be helpful for librarians at Jeppiaar Maamallan Engineering College in Chennai and additionally to different librarians around the state and country. This paper provides original information from library finish users in engineering college, relating to their expertise whiles victimization OPAC.


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