| 1. |
- Rönkkö, Kari
(författare)
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An activity tracker and its accompanying app as a motivator for increased exercise and better sleeping habits for youths in need of social care : field study
- 2018
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Ingår i: JMIR mhealth and uhealth. - 2291-5222. ; 6:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The number of mobile self-tracking devices connected to the Web has exploded in today’s society. With these wearable activity trackers related to Web 2.0 apps and social media have come new ways of monitoring, measuring, representing, and sharing experiences of the human body. New opportunities related to health and new areas of implementation for professionals have appeared, and one identified area that can benefit from mobile health technologies is social work.Objective: There are still only a small number of papers reporting the results from studying wearable activity trackers and accompanying apps in the context of agency-based social work. This study aimed to contribute to the identified shortage by presenting results from a research project framed by the following overarching question: What effects will the studied youths in need of social care experience in relation to exercise and sleep as the result of using a wearable activity tracker and its accompanying app?Methods: A field study framed by action research was performed. The study concerned vulnerable youths living in a Swedish municipality’s care and accommodation home that tried out an activity tracker and its accompanying app.Results: The results from the study confirm previously published research results reporting that instant graphical feedback, sharing information, and being part of a social community can have a positive impact on lifestyle changes. In addition, this study’s main results are that (1) the most important factor for positive health-related lifestyle changes was the establishment of personal long-term goals and (2) professional social workers found the studied technology to function as a valuable counseling tool, opening up avenues for lifestyle talks that otherwise were hard to undertake.Conclusions: This study demonstrates how an activity tracker and its accompanying app can open up a topic for discussion regarding how vulnerable youths can achieve digital support for changing unhealthy lifestyle patterns, and it shows that the technology might be a valuable counseling tool for professionals in social work.
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| 2. |
- Rönkkö, Kari
(författare)
-
An activity tracker and its accompanying app as a motivator for increased exercise and better sleeping habits for youths in need of social care : field study
- 2018
-
Ingår i: JMIR mHealth and uHealth. - : Journal of medical Internet Research. - 2291-5222. ; 6:12
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The number of mobile self-tracking devices connected to the Web has exploded in today’s society. With these wearable activity trackers related to Web 2.0 apps and social media have come new ways of monitoring, measuring, representing, and sharing experiences of the human body. New opportunities related to health and new areas of implementation for professionals have appeared, and one identified area that can benefit from mobile health technologies is social work. Objective: There are still only a small number of papers reporting the results from studying wearable activity trackers and accompanying apps in the context of agency-based social work. This study aimed to contribute to the identified shortage by presenting results from a research project framed by the following overarching question: What effects will the studied youths in need of social care experience in relation to exercise and sleep as the result of using a wearable activity tracker and its accompanying app? Methods: A field study framed by action research was performed. The study concerned vulnerable youths living in a Swedish municipality’s care and accommodation home that tried out an activity tracker and its accompanying app. Results: The results from the study confirm previously published research results reporting that instant graphical feedback, sharing information, and being part of a social community can have a positive impact on lifestyle changes. In addition, this study’s main results are that (1) the most important factor for positive health-related lifestyle changes was the establishment of personal long-term goals and (2) professional social workers found the studied technology to function as a valuable counseling tool, opening up avenues for lifestyle talks that otherwise were hard to undertake. Conclusions : This study demonstrates how an activity tracker and its accompanying app can open up a topic for discussion regarding how vulnerable youths can achieve digital support for changing unhealthy lifestyle patterns, and it shows that the technology might be a valuable counseling tool for professionals in social work.
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| 3. |
- Rönkkö, Kari, et al.
(författare)
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'Bad practice' or 'bad methods' : are software engineering and ethnographic discourses incompatible?
- 2002
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Ingår i: 2002 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EMPIRICAL SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, PROCEEDINGS. ; , s. 204-210
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Organizational problems in industry have evoked increased interest in empirical methodologies in the broader software engineering community. In this article ethnography and its relation to software engineering is addressed. Until now sociologists have performed the majority of ethnographic studies on software development. But how useful are these studies for software engineering? Ethnography emphasizes the members' point of view in order to understand the social. Studies from the members' perspective can be interpreted, as revealing 'bad methods' that do not work in complex work situations. From a sofiware engineering point of view, they just as easy point to the opposite as 'bad practice', bad application of existing methods. The objective of this paper is to promote ethnography and its contribution to sofiware engineering by revealing the different research attitudes of ethnographers and software engineers. Possibilities how to combine ethnographic studies with software method improvement are indicated.
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| 4. |
- Rönkkö, Kari, et al.
(författare)
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Bad Practice or Bad Methods Are Software Engineering and Ethnographic Discourses Incompatible?
