Changing the world, one idea at a time
SKY AND EARTH – A PROPOSED NEW NZ FLAG
In this design, the blue represents father sky and the cosmos, the Southern Cross represents the stars that guide us in the southern hemisphere, the green represents our mother the earth, and the silver fern represents the new life that springs up between earth and sky. We are the new life, but must still remember where we came from.
I have no musical background or ability at all. The first song came while riding the motorbike on a long trip. Since I couldn’t write it down, the only way to remember it was to keep singing it.
Unseen World (1996). A song about death and life.
The PhD Song (2003). Sang this after my PhD, to the tune of “My Way”. For all PhD students.
Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems, 2009
“When a baby is born it is tender and fragile: when it grows and dies it becomes hard and stiff. … Therefore the stiff and unyielding belong to the realm of death while the tender and sympathetic belong to the realm of life.”
Laotze, Tao Te Ching, Verse 76
Introduction
This handbook addresses current issues of research into socio-technical systems (STSs) – which are computer technologies that enable social interactions of any type, whether conversations (email), group discussions (chat), group writing (wiki), online trade (E-bay), online learning (WebCT), social networking (Facebook) or others. The Internet has evolved from hosting information to hosting social interactions. Yet as technology becomes part of social life, surely social life should be part of technical design? Without this, a “social-technical gap” emerges – a deficit between what society wants and what technology does. This book aims to reduce that gap, by suggesting how social knowledge can synergize with technical knowledge.
Socio-technical systems arise when social systems emerge from technical ones, so their success requires social as well as technical performance. The new multi-disciplinary field of socio-technical development cuts across traditional disciplines like Engineering, Psychology, Computing, Health, Sociology, Education and Business. This is a field that no specialist academic discipline can or should encompass. It “belongs” to all disciplines, as connecting social and technical involves not one specialty but many specialties. Any research organization working in this field needs not just cross-disciplinary teams but cross-disciplinary people, to cross discipline borders to make useful connections, as many chapters of this book illustrate.
The socio-technical concept generalizes and includes human-computer interaction (HCI), standing as it were upon the shoulders of HCI. Equally at a higher level “human-centered” computing contains both STS and HCI components. This book asks not how to make technology more efficient, nor how technology harms or helps society, but how to successfully combine society and technology in socio-technical systems. The premise is that technology is not a “given”, but something people create for their use, so technology should work for us, not vice-versa. Ultimately, global humanity must control, direct and define the computer technology that is currently changing humanity, and perhaps we need to change what is changing us to survive. If society is the context of technology, not the other way around, it is incumbent upon us to define requirements, designs and measures for technology to follow. Since it would be unwise to try to do this blindly, this book sheds light on many of the issues involved.
Vision
Throughout the world today people are using computers to socialize in ways previously thought impossible – by email, chat, instant messages, online worlds, e-markets, blogs, wikis, social networks, social bookmarks and many other ways and forms. Each of these is a socio-technical system (STS) – a social system that emerges somehow from a technical one. This book asks how such systems work and what makes them succeed. While connecting people electronically is complex, connecting them socially is even more so, as an STS must “perform” in both social and technical terms. Spam illustrates what happens when technical but not social problems are addressed, as ISP and user inboxes fill with messages no-one reads, wasting time, money and resources. What use is a technically efficient network if 99% of its transmissions are unwanted spam, which creates neither social value nor meaning? Similarly, online issues of security, education, health, trade and education now depend as much on social factors as on technical ones. Yet the real issue is neither social nor technical but how they connect.
As humanity enters a new millennium one cannot but feel that we have, over thousands of years, and sometimes with bitter struggle, made social progress. Villages formed into towns, then cities, then city states, then nations, then “nations of nations” like the USA, the EU or China. We have indeed evolved from tribal social units to social systems with hundreds of millions of people. This gives us hope that the next step, an online global society with us all “citizens of the world”, is possible, by the power of global communications technology. If so, understanding social history and principles is important in creating that technology. Social “inventions” like accountability, group identity, friendship, fairness and public good have been as important to human progress as technology inventions. While computer technology enable new and previously impossible social forms, these forms may still need to follow principles inherent in all social situations, whether virtual or physical. Given several thousand years of physical social history, often written in blood and tears, it would be arrogant for technology to discount the social as irrelevant to the technical. And as online social generations come and go it is becoming clear, in areas like e-commerce, that technology alone does not have all the answers.
As technology problems are increasingly solved, now is a good time to start to address the critical socio-technical questions. A technologized society is affected by the technology it runs upon, but equally it can “socialize” the technology which it creates. Conversely, technology designs are embedded within a social context, and need to engage that context to flourish. Without a social direction technology will not grow as it should, and equally without technology society will not grow as it should. The social and the technical are partners of vastly different natures, yet together they synergize the future. Some themes of this book are that:
1. The socio-technical evolution is only just beginning.2. Technical systems that ignore social requirements will tend to fail.3. Social systems that ignore technical support will tend to fail.4. The future lies in harmonizing social and technical systems in innovative ways.
The Handbook
The exploration of social-technical issues requires the “coming together” of social and technical knowledge. To produce this book we invited new perspectives from top researchers and practitioners around the world. We asked them how social ideas can enlighten technical developments, and how technical developments can inspire new forms of social interaction. The contributors to this handbook are from many countries and disciplines, and practitioners as well as academics. We hope that an understanding of social computing today and tomorrow can be found in their many points of view. This state of the art summary of research in socio-technical design and social networking provides:
1. Social concepts and theories, to enlighten and inspire the analysis, design, implementation, evaluation and operation of socio-technical systems.2. Methods of system development, to manage the complexity of socio-technical interactions.3. Examples of developed systems, with application lessons learned.4. Socio-technical cases, as fields or laboratories for social or technical research.5. Suggestions and future trends, based on current developments and directions.6. Discussion of critical ethical and social issues, involving technology and society.
The Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems, is distinctive in its variety of contributors, depth and breadth of scholarship, clarity and readability, structure and layout organization, combination of practice and theory, and positive vision of the future. The quotes provided by authors throughout the book epitomize their insights. This book will be useful not only to technical designers, where understanding of social principles can decide system success or failure, but also to those working in social fields, as it shows how social concepts and goals can manifest in technical practice. It will also help those teaching the social use of technical systems in any field, as the chapters provide excellent learning cases, and the number of chapters permits selection to fit almost any focus.
Socio-technical systems are essentially “hybrids”, an uneasy mix of high level socio-cognitive structures with equally complex hardware and software architectures. Developing systems that balance human and social aspirations with the constraints of a technology base is a difficult endeavor. We should not expect to get it right the first time. More important than success is to remember hard-won lessons, as ultimately progress is based on knowing more. This book is not the “right way” of socio-technical systems, but merely a report on initiatives, efforts and experiences from workers in the field with the aim to increase knowledge in the field. STS theory and practice is still in its infancy. It has few established paradigms, and given its inherent complexity may continue for some time as it is today – a bubbling flux of new ideas. Yet that we do not know everything does not mean that we know nothing. We do know a great deal about merging the social and the technical, as this book testifies. It provides many signposts pointing to fruitful socio-technical destinations. We invite readers to form their own STS “gestalt” based on the fascinating collection of ideas and experiences presented here, and join the journey.
Contents
The book is organized by sections, representing how a socio-technical system might evolve, from concept to implementation and evaluation. Of course such linear paths are never smooth. Just as agile methods skip or cycle phases, most chapters in this book cut across multiple sections. The grouping is by primary concern, recognizing that chapters are rarely “pure”, as ideas on analysis, say, may have implications for design. The structure is simply a convenient way to structure a complex field by the problems it faces: to conceive, analyze, design, implement and evaluate useful and practical socio-technical systems as catalysts for human social progress.
Section summaries
The section details are as follows:
Section I introduces the core socio-technical concepts, underlying socio-technical systems development and traces their historical roots, as one must know the past to understand the present (Ch 1). As the term implies socio-technical research is like two different and distant worlds colliding (Ch 2), where the impact is not just technical upon social (Ch 3), but also social upon technical (Ch 4). This collision of research worlds has implications for online work systems (Ch 5), for online communities (Ch 6), and for software development in general (Ch 7).
Section II presents some socio-technical perspectives, for socio-technical development. Privacy is the information equivalent of physical freedom, i.e. freedom to control not just one’s physical self but also information about that self. This social principle can apply both to the governance of physical world data (Ch 8), and to the governance of virtual world data (Ch 9). Another critical social factor is leadership (Ch 10), which in turn affects the critical online choice to participate or not, i.e. to use the technology tools provided (Ch 11). Social revolutionaries like Martin Luther-King and Mahatma Ghandi tapped this ultimate human choice: to act or not. Similarly, on the Internet today people also choose to participate or not, with reasons from practical needs to simple entertainment (Ch 12). Modern social democracies produce more by letting every race, creed and color participate, and engage productivity by fairly sharing social gains both by need (socialism) and performance (capitalism). In contrast anti-social acts like stealing deny all forms of fairness. Two complementary response strategies in cyberspace are: 1. To lessen individuals use of technology to form flow “bubbles” that isolate from society (Ch 13), and 2. To strengthen social values in technology to better allow society to protect Internet citizens from anti-social others (Ch 14). Finally, to advance a society must support and not repress the human innovation that bubbles up from within it, with online service provision an excellent example of how technology can help do this (Ch 15).
Section III suggests a range of approaches to socio-technical analysis, as one must capture socio-technical requirements before developing improvements. Doing this for socio-technical systems is not as simple as just asking people what they want, as people in groups follow norms instinctively despite declared statements (Ch 16). With this warning, socio-instrumental pragmatism (SIP) is a useful analytic approach (Ch 17), and business analytics is a useful source of information, although the analysis itself is a socio-technical process (Ch 18). Another useful information source is users themselves, suggesting the concept of “co-design” (Ch 19). Conceptual graphs can also be used to formally analyze workflows and social norms in development (Ch 20). In any socio-technical analysis expectations are raised or lowered, as interacting with people also affects them, so socio-technical success may depend on managing those expectations (Ch 21). Finally, if the goal of analysis is to find out “what users want”, one way to do this is to give them technology “stubs” and let them report needs and expected usage at different times (Ch 22).
Section IV considers socio-technical design – the actual putting together of software components to create a social effect, i.e. methods for turning social requirements into technical solutions. The socio-technical walkthrough is a useful way to test a design that involves people before it is implemented (Ch 23). As creating software designs parallels the creative design of furniture, the translational design approach can help STS designers (Ch 24). In socio-technical systems the human-computer divide is not absolute, so computer agents in organizational environment must model social goals, responsibilities and dependencies (Ch 25). Equally critical for human participation is trust, as without trust people will not risk social interactions with others (Ch 26). One way to remember socio-technical success is with “patterns”, Alexander’s architectural design concept carried over into software design (Ch 27). Group interaction involves not only complex individuals, but also their interactions, making designing systems to support group interaction a challenge of the first order (Ch 28). Equally complex are systems that connect people in an organization to the resources they need (Ch 29). If one works from social needs to technology design, rich media communication technologies need to meet those social needs not mimic face-to-face interactions (Ch 30). Social interaction is complex not only by quantity and quality, but also by recursion, e.g. that I see you changes my behavior, but that you see that I see you also changes your behavior, which in turn changes mine, and so on. Such ripples of recursive social reflexion, where each act changes all acts, make social interactions match those of fluid mechanics for complexity, and for the same reason – the causality is circular not linear. Yet social principles can manage this complexity, e.g. translucence, (that people can see clearly what others do and act accordingly) is one principle behind the success of eBay that can apply to other socio-technical systems (Ch 31). Finally, for computer agents to succeed in social environments they must respect social rules, i.e. etiquette (Ch 32).
