Computer-based Artifacts Research Articles

Towards a Knowledge Communication Perspective on Designing Artefacts Supporting Knowledge Work

The designing of computer-based artefacts to support knowledge work is far from a straightforward rational process. Characteristics of knowledge work have a bearing upon how developers (or designers), together with users, come to approach and capture the rich and tacit knowing of the practice. As all knowledge work is about the production of knowledge, transforming it, so is the design practice for developing artefacts to occupy space within that same practice. There is a need for providing a conceptual language to better reflect the nature of this design work that goes beyond those dressed in the managerial (or rational) language of planned activities and deliverables. Towards this end, a conceptual frame is presented that makes several important aspects of the design practice visible. The frame brings together both nature of design work and characteristics of knowledge work to extend the frame of knowledge in user-developer communication of Kensing and Munk-Madsen. Thereby, providing a means to focus attention and dress debate on what situated designing is. By using explicit concepts, such as types knowledge domains embedded in the design situation, the transitional paths between them, and design engagements, it arms practitioners with specific linguistic constructs to direct attention and efforts in planning and organizing development undertakings. Purpose – the purpose of this work is to present and argue for a perspective on designing of computer-based artefacts supporting knowledge work. This is done to inform practitioners, directing their attention and dressing debate, and providing a conceptual language to better capture design activities in planning and organizing development undertakings. Design/Methodology/Approach – The approach presented in this article is conceptual in so far that a model or frame providing linguistic constructs is constructed and argued, building upon scholarly work of knowledge communication and drawing upon previous findings from empirical encounters. Findings – A conceptual frame is presented that captures the design situation as a situated knowledge communication process. Research limitations/implications – The conceptual frame presented remains yet to be validated in practical application. This may be achieved either using it as a lens to uncover and explain phenomena in similar design work, thereby putting its explanatory power to the test, or using it to direct future development undertakings, thereby putting its predictive power to the test. Practical implications – The practical implications of the design frame lies in its power to provide linguistic constructs to direct one’s effort in planning and organizing development undertakings, and in extension to provide argument for decision-makers allocating resources. Originality/Value – By extending the model of knowledge communication of Kensing and Munk-Madsen, and framing it within a situated design context, it better reflects characteristics of knowledge work, providing practitioners with the means to better organize design activities. Research type – conceptual.

On an Engineering Use of Engineering History

This is a tale of how writing about the engineering past is benefiting the engineering present. Our story is not of the familiar kind, however, in which knowledge of the past failure or success of a particular device has influenced later, related designs. Instead, we deal here with a general methodology from the history of one engineering field and its fruitful application to presentday research and design in another, very different field. The field of application human-computer interaction is the primary discipline supporting the design of computer-based artifacts that people use directly, such as websites, computer games, mobile phones, electronic notebooks, and other interactive programs and devices. Like many fields of engineering in their early years, it has been feeling its way as an area of activity. Because advances in information technology have been so rapid and new applications have emerged with such regularity, no overall research or design methodologies have become established a situation rarely apparent to those who enter the field. This was certainly true of one of the coauthors of this tale, William Newman, an engineer and computer scientist who went to work in the Xerox laboratory in Cambridge, England, in 1988. Confronted with design choices in his work on novel user interfaces, he sought help in journals and conference proceedings devoted to human-computer interaction, but rarely found it. It gradually dawned on him that there was no coherent view

Discovering Healthcare Cognition: The Use of Cognitive Artifacts to Reveal Cognitive Work

Healthcare systems, especially hospital operating room suites, have properties that make them ideal for the study of the cognitive work using the naturalistic decision-making (NDM) approach. This variable, complex, high-tempo setting provides a unique opportunity to examine the ways that clinicians plan, monitor, and cope with the irreducible uncertainty that underlies this work domain. As frontline managers, anesthesia coordinators plan and manage anesthesia assignments for surgical procedures. As frontline managers, coordinators develop and use cognitive artifacts to distribute cognition across time and among members of the acute care staff. Examination of these cognitive artifacts and their use reveals the hidden subtleties of the coordinators’ work. The use of NDM methods including cognitive artifact analysis to understand cognitive work generates insights that extend beyond the operator level to the study of team-level cognition. Results can be used to create computer-based artifacts that aid individual and team cognition.

Comprehensive Object-Oriented Learning – An Introduction

(2003). Comprehensive Object-Oriented Learning – An Introduction. Computer Science Education: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 331-335.

