Common Information Spaces Research Articles

Group Effect Aspects in Digitalisation Production Contexts

Across the years, production systems have recurrently turned to new digital technologies in the search for enhanced productivity and competitiveness. More recently, a prelude to a Fourth Industrial Revolution has been heard, announcing Industry 4.0 as the future of production and manufacture. It has been claimed that cyber-physical production systems would bring drastic changes in the way that people go about engaging in work. It is therefore sensible to think that the way that cooperation is accomplished within production contexts will be also affected. Based on an in-depth interview study featuring 21 participants from different companies, we go on to discuss which challenges have been emerging from recent digitalisation of production work in regard to the way that workers cooperate in accomplishing their productive activities. Our results suggest that there are associated group effects - e.g., group polarisation, hidden profiles, and exclusion - that pose relevant challenges for cooperation within these settings. In this contribution, we go on to present and discuss these results and to propose articulation spaces, which conceptually bring together aspects of coordination mechanisms and common information spaces, as a potential solution for some of those challenges.

TECHNOLOGY FOR IDENTIFICATION OF INFORMATION AGENDA IN NEWS DATA STREAMS

Currently, the volume of news data streams is growing that contributes to increasing interest in systems that allow automating the big data streams processing. Based on intelligent data processing tools, the semantic similarity identification of text information will make it possible to select common information spaces of news. The article analyzes up-to-date statistical metrics for identifying coherent fragments, in particular, from news texts displaying the agenda, identifies the main advantages and disadvantages as well. The information technology is proposed for identifying the common information space of relevant news in the data stream for a certain period of time. The technology includes the logical-linguistic and distributive-statistical models for identifying collocations. The MI distributional semantic model is applied at the stage of potential collocation extraction. At the same time, regular expressions developed in accordance with the grammar of the English language make it possible to identify grammatically correct constructions. The advantage of the developed logical-linguistic model formalizing the semantic-grammatical characteristics of collocations, based on the use of algebraicpredicate operations and a semantic equivalence predicate, is that both the grammatical structure of the language and the meaning of words (collocates) are analyzed. The WordNet thesaurus is used to determine the synonymy relationship between the main and dependent collocation components. Based on the investigated corpus of news texts from the CNN and BBC services, the effectiveness of the developed technology is assessed. The analysis shows that the precision coefficient is 0.96. The use of the proposed technology could improve the quality of news streams processing. The solution to the problem of automatic identification of semantic similarity can be used to identify texts of the same domain, relevant information, extract facts and eliminate semantic ambiguity, etc.
 Keywords: data stream, agenda, logical-linguistic model, distribution-statistical model, collocation, semantic similarity, WordNet, news text corpus, precision.

Territorial Functioning in Collaborative Writing

This paper examines territorial functioning in collaborative writing through a mixed methods study involving interviews and analysis of collaboratively authored documents. Our findings have implications for the way we think about collaborative writing as a design problem, in that current conceptualizations of collaborative writing emphasize the work context rather than the work itself, at the cost of understanding interpersonal dynamics that are central to the common process. The findings come from 23 interviews with 32 university researchers and students regarding their experiences with collaborative writing of academic texts. The analysis of these interviews is supplemented with visualizations of the revision histories of documents written by a subset of the study participants. We discuss our findings in terms of fragmented exchanges in common information spaces and consider the shared document as a mediator for the simultaneous accomplishment and negotiation of work.

Similar Text Fragments Extraction for Identifying Common Wikipedia Communities

Similar text fragments extraction from weakly formalized data is the task of natural language processing and intelligent data analysis and is used for solving the problem of automatic identification of connected knowledge fields. In order to search such common communities in Wikipedia, we propose to use as an additional stage a logical-algebraic model for similar collocations extraction. With Stanford Part-Of-Speech tagger and Stanford Universal Dependencies parser, we identify the grammatical characteristics of collocation words. With WordNet synsets, we choose their synonyms. Our dataset includes Wikipedia articles from different portals and projects. The experimental results show the frequencies of synonymous text fragments in Wikipedia articles that form common information spaces. The number of highly frequented synonymous collocations can obtain an indication of key common up-to-date Wikipedia communities.