Section V looks at socio-technical implementations, to explore some of the practical lessons learned. For example, in today’s virtual or synthetic worlds people can adopt a persona to live out a “second” life. While such worlds pale besides Star Trek’s “Holo-deck” for realism, their capacity to support social interaction is far greater. To understand how millions of people can interact within virtual worlds a socio-technical perspective is essential (Ch 33). And while Star Trek’s Captain Kirk often stressed that computers cannot comprehend human emotions, today’s computer tutoring systems aim to do precisely that (Ch 34). Eye gaze is another usually human cue that is now amenable to computer analysis and used in computer interfaces (Ch 35). Yet not all the conditions for human sociability seem fulfilled by current social networking systems, as while people frequently maintain social relations by computers they less frequently create them that way (Ch 36). The missing factor(s) may be not physical realism but emotional realism, i.e. genuineness (that you mean what you say) supported by properties like spontaneity and immediacy, expressive effort (not copied) and non-modifiability (not faked). This trend to represent emotional and social complexity is evident in knowledge representation systems (Ch 37), online teaching systems (Ch 38) and even academic research, as for researchers to share expensive technical resources requires collaboration (Ch 39).
Section VI looks at socio-technical evaluation, as evaluating systems gives the feedback necessary for continuous improvement. Evaluations are based on criteria, which in turn depend on one’s perspective and concerns. For example, Bandura’s collective efficacy concept has led to a useful measure of online communities (Ch 40). Likewise that social capital has cognitive, relational and structural dimensions suggests dimensions for evaluating social network sites (Ch 41), as does the concept of situational awareness for online team collaboration systems (Ch 42). Online learning communities in contrast suggest a scale of affective satisfaction, as emotion is important to learning (Ch 43). One can not only measure the current state, of an online community but also its current rate of advancement or decline, as “social health” implies that social systems can grow or decline as individuals do (Ch 44). Critical to the evolution (or devolution) of a social system is how it engenders/fosters innovation to reinvent itself for each new generation (Ch 45). Finally, one must measure the social context of technical systems, as a value clash at the cultural level can cause unused or unwanted systems (Ch 46).
Section VII considers the future, of the budding field of socio-technical development. We must learn from the past, where computing has previously over-estimated its capacity in areas like artificial intelligence, e-commerce, pattern recognition and spatial processing. We may need to recognize that if the world is not ultimately “computable”, despite computing power, the role of the computer in social computing may need to change from “solver” to “supporter” (Ch 47). Equally if the role of computing as a power sharer in e-commerce is overstated, perhaps the real online commerce revolution is still to come (Ch 48). While teaching socio-technical concepts at graduate and undergraduate levels is likely to increase, it may need a change from content to process focused delivery (Ch 49). While some see socio-technical progress as inevitable, one can equally argue that online communities will become more formal and rigid as they “age” (Ch 50). Yet every problem can also be seen as an opportunity, as a view on houses of the future illustrates (Ch 51). And while technology progress may “atomize” online experiences, it also suggests systems that enhance trust in society as a whole (Ch 52). Finally, the ultimate question facing humanity may be the old choice between good and evil, so socio-technical developers need to rise to the challenge of designing for good not ill (Ch 53).
Final words
While the physical reality of technology is “hard”, social realities by comparison seem “soft”. That the soft should direct the hard seems counter-intuitive, but we believe this is the way computing will evolve, as it is the spirit of life. The quote beginning this preface illustrates the principle. To let technology define our future is to let something blind to human benefit lead humanity forward. Who knows where that will lead? It is better that people lead the technology forward, based on human and social concepts. While people are flawed they are not blind, as technology is, and so-called human “flaws” like variability may be virtues in an evolutionary context. Our very human reasons, emotions and social instincts have guided us well enough this far. Let us not now defect in our obligation to determine our technological future. What the human mind can conceive it can achieve, so if it can conceive technology it can conceive how to harmonize that technology not only with the social systems of humanity, but also with the natural systems of “Mother Earth” that ultimately sustain our global society.
We send our good will to all those who work to these good ends.
Brian Whitworth and Aldo de MoorEditors of the Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems
Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems, 2009
Mark Aakhus
Mark Aakhus is Associate Professor of Communication in the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers University. Aakhus‘ research focuses on the emergence and management of conflictas people organize and make decisions, solve problems, and learn.These investigations explore how innovations in communication practice and technology affect the quality of human activity and reasoning in complex situations. His publications appear in international journals on communication, technology, discourse, argumentation, and disputing processes. He earned his PhD at the University of Arizona in Communication with an emphasis on Management Information Systems.
José Abdelnour-Nocera
José Abdelnour-Nocera is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Information Technology, Thames Valley University. His interests lie in the design of people-centred systems, having worked in this area as both researcher and consultant in Latin America and Europe. He has been involved in several projects in the UK and overseas in the areas of e-learning, including social development, e-commerce, e-government and enterprise resource planning systems. Dr. Abdelnour-Nocera gained an MSc in Social Psychology from Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela and a PhD in Computing from The Open University, UK
Mary Allan
Mary Allan completed her PhD in 2005 at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her thesis investigated internet mediated collaborative learning at tertiary level, and proposed a new methodology that enables micro and macro investigation of computer mediated collaborative actions. A software pack is currently under development, converting the methodology into a usable tool. Mary’s research focuses on electronically mediated interactions for the construction of collaborative knowledge across diverse contexts such as tertiary teaching and learning, workplace training, and research institutions working across sites nationally and internationally. Mary has been awarded the 2008 BRCSS post doctoral fellowship in which she will be investigating ways of encouraging and facilitating wide spread of sustainable research activities using teleconferencing technologies for lowering carbon footprint.
Dee Alwis
Dee Alwis is currently involved in teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the areas of financial accounting and company performance. This follows her professional career working in major multinational organisations based in the UK including Wilkinson Swords, Dell Computers and THORN-EMI, where she held the positions of management accountant, financial analyst and financial controller. Trained and qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant, Dee is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). She obtained a Master of Science degree in Information Systems and a doctoral degree on intellectual capital from Brunel University. Her Ph.D. thesis examined the impact of intellectual capital on organisational performance and value creation. Her current research interests relate to: Intangible assets and their effects on organisational performance; Corporate governance with a particular focus on corporate financial reporting; Disclosures in Annual Reports.
Junghyun An
Junghyun An is currently a Visiting Instructional Designer at Academic Outreach in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She graduated from Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois, with a specialization in instructional technology (2008). Her research interests include online communities for collaborative and inquiry-based learning, cultural and identity issues emerging within a virtual learning space, discourse analysis, and ethnographic research in technology studies. In examining educational computing policies and practices, she has engaged in the study of alternative and interdisciplinary curriculum development for technology education in pursuit of fostering socially responsible professionals and teachers in the field.
Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson
Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson is an early career researcher who explores the relationship between people and emerging technologies. She has a particular interest in examining ways information systems and institutional policies might better support creative and analytic activities. Her research builds on her PhD thesis (“Understandings of relevance and topic as they evolve in the scholarly research process”) to focus on human decision processes, information retrieval interactions and e-scholarship. In 2005 Theresa’s thesis was awarded the 1st Annual Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award (Information Science category). She designs and delivers courses (postgraduate & undergraduate) in information retrieval & organisation as well as in social informatics. Theresa is active in a cross-Faculty e-Learning research group, and has a particular interest in developing integrated online and face-to-face teaching strategies. Prior to joining UTS, she served as a diplomat, technical writer and environmental education officer.
Jeff Axup
Jeff is a user experience researcher and designer currently based in San Diego, CA, USA. He has a B.S in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Interaction Design, which primarily focused on mobile device concepts and research methods for studying mobile communities of backpackers . Jeff is currently Sr. UI Design Engineer and Lead of the User Experience team at Websense, Inc, where he helps develop a range of enterprise security products. He keeps active in his spare time running Mobile Community Design Consulting and the associated blog mobilecommunitydesign.com.
Ronald Batenburg
Ronald Batenburg (1964) is Associate Professor at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University. He studied sociology at Utrecht University and completed his PhD in 1991 at the University of Groningen. His research interests are in field of business/IT alignment, and the adoption and implementation of Enterprise Information Systems, including ERP, e-procurement, CRM and PACS. He is Member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Electronic Health and the Dutch Tijdschriftvoor Arbeidsvraagstukken.
Mohamed Ben Ammar
Mohamed Ben Ammar is a Ph.D. Student for the REsearch Group on Intelligent Machines (REGIM), at the University of Sfax, Tunisia. His research interests include affective computing in learning environments, intelligent environments, human-like learning in machines, emotionally expressive avatars and facial expression analysis. He received his Master Degree in Cognitive Science from Victor Segalen University of Bordeaux-2, France. He has published in journals like International Research Journal on Digital Future. (FormaMente), Transactions on advances in engineering education and International Journal of the Computer, the Internet and Management. See http://membres.lycos.fr/emaspel/ for more details.
Jos Benders
Jos Benders (1965) holds the Chair “Organization Concepts” at the Department of Organization Studies at Tilburg University and is a Senior Researcher at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University Nijmegen. He studied business administration in Tilburg (MBA) and Indiana, and completed his PhD in 1993 at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. His research interests include employment relationships, organization concepts, and technology, work and organization. He serves as Associate Editor Europe of New Technology, Work and Employment.
Jeremy Birnholtz
Jeremy Birnholtz is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and the Faculty of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University. He also holds an appointment in the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto. Jeremy received his Ph. D. from the School of Information at the University of Michigan in 2005, and is interested in improving the usefulness and usability of collaboration technologies through a focus on human attention, and in the intersections of social science theory and technology design. He uses both laboratory and field methods and has conducted field research in a diverse range of settings.
Ann Borda
Dr. Ann Borda is the Executive Director of the Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (http://www.versi.edu.au), a five-year Australian State Government funded Program to provide a coordinated approach to accelerating the uptake of eResearch on State and national levels. Concurrently, Dr Borda is a Research Fellow at London South Bank University, where she has been investigating HCI and collaborative technologies. Previously, Dr Borda held the position of Programme Manager with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC, http://www.jisc.ac.uk) based at King’s College London, responsible for government-funded projects in developing a UK-wide e-Infrastructure. Dr. Borda has published in a number of areas, including HCI, data modeling & knowledge transfer.
Jonathan P. Bowen
Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen (http://www.jpbowen.com) is Chair of Museophile Limited, a museum and IT consultancy company. He is also a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and an Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University. In 2007, he was a visiting academic at University College London and in 2008 he has been a visiting academic at Brunel University. Previously he was at the University of Reading, the Oxford University Computing Laboratory and Imperial College, London. In 2002, Bowen founded Museophile Limited (http://www.museophile.com) to help museums online, including the areas of virtual communities, wikis, etc. Bowen is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and of the British Computer Society. He holds an MA degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University.
