Participatory Design and Creativity in Development of Information and Communication Technologies

This chapter presents and discusses a new design framework for involving users at an early stage in a mobile ICT development project. A user-centered design process, in which participatory design principles are combined with creativity techniques, is used in order to create scenarios as a communication tool between users and system designers. The theoretical basis for the framework is described, leading to a new participatory design and creativity framework. Empirical insight into how the framework has been developed and used in practice is presented based on the experiences and results from a large ICT development project within the ?eld of mobile communication. Finally, the value of applying creativity as part of a participatory design process is discussed.

Incompleteness and Unpredictability of Networked Communications in Use

This chapter explores the use practices of networked communications, or more speci?cally, the use practices of a Web-based information system in large distributed pharmaceutical development projects. The analysis highlights the process in which the system in question is held together, extended and transformed into a working system for pharmaceutical projects. Assemblage is proposed as a productive concept in making visible the particularities of networked communications, their malleability, and the way in which they evolve in use through extensions, interferences, and unpredictable circumstances. The views presented here enhance an understanding of networked communications in use and consequently draw implications to further development strategies for such technologies.

Mobile Networked Text Communication

This chapter introduces a qualitative study of the use of mobile text messaging (SMS) and re?ects on how SMS in?uences social interaction. It describes how this new communication technology is used to maintain social relations and how it generally assists users in their everyday activities. Three issues are highlighted: how users use SMS to overcome shyness, how they use it for micro-grooming, and how they are able to control messages to their advantage. It is argued that SMS facilitates users in their everyday life through the ways it supports awareness and accountability. These characteristics make the communication channel a “social translucent” technology, contributing to its popularity. It is suggested that simple information and communication technologies such as SMS can provide powerful tools in new designs of information and communication technologies.

Reflective Designing for Actors and Avatars in Virtual Worlds

This chapter proposes a designing strategy referred to as “virtual 3D exploratories”. It is a strategy by which to facilitate knowledge sharing and social innovation, activities important to many postmodern organizations and work groups—be they educational or commercial. The strategy will allow us to build virtual worlds, and universes, aimed at exploration—virtual worlds, where actors interact and communicate with each other by the means of avatars. To substantiate the designing strategy, this chapter calls attention to virtual phenomena such as: avatar-based interaction, communication, and scenarios designed for re?ective practices. Taking a ?rst step, the chapter presents narratives and video-based self-observations from 12 experiential sessions undertaken by the “Virtual 3D Agora-world” SIG as part of the EQUEL EU research project (2002-2004). Based on ?ndings and re?ections from these sessions, the designing strategy of virtual “exploratories” is outlined with reference to the “sense-making” theory (Dervin & Foreman-Wernet, 2003) and summarized in a “designing triangle”.

A Short History of Designing for Communication on the Web

Web design is important for how we communicate on the Internet, and it also has an in?uence on computer interface design in general. Taking a very literal view of the theme of “designing for communication”, this chapter examines the development of Web design as a prerequisite for understanding what it has become today, and it concludes by offering some re?ections on the future of Web design. In the ?rst part of the chapter, the history of Web design is outlined in terms of the complex interplay of various social, cultural, economic, technological, and communicative factors. This section concludes with the presentation of a framework for Web design that allows for—if not actually reconciles—the many existing approaches to the subject. In the second part of the chapter, it is suggested that Web design, as it has developed so far, may be facing major changes as the requirements of users and the technologies employed to meet them are changing.

Strategies for Organizational Implementation of Networked Communication in Distributed Organizations

This chapter presents results elicited from empirical studies of the implementation and use of an open-ended, configurable, and context specific information technology supporting networked communication in a large distributed organization. Our findings are based on a longitudinal case study of the implementation and use of the technology that spread rapidly throughout the organization. We demonstrate the kind of expectations and conditions for change, that management face, when implementing such technologies for computer-mediated communication. Our synthesis from the empirical findings is related to two recent models, the improvisational change management model suggested by Orlikowski and Hofman (1997), and Gallivan’s model for organizational adoption and assimilation (Gallivan, 2001). We operationalize the change management models by identifying and characterizing four different and general implementation contexts and propose strategies for the organizational implementation of such technologies.

Information and Function Chunks as Building Blocks in the Control Room of Life

Inspired by work on systems for control rooms, this chapter describes how working with information on the Internet and other types of network-based information systems can be made easier by applying ?ve principles: 1. by providing information to the user about any changes to the information that may affect him or her;2. by dividing information and functions into chunks—the smallest possible meaningful units;3. by automatically synchronizing navigation and parameters in different chunks;4. by using views that each gives access to chunks that are relevant in a speci?c situation or for a speci?c task; and5. by sharing information from one terminal to another as needed.

Evolving Information Ecologies

This chapter examines how people in organizations appropriate new computer-based media, that is, how they adopt, recon?gure, and integrate advanced communication technologies such as groupware or desktop conferencing systems into their work practice. The chapter presents and analyzes ?ndings from an in-depth ?eld study of the adoption and use of a Web-based groupware application—a “virtual workspace”—in a large multinational ?rm. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the fact that people in modern organizations have plenty of media at their disposal and often combine old and new media to accomplish their work tasks. Furthermore, it highlights the crucial role of organizational communication genres in shaping how people adopt and use new media. The authors argue that understanding and facilitating the process of appropriation is the key to the successful introduction of new media in organizations.

The Psychology of Online Sociability

In this chapter, I will review current approaches to online sociability and present and exemplify the psychological social reality theory of online sociability. By analyzing sociability in a university-level virtual world course, I will present and analyze examples on how to understand the students’ design of conditions for sociability as communication of cultural symbols, such as avatars and virtual landscapes, and the social reality of perceived groups of people. The results of the analysis will be used to illustrate different kinds of online sociability: super?cial, convivial, and negative sociability. The chapter suggests solutions and recommendations to designers and researchers with a focus on online communities and networked communication.

Designing Control of Computer-Mediated Gifting in Sharing Networks

This chapter suggests that the pro-social provision, or gifting, of goods in multiple user sharing networks is largely determined by the relationship an individual has to the larger group(s) of which he or she is a member. This relationship is often referred to as a social dilemma and can be both a con?ict of interest or a pattern of cooperation re?ecting a predicament in acting in self-interest versus the interest of the collective (or different groups of the collective). In this chapter, the social dilemma is modelled by the relationship model, which operates for end users on a tactical level of control and thus sets a general path of performance. Once a speci?c gifting act is included in such a tactic, ?ve dimensions of control are also suggested, which operates on a situated sociotechnical level. The dynamics of sharing networks makes gifting a continuous re-negotiation between reactive actions and overall tactics. In such an environment, the relationship model is suggested to be a relatively stable determinant of types of gifting acts, while the dimensions of control are tentatively suggested to address sociotechnical control requirements of the speci?c gifting actions.