Identifying patients at risk of deterioration in the Joint Emergency Department

In recent years, Danish hospitals have merged their emergency facilities into Joint Emergency Departments. This poses new collaborative challenges across traditionally separated specialized departments, which now have to collaborate in a shared environment. Despite established protocols and patient monitoring regimes, as many as 31 % of non-critical patients deteriorate with potentially severe consequences. To understand why this may be, we conduct a field study with the aim of investigating what factors external to patients relate to the clinicians’ ability to notice adverse events. We look at the case through the lenses of common information spaces. In particular, we apply Bossen’s seven-parameter framework to discover new dimensions of how Emergency Departments and individual clinicians identify and respond to unforeseen events, and how they handle the associated cognitive challenges. We complement these findings with a review of a novel taxonomy for patient monitoring. Our contribution is the identification of four improvement areas for patient monitoring platforms in terms of support for the identification of patient deterioration.

Transformable boundary artifacts for knowledge-based work in cross-organization virtual communities spaces

The paper elaborates on the design and use of cross-organization virtual community spaces facilitating knowledge-based collaborative engagement in the practice of a boundary spanning alliance. Our approach builds upon the concept of transformable boundary artifacts and advances a perspective upon their design as first class objects in common information spaces. Using a case study on vacation package assembly, we identify offline elements of practice and discuss the components of an interaction vocabulary devised to facilitate their transformable interactive embodiment. Transformations allow boundary artifacts to exhibit plasticity as they transcend different social worlds and computing contexts within the cross-organization virtual community space, which in turn, forms the virtuality through which members make sense of collaborative work and contribute to a shared mission. Such contributions are materialized through recurrent interactions with different versions of boundary artifacts, which remain consistent and synchronized at all times.

Artefactual Multiplicity: A Study of Emergency-Department Whiteboards

Whiteboards are highly important to the work in emergency departments (EDs). As a collaborative technology ED whiteboards are usually placed in the dynamic centre of the ED, and all ED staff will approach the whiteboard regularly to organize their individual yet interdependent work. Currently, digital whiteboards are replacing the ordinary dry-erase whiteboards in EDs, which bring the design and use of whiteboards in ED to our attention. Previous studies have applied the theoretical lenses of common information spaces, coordination, and awareness to the investigation of whiteboard use and design. Based on an ethnographic study of the work practices involving two differently designed ED whiteboards, we found these concepts insufficient to explain one essential characteristic of these heterogeneous artefacts. In this paper, we suggest an additional theoretical concept describing this characteristic of heterogeneous artefacts; namely artefactual multiplicity. Artefactual multiplicity identifies not only the multiple functions of heterogeneous artefacts but also the intricate relations between these multiple functionalities.

The Invisible Work of Being a Patient and Implications for Health Care: "[the doctor is] my business partner in the most important business in my life, staying alive"

In a distributed system of care, patients shuffle among many clinicians and spend the majority of their time away from the treatment center. Although we see the results of patients' work (e.g., medication taken, arrived at appointment) we do not see the work itself. By failing to see this work, industry overlooks issues with vital implications for their business. To lift the veil of invisibility from patients' work, we conducted a longitudinal field study to uncover the invisible work breast cancer patients do to obtain information, bridge inter-institutional care, manage dependencies and resolve inconsistent recommendations. In this paper we provide detailed examples of this work and explore the impact on patients and health-care operations; identify patterns of work with implications for patient-centered research and design; and propose common information spaces to improve patients' work through designs that highlight dependencies, preserve state information, link recommendations to justifications, and track task progress.

Data propagation as an enabling technology for collaboration and cooperative information systems

Collaboration in cooperative information systems, as occurring in concurrent design and engineering, exploits common work and information spaces. In this paper we present the Transaction-Oriented Group and Coordination Service for Data-Centric Applications (TOGA) and the DataPropagator CHAMPAGNE that together realize a shared information space that is controlled by a basic collaboration service. Our approach enables both, firstly, the evolution of a set of separate applications to form a cooperative information system, i.e. it provides a technique towards component-oriented system engineering. Secondly, it can be exploited as a basic service within collaboration frameworks to effectively manage common work and information spaces.