Paul J. Bracewell
Paul Bracewell is the Director of Analytics at Offlode Ltd., an Australasian analytical consultancy firm. Prior to joining Offlode, Paul lectured in statistics at Massey University’s Albany Campus (New Zealand), where in 2003 he earned a PhD degree in statistics. Paul is an accredited Doctoral and Masters Associate Supervisor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and is also a SAS Institute certified trainer delivering training throughout Asia-Pacific.
Petter Bae Brandtzæg
Petter Bae Brandtzæg joined SINTEF ICT and the Department of Cooperative and Trusted Systems in 2000. His expertise is in analysing user trends and patterns of use in new digital media, and in with a particular focus on online communities. Brandtzæg holds more than 30 international publications. He is at present researching a Ph.D on online communities/social networking sites at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo and SINTEF.
Bertram (Chip) Bruce
Bertram (Chip) Bruce is a Professor in Library & Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He conducts research on democratic education. This includes research on community inquiry through collaborative community-based work, the theory of inquiry-based learning, and new media for learning. Recent publications include Libr@ries: Changing information space and practice (2006, with CushlaKapitzke) and Literacy in the information age: Inquiries into meaning making with new technologies (2003), various articles, and presentations. He is co-founder of the Community Informatics Initiative co-developer of computer systems to support collaboration and community action, such as Quill, the Inquiry Page, and Community Inquiry Labs (iLabs).
Jamika D. Burge is currently a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. She is managing a wireless network research project under the guidance of John M. Carroll at Penn State University. Burge completed her PhD in Computer Science from Virginia Tech in 2008. She has received several awards, including IBM PhD Research Fellow (2005-2006). Burge is affiliated with several professional organizations, including the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the CSE (Computer Science Education) and CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) Special Interest Groups.
LiciaCalvi is head of the Learning Centre at Lessius, a College of the University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven). She is also (part-time) senior researcher at the Centre for Usability Research, within the Centre for Media Culture & Communication Technology, at K.U.Leuven. Her research interests are in the area of reading and writing new media, sociability and virtual communities, digital libraries and repositories, design, usability and evaluation of IT systems, specifically e-learning and mobile systems.
John M. Carroll is Edward M. Frymoyer Chair Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He was Professor of Computer Science, and Head of Department, at Virginia Tech (1994-2003). Recent books include Making Use (MIT Press, 2000), HCI in the New Millennium(Addison-Wesley, 2001), and Usability Engineering (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2002). Carroll serves on several editorial and advisory boards, and is Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions. He received the Rigo Award and CHI Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Laurence Claeys is a sociologist and communication scientist. She received an M.A. in Sociology, an M.A. in Gender Studies and obtained a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences at the University of Ghent, in Belgium. She does research within the Residential Networked Application team of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Antwerp, Belgium.
Elayne Coakes is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Management at the University of Westminster. Her current research relates to knowledge sharing in organisations. As the Vice-Chair of the BCS Sociotechnical Special Group she is active in promoting this view of information systems and has edited three books of international contributions in this field. Since then she has co-authored ‘ Beyond Knowledge Management’ and an ‘ Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management’ in July 2005. Additionally, she has published more than 60 book chapters, peer reviewed journal chapters, and conference chapters. She is Editor in Chief of the forthcoming Journal: International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development. She is an internationally acknowledged expert on sociotechnical thinking and knowledge management and was Visiting Professor in Seville University, Spain, under the Government grant scheme for Distinguished, International Scholars; a Visiting Research Fellow in Queens University, Canada; and a Keynote speaker at Manchester University, UK, at the Tribute Day for Enid Mumford.
Tanguy Coenen has a Master’s degree and a PhD in Economic engineering from the Solvay Business School at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research investigates knowledge sharing and how this can occur over social networking systems and social media in general. Besides research, he does consultancy, teaches and performs development in this area.
Piotr Cofta is with British Telecom (UK) as a Chief Researcher, Identity and Trust. He is responsible for strategic research in trust, identity and privacy. Previously he has been working for many years for Nokia and more recently for Media Lab Europe, concentrating on the relationship of trust between technology and society. Dr Cofta has recently published his book “Trust, Complexity and Control: Confidence in a Convergent World”. He is an author of several patents and publications, from areas such as trust management, digital rights management and electronic commerce. Dr Cofta is a contributor to several international standards, he publishes and speaks frequently. Piotr Cofta received his PhD in computer science from the University of Gdansk, Poland. He is a member of BCS and IEEE. You can contact him at piotr.cofta@bt.com or through his site http://piotr.cofta.eu
Johan Criel studied engineering in computer sciences at the university of Ghent. He focused his work since some years on the topic of ‘context aware applications’. Since 2005 he is researcher within the Residential Networked Application team of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Antwerp, Belgium.
David Davenport holds a BSc. & PhD. in Electronics from Birmingham University in the U.K. Following several jobs in industry and independent consultancy work, he joined the engineering faculty of Bilkent University in 1987. His research interests include philosophy of mind and computation, computers in learning, and social and ethical issues related to information technology. He is a member of ACM and acting chair of the local SIGART chapter.
Dr Peter Day has a long history of academic and practical experience of community technology. A senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, he is a founder member of the Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP) and Principal Investigator of the ESRC funded Community Network Analysis project and BSCKE funded Community Needs Assessment project. He is a founder member of the Community Informatics Research Network. Peter has published extensively in the field of community informatics and is particularly interested in promoting dialogue between community practitioners, policy-makers and academics about the potential of community media and community network research and practice for community development in the Network Society.
Claire de la Varre is a Ph.D. student in educational psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a research assistant at the National Research Center on Rural Education Support and holds a master’s degree in information science. She recently spent three years at the Learning Technology Section at Edinburgh University in Scotland, as an e-learning developer on the Edinburgh Electronic Medical Curriculum (EEMeC), which was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in 2005. Ms. de la Varre has also worked as a health services research librarian, and digital library programmer.
Harry S. Delugach is an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has over 20 years of teaching experience, as well as an extensive scholarly publication record in knowledge based systems, conceptual graphs, and formal models in software engineering. He serves on several conference program committees, including a senior role in the International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS). He is the author of CharGer, an open-source conceptual graph visualization package. He serves on the USA ANSI L8 committee, which is one of the technical advisory groups to ISO/IEC JTC1’s SC32 subcommittee on data interchange, under whose auspices he served as editor of the Common Logic standard (ISO/IEC 24707:2007).
Aldo de Moor (ademoor@communitysense.nl) is owner of CommunitySense, a research consultancy firm on community informatics. In 1999, he got his Ph.D. in Information Management from Tilburg University, the Netherlands. From 1999-2004, he was an assistant professor at Infolab, Dept. of Information Systems and Management, Tilburg University. In 2005-2006, he was a senior researcher at the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STARLab) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Aldo’s research interests include the evolution of virtual communities, communicative workflow modeling, argumentation support technologies, Language/Action theory, conceptual graph theory, and socio-technical systems design. Aldo has been a visiting researcher at the University of Guelph, Canada, and the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Aldo has been Program Co-Chair of the International Conference on Conceptual Structures, the Language/Action Perspective Working Conference on Communication Modeling, and the Pragmatic Web Conference. Key publications have appeared in journals like Communications of the ACM, Data and Knowledge Engineering, Group Decision and Negotiation Information Systems, Information Systems Frontiers, and Information Systems Journal.
MIT alumnus Peter Denning is Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he chairs the CS department and directs the Cebrowski Institute for innovation and information superiority. He discovered the locality principle, now universally used to optimize storage systems; he codeveloped powerful performance prediction models for computer networks; he cofounded CSNET, the precursor of the NSFNET and modern Internet; he led the team that designed and produced the ACM digital library; he created a great principles framework for computing; and he codiscovered the eight generative practices of innovation. He is a past president of ACM and a prolific author. He holds twenty-four awards for distinguished service and technical contribution.
Cleidson Ronald Botelho de Souza is an Associate Professor of the Faculdade de Computação at the Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, in 2005. He is the author of a number of technical publications in journals and conferences. In general, his research interests are in the field of collaborative software engineering, i.e., computer-supported cooperative work as applied to software engineering.
Ines Di Loreto graduated in Philosophy, and is currently a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the UniversitàdegliStudi di Milano – Italy. Her research interests include Social Media and their societal impact. In particular, she investigates the relationship between ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and the representation of self, analyzing how it impacts the resulting relationships, in the web 2.0 framework.
Dan Dixon is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, but has 10 years of commercial web design and development experience. His main interests are around designing multi-platform services that make the best use of the social aspects of shared use. Prior to moving to academia he had roles as a senior consultant with Headshift, a leading social software company, product manager for the BBC’s online communities and production director for new media agency Syzygy. Currently he is carrying out research on online social spaces, service design, and pervasive gaming.
Ken Eason is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Ergonomics at Loughborough University and Senior Consultant at the Bayswater Institute in London. He has worked on socio-technical systems theory in its application to work systems for 40 years including a period at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He has conducted many research studies of the way user communities in work systems adopt and adapt to new technology and, at the Bayswater Institute, has been particularly involved in the formulation and use of methods of engaging user communities in the development of new working practices using electronic resources.
Dr Rebecca Ellis is a researcher and PhD supervisor at the Institute of Social and Technical Research, University of Essex. The Institute was formed as a hybrid organisation to cut across disciplinary boundaries in examining the social use of technology. Rebecca has a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Sheffield. She was funded on a two year project by the UK Economic and Social Research Council to explore the social and cultural aspects of eBay, the Internet auction site. Her publications include chapters in Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting and Desire and Intelligent Spaces: The Application of Pervasive ICT.
Thomas Erickson is an interaction designer and researcher at IBM Research in New York to which he telecommutes from his home in Minneapolis. His primary interest is in studying and designing systems that enable groups of all sizes to interact coherently and productively over networks. More generally, Erickson’s approach to systems design is shaped by methods developed in HCI, theories and representational techniques drawn from architecture and urban design, and theoretical and analytical approaches from rhetoric and sociology. In addition to computer-mediated communication, other research interests include virtual communities, game-like interactions, genre theory, personal information management and pattern languages.
Umer Farooq is a PhD candidate in Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, and his advisor is John M. Carroll. His research interests include understanding and supporting group and community collaboration through the design and evaluation of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) tools. In June 2008, he successfully defended his dissertation, which investigates the feasibility, effectiveness, and consequences of supporting everyday creative scientific collaboration with computer-supported awareness in distributed settings. He has many refereed articles in national and international conferences and journals.
Thomas Finholt is research professor and associate dean for research and innovation at the School of Information, University of Michigan, and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology. He is also director of the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) and the Center for Information Technology Integration. Finholt’s research focuses on the design, deployment, and use of cyberinfrastructure in science and engineering. He was a co-developer of the world’s first operational collaboratory, the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC) , which was a finalist in the science category for the 1998 Smithsonian/Computerworld awards. His recent work has focused on the development of NEESgrid , the collaboratory component of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). He has also conducted research on the impact of geographic dispersion and computer-mediated communication on trust and performance in virtual teams, on the effect of electronic and cash incentives on response rates for online surveys, and on the use of archived digital content. He co-founded the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW), and has served as the director of CREW since 1997.