Production and Transformation of Computer Artifacts Toward Construction of Meaning in Mathematics

Artifacts both mediate our interaction with the world and are objects in the world that we reflect on. As computer-based artifacts are generally intermingled with multiple praxes, studying their use in praxis uncovers processes in which individuals, the community, and tools are involved. In this article, we examine a now common computer-based artifact in mathematics classrooms, the representative. This artifact is often in continual transformation in the course of action during school activities. We document how several praxes with representatives mediate the construction of meaning. We show that the ambiguity of computer representatives regarding the examples and concepts they are meant to represent boost this construction. The construction of meaning of mathematical functions is described as a process that occurs through social interaction and the interweaving of the ambiguous computer-based artifacts. We show that this construction depends heavily on intentional design of activities by the teacher, leading to the creation of states of intersubjectivity.

A Framework for Integrating Cognitive Task Analysis into the System Development Process

This paper describes a process that orchestrates different types of specific CTA techniques to provide design relevant CTA results and integrates CTA results into the software development process. Two fundamental premises underlie the approach. First, CTA is more than the application of any single CTA technique. Instead, developing a meaningful understanding of a field of practice relies on multiple converging techniques in a bootstrapping process. The important issue from a CTA perspective is to evolve a model of the interconnections between the demands of the domain, the strategies and knowledge of practitioners, the cooperative interactions across human and machine agents, and how artifacts shape these strategies and coordinative activities across a series of different specific techniques. Second, since CTA is a means to support the design of computer-based artifacts that enhance human and team performance, CTA must be integrated into the software and system development process. Thus, the vision of CTA as an initial, self-contained technique that is handed-off to system designers is reconceived as an incremental process of uncovering the cognitive demands imposed on the operator(s) by the complexities and constraints of the domain.

A Human Activity Approach to User Interfaces

How can we understand why a bank teller has different needs for a user interface than those of casual users of a machine teller, or why a graphic designer needs a different user interface than a secretary? This article presents a framework for the design of user interfaces that originates from the work situations in which computer-based artifacts are used: The framework deals with the role of the user interface in purposeful human work. Human activity theory is used in this analysis. The purpose of this article is to make the reader curious and hopefully open his or her eyes to a somewhat different way of thinking about the user interface. The article applies examples of real-life interfaces to support this process, but it does not include a systematic presentation of empirical results. I focus on the role of the computer application in use. Thus, it is necessary to consider human-computer interaction and other related work conditions. I deal with human experience and competence as being rooted in the practice of the group that conducts the specific work activity. The main conclusions are: The user interface cannot be seen independently of the use activity (i.e., the professional, socially organized practice of the users and the material conditions for the activity, including the object of the activity). The standard view in these situations is to deduce an ultimate set of operations from an abstract use activity and apply these to design and analysis. This article argues that the user interface fully reveals itself to us only when in use. What is a good user interface for those with a certain degree of competence may not be efficient for those with different levels of competence. I give certain general recommendations for the user interface, but I have no guarantee that such recommendations are applicable to the specific case wherein these concerns may be overruled by specific social or material concerns.

What Sorts of Machines Can Understand the Symbols They Use?

I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss with philosophers some difficult issues common to philosophy and AI. It is increasingly difficult to keep up with all the relevant literature, and only mutual aid can prevent time-wasting re-invention of wheels and blundering down blind alleys. My topic is a specialised variant of the old philosophical question 'could a machine think?'. Some say it is only a matter of time before computer-based artefacts will behave as if they had thoughts and perhaps even feelings, pains or any other occupants of the human mind, conscious or unconscious. I shall not pre-judge this issue. The space of possible computing systems is so vast, and we have explored such a tiny corner, that it would be as rash to pronounce on what we may or may not discover in our future explorations as to predict what might or might not be expressible in print shortly after its invention. Instead I'll merely try to clarify what we might look for. Like Searle ([11, 12]) I'll focus on a specific type of thought, namely understanding symbols. Clearly, artefacts like cardsorters, optical character readers, voice-controlled machines, and automatic translators, manipulate symbols. Do they understand the symbols? Some machines behave as if they do, at least in a primitive way. They respond to commands by performing tasks; they print out answers to questions; they paraphrase stories or answer questions about them. We understand the symbols, but do they? Is real understanding missing from simulated understanding just as a real wetness is missing from a simulated tornado? Or is a mental process like calculation: if simulated in detail, it is replicated? If 'understanding' denotes some logically private internal