Awareness, Representation and Interpretation

This paper discusses how representation and interpretation affect the degree and character of awareness afforded by computer systems: awareness of people and of information artifacts. Our discussion ranges from system design to theoretical concepts, and we focus on consistencies across this spectrum. We begin by briefly describing a prototype collaborative filtering system, Recer. This system tracks ongoing activity in the web browsers and text editors of a group of people, and offers recommendations of URLs and local program files that are specific to and adaptive with that activity, and that reflect patterns of earlier activity within the community of use. We then take a more general look at collaborative filtering, and compare it with two other approaches to engendering awareness of useful artifacts: information retrieval and software patterns. We discuss how each implicitly or explicitly involves collaboration, formalisation and subjectivity in its core representations. We then explore the artifact-centred approach to awareness that Recer represents, and relate it to the activity-centred approach more familiar within CSCW. We use this comparison in discussing, in more theoretical terms, how representation and formalisation affects awareness, interpretation and use. Our intention is to explore and understand the choices that designers have for the core representations of information systems, and the consequences for awareness that follow for users. We wish to relate such practical design issues to the more theoretical discussion in CSCW around concepts such as common information spaces, the space-place distinction, and the status of formal constructs.

TOGA—A customizable service for Data-Centric collaboration

Collaboration in cooperative information systems, like concurrent design and engineering, exploits common work and information spaces. In this paper we introduce the TOGA service (Transaction-Oriented Group and Coordination Service for Data-Centric Applications), which offers group management facilities and a push model for change propagation w.r.t. shared data, thus allowing for group awareness. Through TOGA's customizability and its layered architecture the service can be adapted to a variety of different collaboration scenarios. Multiple communication protocols (CORBA, UDP/IP, TCP/IP) are supported as well as basic transaction properties. Our approach enables both, firstly, the evolution of a set of separate applications to form a cooperative information system, i.e., it provides a technique towards component-oriented system engineering. Secondly, it can be exploited as a basic service within collaboration frameworks to effectively manage common work and information spaces. In this paper we report on design issues, implementation aspects, and first experiences gained with the TOGA prototype and its exploitation in an activity coordination and collaboration framework system.

Remembering past, present and future—articulating dimensions of “organizational memory” for organizational learning

The need for some form of "organizational memory" (OM) has become increasingly recognized by many organizations in the current complex and turbulent business environment. This renewed interest in a topic that has had a chequered career is not due solely to the attentions of the CSCW community, but can be found throughout organisations and in the writings of those researchers studying them. Usually, the concept is described in terms of the "storage" metaphor borrowed from the cognitive science field, where human and computer memories are viewed as similar, thus leading to the view that "storing" and "recalling" are symmetrical operations which do not involve any situational complexities.This, however, is not a very accurate picture of how people actually "remember" in organizations, as the very nature of the memory and even the memory act itself is affected by the changing conditions existing both for the person and in the work environment over time. Thus, in Bannon & Kuutti (1996) we deconstructed the idea of "organizational memory" by reformulating the notion of memory implicit if not explicit in most current views, i.e. the notion of memory as a passive store, arguing instead for an active, constructive view of "remembering" that has a long, if forgotten history within psychology. We also emphasised the need for empirical studies of "memories in use" and common information spaces, and suggested expanding the domain of discourse to include sociological as well as psychological perspectives on concepts such as memory, learning, remembering, talking, etc. in the context of organizations.While we believe that the paper served a useful purpose in directing attention towards a more fruitful line of enquiry about OM, it was mainly a critical review and as such did not elaborate on possible alternative formulations of the concept that would instantiate this shift if perspective from storage to remembering support. This paper moves one step in this direction by outlining a framework within which remembering can be situated, providing some indication of the structure that a support tool for this activity should possess. The framework is constructed by linking two concepts: the modality of remembering and the structure of activity.