Brent Furneaux is a doctoral candidate at York University’s Schulich School of Business specializing in the field of Information Systems. His current research interests include the processes surrounding individual and organizational decision making, the strategic management of organizational knowledge, and questions related to end of life phenomena such as the end of the information system life. He is currently pursuing dissertation research that seeks to better understand the factors that drive organizational decisions to discontinue their use of information systems. Brent is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
GöranGoldkuhl, PhD, is professor in information systems at Linköping University and Jönköping International Business School, Sweden. He is the director of the research group VITS (www.vits.org). He has published several books and more than 120 research papers at conferences, in journals and as book chapters. He is currently developing a family of theories, which all are founded on socio-instrumental pragmatism: Workpractice Theory, Business Action Theory, Information Systems Actability Theory. He has a great interest in qualitative and pragmatic research methods and he has contributed to the development of Multi-Grounded Theory, (a modified version of Grounded Theory).
Wallace Hannum is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Associate Director for Technology of the National Research Center on Rural Education Support. Hannum’s focus has been on applying learning theory to the design of effective instructional programs in public and private organizations both in the U.S. and internationally. His work integrates empirical learning research with processes for improving organizational effectiveness and focuses on instructional uses of technology, especially distance education to benefit those in rural areas. Dr. Hannum’s goal remains improving human competence and capability through education.
Catherine Heeney is based at the Ethox Centre at Oxford University; which focuses on issues around biomedicine and ethics. She works in a multi-disciplinary team within a project entitled the Governance of Genetic Databases, and has been working on the sociological component. This has involved interviewing scientists involved in the building and maintenance of biobanks and similar entities. She draws on the theoretical frameworks provided by Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy and Science and Technology Studies. Catherine has worked at Edinburgh University at the Genomics Forum and the Department of Politics. At the Politics Department, she worked on a Project entitled ‘Privacy and Data-sharing’, which explored the legal, technical and organisational spurs and barriers to data sharing in the public sector. Her doctoral thesis was on “The Role of Privacy in the Collection and Dissemination of Census and Survey Data”, which she carried out at the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census, within the Department of Sociology at Manchester University. As a doctoral researcher she spent two periods as a Marie-Curie Fellow at INFOLAB, Information Management, Department, Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Here she carried out research on the social and ethical aspects of the use of information technology in information management and in statistical research.
Jan Heim is Chief Scientist at SINTEF ICT. Heim has been Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology at University of Trondheim. He joined the research institute SINTEF in Oslo in 1995 where he has worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction with a focus on user requirements, adaptation of usability methods and psychological aspects of mediated communication in various European research projects. He is author or co-author of several international papers.
Thomas Herrmann is a professor of Information- and Technology-Management and a fellow of the Electrical Engineering Department. His research interests and teaching areas include design methods for socio-technical systems in the areas of knowledge management, groupware, (work-)process management and service engineering, as well as Human-Computer Interaction and privacy.
He was faculty member from 1992-2004 at the Computer Science Department at the University of Dortmund and was in charge of the development of infrastructure and new media for the University. He holds a PhD in Computer Science of the Technical University of Berlin (1986) and a Master of Art in Communication Science of the University of Bonn (1983).
Dirk Heylen received his Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht. After that he became assistant professor in the Human Media Interaction group at the University of Twente where his research involves modeling conversational and cognitive functions of embodied conversational agents. His work on the analysis and synthesis of nonverbal communication in (multiparty) conversations has been concerned with gaze, and head movements in particular. He is involved in European and Dutch national projects on multi-party interaction, emotion research and the building of models of communicative agents. This includes building models of affective interaction, particularly in tutoring situations.
A sociologist and computer scientist whose work focuses on “human centered” information systems, Starr Roxanne Hiltz is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita, Information Systems Department, College of Computing Sciences, NJIT. For 2008-2009 she has been chosen to be the Fulbright/ University of Salzburg Distinguished Chair in Communications and Media. Her research interests include Group Support Systems (virtual teams and online communities), evaluation research methods, Asynchronous Learning Networks, Emergency Management Information Systems, Pervasive Computing, and the applications and impacts of “social computing” (“Web 2.0”) systems. (Http://is.njit.edu/hiltz)
David Hinds is currently the President of Hinds & Associates, a management consulting firm. He recently completed his PhD in Business Administration with a concentration in information systems and social network analysis. Previously, he held senior management positions with Deloitte Consulting, Cordis Corporation (Johnson & Johnson), and The Wurth Group. He was also President and owner of Trend Distributors, a building supply distribution company. In addition to the PhD, Hinds hold a BS in Engineering Science, an MS in Management Science, and an MBA.
Paul Hodgson works for British Telecom (UK) as a Senior Researcher, Security and Trust in the Mobility Research Centre. He is responsible for research in convergent security and trust, specifically in trust, identity and privacy. He joined BT in 1997 and has previously worked in the Security Research Centre on defensive technologies and the Future Technologies group on applying nature inspired approaches to network security. Prior to joining BT he worked on music and artificial intelligence at the University of Sussex, where he did work in computational/musical creativity. Prior to this he ran his own music software company and worked as a musician after completing a first degree in social science and philosophy at the University of Manchester. His research interests include the technical and social aspects of creativity, trust and security with special reference to opportunities in convergent environments. Dr Hodgson is author of several publications and patents, from areas such as computational creativity, email anti-virus protection, mobile services encryption and trust management. Dr Hodgson is a contributor to several international journals and he publishes and speaks frequently. Paul Hodgson received his DPhil in cognitive science from the University of Sussex, UK. He is a CISSP, a fellow of the RSA and a visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. You can contact him at paul.w.hodgson@bt.com
Paul Hoeken (1955) is Lecturer at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University Nijmegen. He studied business administration at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Prior to his present job he was active in consultancy, information management and logistics. His research interests include effectiveness of information systems projects, information architecture development and packaged software implementation.
Dr. Janet Holland completed a Ph.D. in Teaching and Leadership, Instructional Design and Technology, with a minor in Communications from the University of Kansas. Dr. Holland currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Emporia State University, teaching pre-service teachers and master degree students in Instructional Design and Technology.
Dan Horn is an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. He received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Michigan. He served as a post doctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, supporting the development of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). His research interests include social network analysis and computer-supported cooperative work.
Wilson Huang is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Valdosta State University. His Ph.D. degree in criminology is received from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has published refereed articles in the areas of cybercrime, hotel crime, criminal sentencing, and criminal violence across nations. His teaching interests include police-community relations, comparative criminal justice, crime and technology, and program evaluations.
Matthew J. Irvin received his Ph.D. in education with a specialization in educational psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include student risk and resilience and the use of distance education for student learning and professional development for educators. Dr. Irvin has also had experience teaching college-level courses that incorporated elements of distance education and development of online courses.
Isa Jahnke, Dr. phil., Assistant Professor, studied social science in Germany. She worked three years at a consultancy company. From 2001 until 2004 she researched in the field of socio-technical systems and knowledge management. After her PhD study, she moved as a Postdoctoral research assistant to the Department of Information and Technology Management. Since April 2008, she is an Assistant Professor at the Dortmund University of Technology at the Center for Research on Higher Education and Faculty Development. Her research topics are computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative learning, Web 2.0, and Internet-based communities. Further information: http://www.isa-jahnke.de ; Contact: isa.jahnke@tu-dortmund.de
Monique Janneck is junior professor for work and organizational psychology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She studied psychology and earned a doctorate in informatics with a thesis on the design of cooperative systems from a communication psychology perspective. Her research focus is on the interplay between human behavior, social structures and technological development: She is interested in the way humans interact with technology, the way theories and findings on human behavior can inform the design of information technology, and the way technology impacts individual, organizational, and social behavior and structures.
Julie Keane is a Ph.D. student in education (Culture, Curriculum and Change) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a research assistant at the National Research Center on Rural Education Support. From 1993-2004 Ms. Keane was Associate Project Director at the Center for Children and Technology, EDC, Inc. in New York. She participated in nationally-based research examining technology in school reform, including analysis of federal and state education policy, professional development programs, curriculum reform initiatives, and the impact of technology on the social context of teaching and learning. Ms. Keane holds a MA in Political Science.
Julie E. Kendall, Ph. D., is a Professor of Management in the School of Business-Camden, Rutgers University. Dr. Kendall is a fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute and a Past Chair of IFIP Working Group 8.2. She was awarded the Silver Core from IFIP. Professor Kendall has published in MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Information & Management, CAIS, Organization Studies and many other journals. Additionally, Dr. Kendall has co-authored Systems Analysis and Design, 7th edition Project Planning and Requirements Analysis for IT Systems Development. She co-edited the volume Human, Organizational, and Social Dimensions of Information Systems Development and is on the Senior Advisory Board for JITTA and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Database Management and IRMJ.
Kenneth E. Kendall, Ph. D. is a Distinguished Professor of Management in the School of Business-Camden, Rutgers University. He is one of the founders of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) and a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI). He served as the President of DSI and as a Program Chair for both DSI and AMCIS. Dr. Kendall was named as one of the top 60 most productive MIS researchers in the world, and he was awarded the Silver Core from IFIP. He co-authored, Systems Analysis and Design, 7th edition, and Project Planning and Requirements Analysis for IT Systems Development. He edited Emerging Information Technologies: Improving Decisions, Cooperation, and Infrastructure and co-edited The Impact of Computer Supported Technologies on Information Systems Development.
Manuel Kolp is an associate professor in Information Systems at the Universitécatholique de Louvain, Belgium where he is also head of the Information Systems Research Unit and Academic Secretary of Research for the Louvain School of Management. Dr. Kolp is also invited professor with the University of Brussels and the Universitary Faculties St. Louis of Brussels. His research work deals with agent-oriented and socio-technical architectures for e-business and ERP II systems. He was previously a Post Doctoral Fellow and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. He has been involved in the organization committee of international conferences and has chaired different workshops. His publications include more than 50 international refereed journals or periodicals and proceedings papers as well as three books.
Olga Kulykis a PhD student in the Human Media Interaction group, University of Twente, the Netherlands. She is also a visiting researcher in the Human Computer Interaction, Multimedia and Culture group of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her current research is on situation awareness support to collaboration of multidisciplinary teams in life sciences. She holds a MSc in computer science and post-MSc in human-computer interaction design. Her research interests include human-computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work, group awareness in co-located collaborative environments, and ubiquitous computing.
Ivan Launders is a technical solutions architect for British Telecommunications. He has twenty-two years of software and telecommunications experience working with network and system integration solutions. He received his Master’s Degree in 1996 from Sheffield Hallam University and is currently working towards the completion of a Ph.D. in Transaction Agent Modelling and Knowledge Representation at Sheffield Hallam University. His research interests are in Smart Applications, particularly in capturing and modeling the exchange and use of knowledge in business transactions and business processes.
Ronald M. Lee has nearly 30 years of research experience in electronic commerce, web-based initiatives, and formal modeling. For the last five years, he has conducted research at Florida International University on open sourced e-learning, e-tourism, e-culture, and virtual world environments. For the previous ten years, he was Director of the Erasmus University Research Institute for Decision Information Systems (Euridis). He previously held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Lee holds a BA in Mathematics, an MBA, and a PhD in Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton).
Dr. Ronald Leenes is associate professor in IT, law and (new) technology at TILT, the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (Tilburg University). His primary research interests are privacy and identity management, regulation of, and by, technology. He is also involved in research in ID fraud, biometrics and Online Dispute Resolution. Leenes (1964) studied Public Administration and Public Policy at the University of Twente and received his PhD for a study on hard cases in law and Artificial Intelligence and Law from the same university.
Associate professor Mikael Lind is with the University College of Borås, Linköping University, and Jönköping International Business School, Sweden. He is the leader of the informatics department and the founder of InnovationLab at the school of Business and Informatics in Borås. He is also associated to the research network VITS in Sweden and is active in different international communities such as Language/action and Pragmatic Web. His current research interests are business process management, e-services, method engineering, co-design of business and IT, private-public partnership, and research methods for information systems development. His research is mainly characterised by empirically driven theory and method development. He is involved in several action-research projects focusing co-design of business processes and information systems. He is also the project manager of the citizen-centric e-service project e-Me — turning the internet around (www.e-me.se). He is also associate editor for the open journal Systems, Signs & Actions (www.sysiac.org)
Dr Rachel McLean is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Technology within the Business School at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She has contributed to both national and international conferences and journals, and managed a number of funded research projects. Her research and publications are in the field of the adoption, implementation and use of technology in a variety of organisational and social contexts.
Dr. Dario Maggioriniis assistant professor at the UniversitàdegliStudi di Milano – Italy; where he received his master degree and PhD in computer science in 1997 and 2002 respectively. He joined as a faculty member the department of Informatics and Communication in 2003, where his teaching activity is typically related to operating systems and network protocols and architectures. In the past, he has been working on Quality of Service for IP networks, multimedia content delivery, application-level networking, and software architectures for service provisioning. Currently, his research interests focus mainly on software and network architecture for entertainment applications and content/service provisioning in distributed environments.
Dr. Christopher A. Miller is Chief Scientist and co-owner of Smart Information Flow Technologies, a small business in Minneapolis, MN specializing in research and development of intelligent human-automation systems. Previously, Dr. Miller was a Fellow at the Honeywell Technology Center. His interests include human automation integration, human performance modeling, and politeness and etiquette across cultures and in human-human and human-machine interaction. Dr. Miller’s Ph.D. was received from the Committee on Cognition and Communication in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Anders I. Mørch is an associate professor at InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway. He received a PhD in informatics from the University of Oslo and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has worked in industry for 3 years at the NYNEX Science and Technology Center, New York. His general interests are technology-enhanced workplace learning, human-computer interaction, and participatory design. His specific interests include computer-supported collaborative learning, educational applications of software agents (critics; pedagogical agents), and socio-technical interaction design. Dr. Mørch is a senior researcher and InterMedia project leader in the European Knowledge-Practices Laboratory (KP-Lab) project (2006-2011). Contact him at anders.morch@intermedia.uio.no.
Mahmoud Neji received the Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the UPS Toulouse, France in 1984. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher. His research interests include pattern recognition, computer vision, and automated face analysis such as face modeling, facial expression recognition, affective computing in learning environments, intelligent environments.
DoritNevo is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at York University’s Schulich School of Business. She received her Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of British Columbia and her M.Sc. in Economics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Her current research interests include expectations management, requirements analysis, and design and evaluation of knowledge management systems.
Anton Nijholt received his M.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Delft University of Technology and his Ph.D. degree from the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He held positions at various universities in the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada. Currently, he is chair of the Human Media Interaction group of the University of Twente. His main research interests are multiparty and multimodal interaction, and social and intelligent (embodied) agents. He is involved in European projects on multi-party interaction, emotion research and embodied agents. Game research and brain-computer interfacing also receive his interest in some large-scale Dutch national projects.
PernillaQvarfordt is a Research Scientist at FX Palo Alto Laboratory, where she conducts research in the area of human-computer interaction. Pernilla’s current research is focused on developing technology for enhancing human-human communication and collaboration. Pernilla received her Ph. D. in Computer Science from Linköping University, Sweden in 2004. Her dissertation work focused on exploring the use of eye-gaze information in multimodal interaction. During her graduate study she worked Université Paris-Sud and the IBM Almaden Research Center as a visiting researcher.
Emilee Rader is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, in the School of Information. After earning a master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, she spent five years working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Motorola Labs, designing and evaluating next generation applications for mobile technologies. Her current work focuses on understanding the social and cognitive processes that affect how collaborative groups use social software for information management, in order to design technological or social interventions to make storing, organizing, finding and sharing information easier.
David Redmiles is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1992. He is the author of a number of technical journal and conference publications. In general, his research interests are in the overlap between software engineering, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work.
Rutger Rienks received his M.Sc. degree and his PhD. from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. His activities focus on the extent to which computers can replicate the human abilities to perceive and comprehend both single- and multiparty interaction. He has published on meeting modelling in general and on a number of topics where technology can aid the meeting domain. He has shown possibilities for applications on various dimensions of the meeting process.
Dr. Laura Anna Ripamonti is Assistant Professor at the UniversitàdegliStudi di Milano – Italy, where she teaches “Economics and Enterprise Management” to Computer Science undergraduate students and “Laboratory of Computer Science” to students graduating in Biosciences. She graduated in Engineering and Managerial Sciences at Politecnico di Milano and she got a PhD in Computer Science. Her research interests focus on the relations between ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and social networks. Due to her multidisciplinary background, she is interested both in the technological and in the organizational aspects of the topic, which she prefers to investigate through an “action research” approach.
Dr. Rittgen received a Master of Science in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics from University Koblenz-Landau, Germany, and a PhD in Economics and Business Administration from Frankfurt University, Germany. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Business and Informatics of the University College of Borås, Sweden. He has been doing research on business processes and information systems development since 1997, especially in the areas Business and IT Co-design & Collaborative Modeling, Business Network Governance and Business Process Simulation & Improvement. Dr. Rittgen is the Vice-Chair of the AIS Special Interest Group on Modeling and Simulation, SIGMAS (www.ModellingAndSimulation.org) and an Associate Editor of the Informing Science Journal. He is also a PC member in several international conferences and serves on numerous review committees for international journals and conferences. He published over 70 works including 2 edited books, 8 book chapters and 10 journal articles. For further details refer to http://www.adm.hb.se/~PRI/.
Mary Beth Rosson is a Professor in Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. Her research interests include community computing, environments and tools for learning and using object-oriented design and programming, and visual programming environments. She co-authored Usability Engineering(Morgan-Kaufmann, 2002), and has numerous articles in national and international conferences, magazines, journals, including the Communications of the ACM and International Journal of Hunan-Computer Studies. In 2008, she was inducted into the CHI Academy for her extensive research contributions to the study of HCI.
Andee Rubin, Senior Scientist at TERC, has done research and development in the fields of mathematics, educational technology, and online learning for over 25 years. Her recent research has focused on how students and teachers develop statistical reasoning, how video can be used to introduce ideas of movement over time, and how mathematics can be integrated into informal settings such as zoos and aquariums. She is the author of Electronic Quills: A Situated Evaluation of Using Computers for Writing in Classrooms (with Bertram Bruce) and an editor of Ghosts in the Machine: Women’s Voices in Research with Technology.
Roel Schouteten (1969) is Assistant Professor at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University Nijmegen. He studied management and organization at the University of Groningen where he completed his PhD in 2001. His research interests include quality of working life, technology, work and organization, and HRM and performance. He serves as editorial secretary of the Dutch Journal of Labour Studies (TijdschriftvoorArbeidsvraagstukken).
Ben Shneiderman (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/) at the University of Maryland. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001. He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. His books include Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (Addison Wesley, 5th ed. 2009) and Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies (MIT Press), which won the IEEE Distinguished Literary Contribution award in 2004.
Dr Shore started his career in ICL, UK before completing his degree in Computer Science and emigrating to New Zealand where he accepted a commission in the RNZAF as a computer specialist. On retiring from the RNZAF, he took the position of Manager Computer Security at the Government Communications Security Bureau. Dr Shore subsequently left the Government and returned to industry as Technical Director, CES Communications where he was responsible for the design and development of secure voice, satellite, and radio products. Dr Shore is currently the Head of Security for Telecom NZ and a Senior Fellow at Canterbury University where he lectures in Computer Forensics and Information Warfare.
Jonas Sjöström, BSc, is a systems designer, software developer and teacher currently working on his PhD studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research is centered around socio-technical design of information systems. His PhD work aims at providing a coherent and useful conceptualization of the IT artifact founded in semiotics and social action theories. Furthermore, he works actively with conceptualizing use qualities of IT artefacts, as a means to improve IT design and organizational change processes.
Peter is president of The Leadership Alliance Inc. (TLA), an Anglo-Canadian management-consulting company he founded in 1988. Peter maintains a very active international consulting practice assisting client organizations in both public and private sectors. He largely specializes in helping clients enhance their performance by optimizing strategies for design and development of critical innovation drivers such as Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management, Leadership, Collaboration and Motivation. Peter is a past associate of Peter Senge’s Organizational Learning Center (MIT) and of the Agility Forum. He is Editor-in-Chief of the online “Journal of Knowledge Management Practice”; Consulting & Special Issue Editor for the scholarly-refereed journal “The Learning Organization”; Executive Director, International Foundation for Action Learning-Canada; and Past-Chair, International Community of Action Learners. Peter has had published over forty scholarly chapters on a broad range of topics related to performance enhancement, and is internationally in demand as a speaker, workshop leader and conference chair.
Ronald Stamper studied mathematics at Oxford in the 1950s, where he developed a passion for singing opera but, was diverted into hospital administration and then the steel industry, where he began to apply computers. Soon disillusioned by the poor organisational returns from technically excellent systems, he began to look for an alternative approach. The opportunity came when asked by the steel industry staff college to create courses for systems analysts in heavy industry. At that time, computer companies ran all the other courses for marketing their products. Instead, he treated organisations as the real information systems in which computers could play a part – if appropriate. He was one of the main contributors to a national training programme in systems analysis and was invited to join a team at the London School of Economics to develop teaching and research in information systems in 1969. His book Information, based on organisational semiotics, was published in 1973. He began the research mentioned here in 1971 with Research Council funding. The theoretical work was largely completed before he left the LSE 20 years later for the University of Twente. With his students there and at other universities, the theory was put to the test in a large number of diverse organisations. Since retiring in 1999 he has continued the work, with funding from the EPSRC concentrating on writing up results from this lengthy research programme.
Charles Steinfield is a professor and chair in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. His research interests include the uses of online social networks, individual and organizational collaboration via ICT, and e-commerce. He is currently pursuing projects on social capital and online social network site use, collective action and the diffusion of information technology standards, and ICT use in knowledge-oriented business clusters. He is a recipient of MSU’s Teacher-Scholar and Distinguished Faculty awards.
Tom Stewart is Joint Managing Director of System Concepts. He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the Ergonomics Society. He was a founder member of the Human Sciences and Advanced Technology (HUSAT) Research group at Loughborough University in 1970. In 1979, he joined the management consultancy Butler Cox and Partners and worked on assignments in Europe, North America and Australia. He joined System Concepts in 1983, and became Managing Director in 1986. He chairs a number of British, European and International standards committees and is founding editor of the international Journal Behaviour and Information Technology. He is President of the Ergonomics Society.
Matti Tedre holds a PhD degree in Computer Science. He works as an associate professor and head of B.Sc Program in Information Technology at Tumaini University, Tanzania. Previously he has worked in the Department of Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Joensuu, Finland, as an assistant, researcher, and lecturer; and he spent two years in South Korea visiting the universities of Yonsei and Ajou. He has also been a visiting instructor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Earlier, he worked as a programmer and as a software analyst. His research interests include social studies of computer science, the history of computer science, information technology education, and the philosophy of computer science.
David Thorns is Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has over 40 years experience as an urban researcher working in the fields of housing, social policy, social inequality, tourism, research methodology and the implications of globalisation. He has published extensively including 10 books. He is a Principal researcher and Member of the Management Group of the Building Research Capability in the Social Sciences project and Principal Researcher on a three year Marsden funded project Winners and Losers in the Knowledge Society. He is also a member of steering committee of the Asia Pacific Housing Research Network. Social Science Commission of NZ UNESCO and Vice President Social Sciences of the Royal Society New Zealand and Board member of the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa /New Zealand. International Social Science Council and Capability Building Fund for the NZ Advanced Network.
Since 1999, a Lecturer in the School of ICT at Griffith University, and a Senior Consultant in the Software Quality Institute (partnered with the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University). Before academia, he began his IT career in London in the late 1980’s as a Technical Writer and from there to business analysis and software process improvement work in Australia working with public and private sector clients.
Wouter Van den Bosch holds a BA in International Business Studies and currently studies Sociology. He works as a researcher for Memori, a research- and consultinggroup of the University College of Mechelen, Belgium. His work focuses on the design and development of social software applications and their use to support online community building, knowledge management, citizen participation and social inclusion.
Veerle Van der Sluys is freelance Java and Drupal software engineer and has a passion for web development and new technologies (web2.0). She received her MSc and her PhD in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from Ghent University (Belgium). Veerle’s research interests are in decision support, social network analysis and network visualization. She has been involved in the KnoSoS research project at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and Katholieke Hogeschool Mechelen, Belgium.
Gerrit van der Veerhas a MSc in Cognitive Psychology and a PhD in computer science. His research interests are in user interface design methods, visual design, and mental models of ICT users. He is emeritus professor in interaction design at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and full professor of human-computer interaction at the Open University Netherlands. Currently he is also a visiting professor in the Human Media Interaction research group of the University of Twente.
Paul van der Vet studied chemistry and philosophy of science and holds a Ph.D. in chemistry. He joined the Department of Computer Science at Twente in 1989 to work on AI projects related to natural science domains. He has carried out research in text mining, information extraction, and information retrieval. He has an interest in ontologies and knowledge representations, again of natural science subjects. Since 2000, he is member of the Human Media Interaction group at Twente. Currently, he is involved in several national and international research projects.
Betsy van Dijk is an assistant professor in the Human Media Interaction research group. She graduated in mathematics and has a PhD on teaching methodology in computer science. Currently, her research interest is in the field of human-computer interaction where the main topics are interface and interaction design, user evaluation, user modelling and personalization. Her focus is on multi-modal and multi-party interaction and ambient intelligence. She is involved in several national and international research projects on human-computer interaction.
Shun-Yung Kevin Wang serves as a research analyst with the Justice Research Center in Tallahassee, Florida. He has intensive experience in retrieving and analyzing delinquent juvenile data stored in the information system of Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ). Prior to his current employment, he served as a program evaluator and data analyst for organizations in Florida. Mr. Wang holds a M.S. from the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a Specialist degree from the College of Information at Florida State University (FSU). Currently, he is a candidate for a doctoral degree in criminology and criminal justice at FSU.
Yves Wautelet is an IT project manager and a postdoc fellow at the Universitécatholique de Louvain, Belgium. He completed a PhD thesis focusing on project and risk management issues in large enterprise software design. Dr. Wautelet also holds a bachelor and master in management sciences as well as a master in Information Systems. His research interests include aspects of software engineering such as requirements engineering, software project management, software development life cycles and CASE-Tools development as well as information systems strategy.
Hans Weigand studied Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, with minors in Linguistics and Organization theory. His Ph.D. thesis applied linguistics to the field of knowledge representation. In 1989, he moved to Tilburg University where he is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Dept. of Information Management He has participated in several European industrial projects and research networks, and is one of the founders of the Language/Action Perspective workshops and the Pragmatic Web conference.
Brian Whitworth is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University (Albany), Auckland, New Zealand. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics, a B.A. in psychology, an M.A. (1st Class) in neuro-psychology, and a Ph.D. in Information Systems. He has published in journals like Small Group Research, Group Decision & Negotiation, The Database for Advances in Information Systems, Communications of the AIS, IEEE Computer, Behavior and Information Technology (BIT), Communications of the ACM and IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Topics include generating online agreement, voting before discussing, online communication processes, legitimate by design, spam and the social-technical gap, polite computing and the web of system performance. His hobbies include motorcycle riding, quantum theory and philosophical songs.
Dr. Heike Winschiers-Theophilus is involved in cross-cultural design and usability engineering research in Namibia since 1995. She received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Hamburg in 2001. She has been a faculty member of the University of Namibia and is now heading the Software Engineering Department at the Polytechnic of Namibia. She is part of an international researcher community engaged in Human Computer Interaction for development propagating Community Centered Design as an adaptation of Participatory Design.
ShuminZhai works at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He has published about 100 research papers, received numerous patents, contributed to three IBM Research Division Accomplishments, and led major IBM product innovations. His work has been broadly reported in the news media. He is on the editorial boards of Human-Computer Interaction, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, and other journals. He has been a visiting professor and have lectured at various universities in the US, Europe and China. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Toronto. In 2006, he was elected to ACM’s inaugural class of Distinguished Scientists.
Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking SystemsEdited by Brian Whitworth (Massey University) and Aldo de Moor (CommunitySense)Foreword by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
Cite as: “Whitworth, B., & De Moor, A. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems. Hershey, PA: IGI.” ISBN: 978-1-60566-264-0; 1,034 pp
Contributor List and Biographies
The Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems is a state-of-the-art summary of knowledge in an evolving, multi-disciplinary field. It is distinctive in its variety of international author perspectives, depth and breadth of scholarship, and combination of practical and theoretical views. This noteworthy collection is useful for anyone interested in modern socio-technical systems, where knowledge of social principles can mean the difference between success and failure.
“Brian Whitworth and Aldo de Moor have gathered valuable material from an international panel of experts who guide readers through the analysis, design and implementation of socio-technical systems. It will be widely useful in defining issues in engineering, computing, management, organization, government policy, and ethics. The practical guidance and fresh theories can inspire a new generation of designers and researchers to catalyze even more potent forms of human collaboration.”– Ben Shneiderman
Foreword by Ben Shneiderman
Preface by Brian Whitworth and Aldo de Moor
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland, USA
Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Tom Stewart, System Concepts, UK
Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Distinguished Professor, Emerita, USA
Mark Aakhus, Rutgers University, USA
Ronald Stamper, Independent Scholar, UK
Charles Steinfield, Michigan State University, USA
Table of Contents, Volume I
Section I. General Socio-Technical Theory
That social and technical systems can combine to create “socio-technical” systems
Prologue Socio-technical systems by Tom Stewart, System Concepts Limited, UK, p1http://www.system-concepts.com/articles/usability-and-hci/socio%11technical-design:-combining-society-and-technology/
Chapter I. The Social Requirements of Technical Systems p3Brian Whitworth, Massey University- Auckland, New Zealand
Brian Whitworth discusses how social requirements are as critical to computer system success as technical requirements.
Chapter II. The Social Study of Computer Science 23 Matti Tedre, Tumaini University, Tanzania
Matti Tedre illustrates the relevance of social research methods to computer science, laying the foundation for a pluralistic approach to socio-technical research.
Chapter III. Virtual Collaboration and Community, p39Ann Borda, Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI), AustraliaJonathan P. Bowen, London South Bank University & Museophile Limited, UK
Ann Borda and Jonathan P. Bowen discuss how the functions and tools of virtual organizations create and support online human collaboration.
Chapter IV. The Social Derivation of Technical Systems, p50 David Davenport, Bilkent University, Turkey
David Davenport analyses how social values critically affect the design, use and evaluation of technical systems.
Chapter V. Socio-Technical Theory and Work Systems in the Information Age, p65Ken Eason, Loughborough University, UKJosé Luis Abdelnour-Nocera, Thames Valley University, UK
Ken Eason and José Luis Abdelnour-Nocera explain how socio-technical concepts and applications are changing work systems in modern organizations.
Chapter VI. An Engagement Strategy for Community Network Research and Design, p78Peter Day, University of Brighton, UK
Peter Day uses a participatory approach to explore how the social and technical connect in the “Poets Corner”, an online socio-technical community.
Chapter VII. On the Alignment of Organizational and Software Structure, p94Cleidson R. B. de Souza, Universidade Federal doPará, BrazilDavid F. Redmiles, Univeristy of California, Irvine, USA
Cleidson R. B. de Souza and David F. Redmiles outline the connection between organizational structure and software development.
Section II. Socio-Technical Perspectives
Socio-technical perspectives impact both social and technical systems
Prologue Reconciling the Social and the Technical, by Ronald K. Stamper, Independent Scholar, UK, p106
Chapter VIII. Privacy and the Identity Gap in Socio-Technical Systems, p110Catherine Heeney, The University of Oxford, UK
Catherine Heeney demonstrates that current models for the governance of online data contradict current privacy expectations.
Chapter IX. Privacy Regulation in the Metaverse, p123 Ronald Leenes, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Ronald Leenes suggests that the need for privacy is growing in virtual worlds like Second Life, despite their avowed openness, and that such worlds are ideal environments to study social phenomena.
Chapter X. Leadership of Integrated Teams in Virtual Environments, p137 David Tuffley, Griffith University, Australia
David Tuffley reviews the role of leadership in online social interactions and how it can be improved.
Chapter XI. Recontextualising Technology in Appropriation Processes, p153 Monique Janneck, University of Hamburg, Germany
Monique Janneck reviews the critical social factors that affect whether technical artifacts designed for use in organizations are actually used by their members.
Chapter XII. Explaining Participation in Online Communities, p167Petter Bae Brandtzæg, SINTEF and University of Oslo, NorwayJan Heim, SINTEF, Norway
Petter Bae Brandtzæg and Jan Heim present data that suggests why users choose to participate in online communities – or not.
Chapter XIII. Cyber Security and Anti-Social Networking, p183Malcolm Shore, Canterbury University, New Zealand
Malcolm Shore reviews how script kiddies and hackers use and misuse social networks, and develops a model of their psychological goals in a self-absorbed flow.
Chapter XIV. Emerging Cybercrime Variants in the Socio-Technical Space, p195 Wilson Hunag, Valdosta State University, USAShun-Yung Kevin Wang, Florida State University, USA
Wilson Huang and Shun-Yung Kevin Wang suggest that cybercrime flourishes in the “gaps” between social and technical systems, and use this framework suggest response strategies to cybercrime.
Chapter XV. Developing Innovative Practice in Service Industries, p209Elayne W. Coakes, Westminster Business School, UKPeter Smith, The Leadership Alliance Inc., CanadaDee Alwis, Middlesex University, UK
Elayne Coakes, Peter Smith, and Dee Alwis suggest that socio-technical communities of innovation can improve service competitiveness in modern fast-moving business markets.
Section III. Socio-Technical Analysis
How to gather and analyze data from a socio-technical system
Prologue Gathering and analyzing data from socio-technical systems,222by Mark Aakhus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA.
Chapter XVI. Using Communication Norms in Socio-Technical Systems, p224. Hans Weigand, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Hans Weigand asks why what users ask for in a system is not always what they want, and uses a language action perspective to relate group and communication norms to the analysis, diagnosis and design of socio-technical systems.
Chapter XVII.Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism in Action, p236Jonas Sjöström, Uppsala University, SwedenGöranGoldkuhl, Linköping University, Sweden
Jonas Sjöström and GöranGoldkuhl introduce socio-instrumental pragmatism (SIP) and illustrate its use in analysis and design.
Chapter XVIII. A Framework for Using Analytics to Make Decisions, p251Paul J. Bracewell, Offlode Ltd., New Zealand
Paul Bracewell argues that while business analytics generates statistical evidence for corporate decisions, the key decisions by end-users and corporate executives are socio-technical, as they are made at some distance from the technology.
Chapter XIX. The Challenges of Co-Design and the Case of e-Me, p265 Mikael Lind, University of Borås, SwedenPeter Rittgen, VlerickLeuven Gent Management School, Belgium & University of Borås, Sweden
Mikael Lind and Peter Rittgen illustrate some of the challenges of co-design in the implementation of e-Me, an electronic online assistant for students.
Chapter XX. Formal Analysis of Workflows in Software Development, p280 Harry S. Delugach, University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA
Harry Delugach shows how conceptual graphs can help conceive, describe, evaluate, and compare workflow processes in the software development process.
Chapter XXI. The Role of Expectations in Information Systems Development, p298 Dorit Nevo, York University, CanadaBrent Furneaux, York University, Canada
DoritNevo and Brent Furneaux review how stakeholder expectations impact socio-technical analysis, and suggest that managing expectations during analysis is critical to system success.
Chapter XXII. Building a Path for Future Communities, p313 Jeff Axup, Mobile Community Design Consulting, USA
Jeff Axup illustrates how to elicit social needs in system development, using the example of back-packers sharing information with mobile technologies.
Section IV. Socio-Technical Design
How to design socio-technical systems to satisfy social and technical needs
Prologue: Socio-technical Design by Thomas Erickson, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA. p334
Chapter XXIII. Systems Design with the Socio-Technical Walkthrough, p336 Thomas Herrmann, University of Bochum, Germany
Thomas Herrmann outlines the socio-technical walkthrough, a participatory process useful when designing technical systems to support cooperation and collaboration.
Chapter XXIV. Applied Pragmatism and Interaction Design, p352 Anders I. Mørch, InterMedia University of Oslo, Norway
Anders Mørch presents a translational approach to socio-technical interface design, based on creative practices from the fields of architecture and furniture design.
Chapter XXV. A Social Framework for Software Architectural Design, p367Manuel Kolp, UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, BelgiumYves Wautelet, UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Belgium
Manuel Kolp and Yves Wautelet suggest that multi-agent system (MAS) design can reflect human organizational structures by modeling actors, goals, responsibilities and social dependencies.
Chapter XXVI. Designing for Trust, p388 Piotr Cofta, British Telecom, UK
Piotr Cofta uses citizen identity systems to illustrate the design of socio-technical systems that people trust, and suggests that trust can be estimated before system deployment.
Chapter XXVII. Pattern Languages for CMC design, p402 Dan Dixon, University of the West of England, UK
Dan Dixon suggests that reapplying the original concepts of Alexander’s pattern languages has rich potential for socio-technical designers and developers.
Chapter XXVIII. Creating Social Technologies to Assist and Understand Social Interactions, p416 Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The NetherlandsDirk Heylen, University of Twente, The NetherlandsRutger Rienks, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Anton Nijholt, Dirk Heylen, and Rutger Rienks review the concepts, challenges and methods used when designing electronic meeting systems that mediate social interactions.
Chapter XXIX. A Modern Socio-Technical View on ERP-Systems, p429 Jos Benders, Tilburg University & Radboud University Nijmegen,The NetherlandsRonald Batenburg, Utrecht University, The NetherlandsPaul Hoeken, Radboud University Nijmegen, The NetherlandsRoel Schouteten, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Jos Benders, Ronald Batenburg, Paul Hoeken and Roel Schouteten show how a socio-technical approach can improve Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
Chapter XXX. Being Face to Face: A State of Mind or Technological Design? p440 Mary Allan, University of Canterbury, New ZealandDavid Thorns, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Mary Allan and David Thorns introduce field and habitus theory to conferencing technologies, and advise designers to satisfy social needs rather than try to mimic face-to-face interaction.
Chapter XXXI. Applying Bourdieu to eBay’s Success and Socio-Technical Design, p455 (link at bottom of linked page)Rebecca M. Ellis, University of Essex, UK
Rebecca Ellis uses social field theory to explain eBay’s success, and suggests extending concepts like translucence to socio-technical systems in general.
Chapter XXXII. Relationships and Etiquette with Technical Systems, p473Christopher A. Miller, Smart Information Flow Technologies, USA
Christopher A. Miller uses examples from his and others’ work to argue that designers of technology that interacts socially with people need to understand social etiquette.
Section V. Socio-Technical Implementation
How socio-technical systems are put into practice
Prologue Socio-technical Systems in the Context of Ubiquitous Computing, Ambient Intelligence, Embodied Virtuality, and the Internet of Things by Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The Netherlands. p489
Chapter XXXIII. Augmenting Actual Life Through MUVEs, p493 Laura Anna Ripamonti, UniversitàdegliStudidiMilano, ItalyInes Di Loreto, UniversitàdegliStudidiMilano, ItalyDario Maggiorini, UniversitàdegliStudidiMilano, Italy
Laura Anna Ripamonti, InesDi Loreto, and Dario Maggiorini tap their expertise in virtual environments to suggest a socio-technical framework for Second Life and similar online worlds.
Chapter XXXIV. The Role of Affect in an Agent-Based Collaborative E-Learning System Used for Engineering Education, p510. Mohamed Ben Ammar, Research Group on Intelligent Machines (REGIM), University of Sfax, ENIS, TunisiaMahmoud Neji, Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion, University of Sfax, TunisiaAdel M. Alimi, Research Group on Intelligent Machines (REGIM), University of Sfax, ENIS, Tunisia
Mohamed Ben Ammar and Mahmoud Neji review affective computing and present an implemented multi-agent model of an intelligent tutoring system that can recognize human emotions.
Chapter XXXV. Gaze-Aided Human-Computer and Human-Human Dialogue, p529Pernilla Qvarfordt, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, USAShumin Zhai, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA
Pernilla Qvarfordt and Shumin Zhai show how designers can use eye gaze data to enrich human-computer-human and human-computer communication.
Chapter XXXVI. How to Engage Users in Online Sociability, p544 Licia Calvi, Lessius University College, Belgium
Licia Calvi investigates the conditions under which people engage socially online, and finds they use online networks to maintain connections to people they already know rather than to make new connections to people they do not.
Chapter XXXVII. Socio-Technical Systems and Knowledge Representation, p558Ivan Launders, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Ivan Launders suggests how multi-agent architectures can model social complexity in a U.K. mobile National Health Service use case.
Chapter XXXVIII. Social Support for Online Learning, p575Claire de la Varre, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USAJulie Keane, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USAMatthew J. Irvin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USAWallace Hannum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Claire de la Varre, Julie Keane, Matthew J. Irvin and Wallace Hannum developed an online system for rural schools to meet distance learner’s social as well as intellectual needs, and suggest this can reduce attrition rates in distance education courses.
Chapter XXXIX. Enabling Remote Participation in Research, p589, Jeremy Birnholtz, Cornell University, USAEmilee J. Rader, University of Michigan, USADaniel B. Horn, Booz Allen Hamilton, USAThomas Finholt, University of Michigan, USA
Jeremy Birnholtz, Emilee J. Rader, Daniel B. Horn and Thomas Finholt apply the concept of “common ground” to shared display systems, reporting on academic research tele-participation in earthquake engineering and geo-technical centrifuge experiments.
Section VI. Socio-Technical Evaluation
How to measure and evaluate socio-technical systems
Prologue by Starr Roxanne Hiltz, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA,p605
Chapter XL. Community Collective Efficacy, p608 John M. Carroll, The Pennsylvania State University, USAMary Beth Rosson, The Pennsylvania State University, USAUmerFarooq, The Pennsylvania State University, USAJamika D. Burge, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
John M. Carroll, Mary Beth Rosson, UmerFarooq and Jamika D. Burge develop Bandura’s collective efficacy concept into an online community measure used successfully in three of their online community projects.
Chapter XLI. An Analysis of the Socio-Technical Gap in Social Networking Sites, p620 Tanguy Coenen, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BelgiumWouter Van den Bosch, Katholieke Hogeschool Mechelen, BelgiumVeerle Van derSluys, Independent Scholar, Belgium
Tanguy Coenen, Wouter Van Den Bosch and Veerle Van DerSluys use a social capital perspective to identify social needs and gaps in social network sites.
Chapter XLII. Situational Awareness In Collaborative Work Environments, p636 Olga Kulyk, University of Twente, The NetherlandsBetsy van Dijk, University of Twente, The NetherlandsPaul van der Vet, University of Twente, The NetherlandsAnton Nijholt, University of Twente, The NetherlandsGerrit van der Veer, Open University, The Netherlands
Olga Kulyk, Betsy van Dijk, Paul van der Vet, Anton Nijholt and Gerrit van der Veer use the concept of situational awareness in their case studies to suggest challenges for the design and evaluation of online collaborative environments.
Chapter XLIII. A Scale of Affective Satisfaction in Online Learning Communities, 651Janet L. Holland, Emporia State University, USA
Janet Holland presents a scale of affective satisfaction, and illustrates its use in an online learning teaching intervention.
Chapter XLIV. Assessing the Social Network Health of Virtual Communities, p669David Hinds, Hinds & Associates, USARonald M. Lee, Florida International University, USA
David Hinds and Ronald M. Lee suggest how measuring the social “health” of virtual communities can be a useful socio-technical performance diagnostic for designers, managers and users.
Chapter XLV. Situated Evaluation of Socio-Technical Systems, p685 Bertram C. Bruce, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USAAndee Rubin, TERC, USAJunghyun An, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Bertram C. Bruce, Andee Rubin and Junghyun An introduce situated evaluation as an approach to evaluating innovation in socio-technical systems, with classroom uses of an electronic Quill as a test case.
Chapter XLVI. Cultural Appropriation of Software Design and Evaluation, p699Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Polytechnic of Namibia, Namibia
Heike Winschiers-Theophilus finds that socio-technical systems whose intrinsic values clash with those of their target audience tend to be unused or unwanted, with the Namibian context as an example, so suggests designing socio-technical systems with target culture values in mind.
Section VII. The Future of Socio-Technical Systems
How will socio-technical systems evolve in the future?
Prologue The Future of Socio-Technical Systems by Charles Steinfield, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, p712
Chapter XLVII. Resolving Wicked Problems through Collaboration, p715 Peter J. Denning, Naval Postgraduate School, USA
Peter J. Denning suggests how understanding “messy” problems can help future designers develop systems to support the types of collaboration needed to resolve them.
Chapter XLVIII. The Myth of the e-Commerce Serf to Sovereign Powershift, p731Rachel McLean, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, UK
Rachel McLean suggests the view that e-commerce empowers customers is a myth, as it shifts responsibilities not power, so a true power shift in the culturally ingrained producer-consumer relationship still remains only a potential for the future.
Chapter XLIX. Teaching the Socio-Technical Practices of Tomorrow Today, p748, AlsoTheresa Dirndorfer Anderson, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia
Theresa Anderson reports experiences teaching a socio-technical course, with examples, to give ideas for those wishing to do the same in the future.
Chapter L. Socio-Technical Communities: From Informal to Formal? p763 Isa Jahnke, Dortmund University of Technology, Germany
Isa Jahnke suggests that today’s socio-technical systems will inevitably move from undefined, informal interactions to formal structures and rules, with what is initially enforced by social sanctions eventually being enforced by technological control.
Chapter LI. Future Living in a Participatory Way, p779Laurence Claeys, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, BelgiumJohan Criel, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Belgium
Laurence Claeys and Johan Criel see the socio-technical gap as an opportunity rather than a problem for context aware applications, and use a “home of the future” empirical study from Belgium and the Netherlands to illustrate this.
Chapter LII. The Impact of Communications Technology on Trust, p794Paul Hodgson, British Telecom, UK
Paul Hodgson argues that communications technology in postmodern society leads to the atomization of experience, which reduces social trust, and that consequently we need future technologies that enhance trust for the benefit of society as whole.
Chapter LIII. Good and Evil in the Garden of Emerging Information Technologies, p805Kenneth E. Kendall, Rutgers University, USAJulie E. Kendall, Rutgers University, USA
Ken and Julie Kendall suggest that emergent technologies like widgets, mashups, gadgets, dashboards and push-pull technologies are double-edged swords, usable for good or ill, and formulate a checklist of critical questions for future socio-technical designers.
The following defines the research terms used and links to pages on the research roadmap.
Abstract. A stand–alone single paragraph of 100-300 words that outlines the research topic, method, findings and conclusions, and encourages the reader to read on.
Accuracy. How close a measurement is to its true value based on the sensitivity of the measuring instrument.
Applications. How research could impact current practice and answers the question “So what?”
Author. Someone who has participated in the research journey, the write-up, and believes in the paper.
Bias. When the research results are determined by the experimenter rather than external causes.
Collegiality. Collegiality in science means recognizing your research colleagues.
Comprehensive. That the research sufficiently discusses previous research that relates to it.
Construct. A concept connected to data evidence, that is “constructed” as it were from data and theory.
Contribution. What a research paper adds to what has already been done.
Control group. The set of subjects who do everything the same but don’t receive the treatment.
Correlation. That two variables change together and so associate in some way.
Correlation strength. The degree to which two variables vary together.
Cross-tabulation. A frequency table that shows more than one categorical variable.
Conclusions. General statements about what the findings mean that link to earlier sections.
Data conversion. Turns raw data into the base data set that gives the findings.
Data type. Data can be qualitative or quantitative. The latter can be categorical, ordinal, interval or ratio.
Dependent variable. A variable that is caused and so changes depending on other constructs.
Discussion section. Considers what the results mean.
Error types. A research finding can be a false positive or a false negative.
Findings. Findings follow directly from the specific data and are not general conclusions.
Frequency table. Show the frequency distribution of variables as numbers and/or percentages.
Generalize. To apply the results from a sample to a larger population.
Graphs. Graphs present numeric data in picture form.
Holistic systems are defined not just by their parts but also the interactions between those parts.
Hypothesis. A statement whose opposite the research results can deny.
Implications. What the research suggests for other theories.
Independent variable. A variable that causes another variable to change.
Introduction. Gives the general context of the research
Key terms. The words used to describe the main constructs that the research addresses.
Limitations. Possible flaws in the research including any necessary assumptions made.
Literature review. Defines the research question that is the linchpin of the paper based on a theory framework derived from the literature.
Logical. Academic writing is logical if ideas are presented in a rational manner without jumping to unfounded conclusions.
Logical flow. When ideas follow each other in a rational sequence.
Method. How one gathers external evidence to answer a research question.
Method type. Whether the method used is exploratory, descriptive, correlational or experimental.
Missing values. What is recorded when a data gathering attempt fails, e.g. NA=Not Applicable.
Null hypothesis.The logical opposite of an hypothesis.
Original. That the research is new in some way that differs from what has been done before.
Outlier. A data value that is significantly different from all the others.
Pilot study. A pilot study tries out the procedure and method tools on a few cases to uncover problems.
Precedent. The research that immediately precedes, in that it logically leads to yours.
Procedure. How the data was collected, e.g. by face-to-face, telephone, questionnaire or online website.
Publication type. Tells the reader the paper structure to expect, e.g. theoretical, review, experiment.
Purpose. Defines what the research hopes to achieve.
Recommendation. A proposal for practical action based on the research implications.
Reference. To give a citation in the paper body and a full reference in a list at the end of the paper.
Relevant. Research is relevant if it is of interest to a given target audience.
Reliability. Whether the data gathered would be the same if gathered again.
Replication. That independent others can repeat the research.
Research contribution. What the research adds to current knowledge.
Research design. The logic by which the results answer the research question, e.g. when the treatment of an experimenter changes an independent variable to measure the effect on a dependent variable.
Research problem. The practical problem that the research addresses.
Research question. The abstract question that the research aims to answer by concrete evidence and is the core of any research.
Result table. Give results like mean and standard deviation broken down by one or more variables.
Results section. Describes how raw data from the method was analyzed to give findings.
Reviewing. Reviewing is how scientists keep each other scientific.
Rigorous. Rigor is the degree to which research has scientific merit and avoids bias in any form.
Sample. The set of cases from which the results were gathered.
Scope. A boundary line around the topic area that specifies what is inside and what is outside it.
Science. Seeking to answer questions about a reality based on evidence in a way that others can repeat.
Scientific research. A way to increase common knowledge using shared evidence.
Scientist. A person who knows that they do not know and so finds uncertainty interesting.
Significance. How likely an interaction occurred by chance measured as a probability (p), e. g. p < .05 means a less than 5% probability the results are random. The degree that the null hypothesis is unlikely.
Structure. The structure of an academic paper is how the overall research logic unfolds.
Target audience. The group of people to whom the paper is addressed.
Task. What the subjects were asked to do.
Theory framework. The related set of concepts that underlie the research question.
Topic. Defines the research subject area.
Topic construct. The construct the research investigates.
Unit of research. The data collection unit, i.e. one data collecting act or case.
Validity. Whether the data gathered actually represents the construct concerned.
Variable. A construct measured as a number is a variable, e. g. the construct Usage as measured by web hits is a variable.
Well-written. A paper is well-written if the text, figures, tables and graphs are easy to understand and pleasant to read.
Science is the process not the product. Ironically, science fiction writers best describe science:
“Science does not purvey absolute truth, science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature, it’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match.” Isaac Asimov
“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.” Carl Sagan
As the father of modern anthropology said in 1964:
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.” Claude Lévi-Strauss
Science is a journey. Science began when Socrates walked around Athens asking questions like “What is justice?” until the authorities put him to death for “corrupting the young”. While others argued what they knew to be true, he began by not knowing then defined and tested the alternatives, finding that those who claimed to know did not know at all. Socrates began the journey of science from ignorance to knowledge by not knowing. He invented thinking forward, going from agreed “facts” to conclude what wasn’t known before. The contrast is thinking backwards, going from what we assume to be true to find what supports it. Thinking forward creates knowledge while thinking backwards doesn’t, as we end up where we began. So to say science is a state of knowing is like saying a journey is where you end up, while ignoring the harbor of not knowing where science begins. As Feynman explains:
We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Richard Feynman
Science is a way of asking questions about a reality. Following Socrates, science is seeking to answer questions about a reality based on evidence in a way that others can repeat. This means:
“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote… Many instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that ‘our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.’” Michelson, 1894
How wrong he was! Only a few years later physics was upturned by relativity and quantum mechanics! The universe of knowledge, like the physical universe itself, is bigger than we think, or can even imagine. Any expert who knows their subject knows that we are nowhere near understanding everything.
This definition is general as it doesn’t limit science to the physical world we see. So mathematics and logic are formal sciences but not natural sciences. Linguistics is not based on the sensory world but is still science because language can generate evidence to test a theory. To require science to focus only on the natural world excludes the “unreal” data of computer simulations that generate evidence based on parameter propositions and so are science. Fairies are not accepted by science because they don’t generate repeatable evidence not because they are “supernatural”. To say what can’t be seen doesn’t exist is naïve, as physicists can’t see quarks but accept them based on repeatable evidence. Yet the multi-verse theory of physics is a fairy story since by definition we can’t gather evidence from other universes.
This definition is specific as it does not include the creative arts or skills. The artist conveys meaning to others by creative acts, of music, painting, poetry or pottery, but the scientist uncovers knowledge. This is not to say that art can’t be done scientifically, but a painter say who tried all the color alternatives of a painting to report the effect would be a poor painter. Equally a cook preparing a dinner who tried every option to see which was best would need many ovens, and even then could not guarantee a meal that night. While to apply knowledge is not science, any more than to know a fact is to be a scientist, there are applied sciences that test how knowledge can be applied to practical problems, e.g. architecture uses design science to explore how things can be built, but building things in itself is not science. Likewise computer science as the study of hardware and software design is science but programming per se is not.
Science is not just learning new things, as even monkeys do that. Nor is it being creative as that is art. It is not limited to the physical world, as mathematics gathers evidence in symbolic worlds. Nor does it require fixed universal rules, as the quantum theory conclusion that physical events are inherently random is a finding of science like any other. Science is the journey to discover new knowledge based on sharing evidence with others. The next section explores how the journey of science proceeds.
General contribution. Remind readers of the research contribution mentioned in the introduction and expand upon it, e.g. clarify what others contributed and what was original. Then move on to discuss the contribution of the work in general, such as potential or applications. Don’t leave readers unsure of what a paper contributes but answer the question “What value does this paper add?”
Potential. Potential is the probability that the work can lead to other research or useful applications. It may address a concern that many other people have raised, and so have publicity potential. Research that is ordinary in itself may have extra-ordinary potential.
Applications. Applications are how the research could impact current practice and answer the question asked of all research “So what?” To discover new knowledge is one thing but to apply it is another. It may help to return to the problem that began the research and consider how it is affected. To generalize findings to practical situations takes effort but media interest is often based on the potential applications of research rather than its theory contribution. Don’t underestimate the applications, e.g. as part of their PhD research, Larry Page and Sergey Brin devised a mathematical way to count and qualify backlinks to measure a web page’s rank, so that “the Web would become a more valuable place.” Only when testing the results did they realize its application to Internet search and thus Google was borne. Discuss possible practical applications of the research.
Target audience. The target audience is the group of people to whom the paper is addressed. Given the purpose, who then is the target audience? Like the contribution, this is not always obvious so it pays to include statements like “This paper will interest …“. Stating the target audience also helps a reader decide if the paper relates to them. Again experienced reviewers look for it and note its absence.
Everyone is no-one. You might think the best target audience is “everyone” but for scientific research that usually translates into no target audience, i.e. the target is no-one. It is like saying you love everyone when asked if you love your wife. So try to be more specific and pick a target audience.
Tailoring. Having a target audience also helps the author tailor how the paper is written, e. g. a paper for programmers can have code examples not useful to designers. Decide the target audience in advance so you can tailor the paper to them.