- 2002
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Organizational problems in industry have evoked increased interest in empirical methodologies in the broader software engineering community. In this article ethnography and its relation to software engineering is addressed. Until now sociologists have performed the majority of ethnographic studies on software development. But how useful are these studies for software engineering? Ethnography emphasizes the members' point of view in order to understand the social. Studies from the members' perspective can be interpreted, as revealing 'bad methods' that do not work in complex work situations. From a software engineering point of view, they are just as easy point to the opposite as 'bad practice', bad application of existing methods. The objective of this paper is to promote ethnography and its contribution to software engineering by revealing the different research attitudes of ethnographers and software engineers. Possibilities how to combine ethnographic studies with software method improvement are indicated.
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| 5. |
- Rönkkö, Kari, et al.
(författare)
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Inside Information 2 − Usability and User Research : Eight years of research and method development cooperation
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report is a follow up to the Inside Information – Usability and User Research at UIQ Technology report that was made available in October 2006. The initial report was written from an industrial point of view aimed to market UIQ Technology through the demonstration of the UIQ usability and user research philosophy. UIQ Technology Usability Metrics (UTUM) was important result here. UTUM was considered an extremely cost-effective method for keeping in focus what is important for users and handset makers. It was a tool for guiding development decisions as well as for validating the worthiness of design concepts. The two parts in UTUM was perceived by the company as an innovation in their software development practice. The first part was the relationship to users and attitude to their participation in the design process. The second part was how the company immediately and directly incorporated this usability understanding into the software development process. UTUM, together with other usability methods and results presented in this report, have been produced in an action research manner. Due to the closure of the company, the main author of the 2006 report, and the same researchers who also supported the writing of the initial report, decided to produce a follow-up and closure version of the initial report; as a way to summarize the results from the academic and industrial cooperation. In this updated version, eight years of joint action research and cooperative method development surrounding usability and user research is concluded.
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| 6. |
- Rönkkö, Kari
(författare)
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Interpretation, interaction and reality construction in software engineering : An explanatory model
- 2007
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Ingår i: Information and Software Technology. - : Elsevier. - 0950-5849 .- 1873-6025. ; 49:6, s. 682-693
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The incorporation of social issues in software engineering is limited. Still, during the last 20 years the social element inherent in software development has been addressed in a number of publications that identified a lack of common concepts, models, and theories for discussing software development from this point of view. It has been suggested that we need to take interpretative and constructive views more seriously if we are to incorporate the social element in software engineering. Up till now we have lacked papers presenting 'simple' models explaining why. This article presents a model that helps us better to understand interpretation, interaction and reality construction from a natural language perspective. The concepts and categories following with the model provide a new frame of reference useful in software engineering research, teaching, and methods development.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Rönkkö, Kari
(författare)
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Making Methods Work in Software Engineering : Method Deployment - as a Social Achievement
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The software engineering community is concerned with improvements in existing methods and development of new and better methods. The research approaches applied to take on this challenge have hitherto focused heavily on the formal and specifying aspect of the method. This has been done for good reasons, because formalizations are the means in software projects to predict, plan, and regulate the development efforts. As formalizations have been successfully developed new challenges have been recognized. The human and social role in software development has been identified as the next area that needs to be addressed. Organizational problems need to be solved if continued progress is to be made in the field. The social element is today a little explored area in software engineering. Following with the increased interest in the social element it has been identified a need of new research approaches suitable for the study of human behaviour. The one sided focus on formalizations has had the consequence that concepts and explanation models available in the community are one sided related in method discourses. Definition of method is little explored in the software engineering community. In relation to identified definitions of method the social appears to blurring. Today the software engineering community lacks powerful concepts and explanation models explaining the social element. This thesis approaches the understanding of the social element in software engineering by applying ethnomethodologically informed ethnography and ethnography. It is demonstrated how the ethnographic inquiry contributes to software engineering. Ethnography is also combined with an industrial cooperative method development approach. The results presented demonstrate how industrial external and internal socio political contingencies both hindered a method implementation, as well as solved what the method was targeted to do. It is also presented how project members’ method deployment - as a social achievement is played out in practice. In relation to this latter contribution it is provided a conceptual apparatus and explanation model borrowed from social science, The Documentary method of interpretation. This model addresses core features in the social element from a natural language point of view that is of importance in method engineering. This model provides a coherent complement to an existing method definition emphasizing formalizations. This explanation model has also constituted the underpinning in research methodology that made possible the concrete study results.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Rönkkö, Kari, et al.
(författare)
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Personas is not Applicable : Local Remedies Interpreted in a Wider Context
- 2004
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the major problems with participatory design is that it is extremely difficult to apply it to current developments. Software development for the mass market is one aspect of current developments which has been addressed. The problem of how to apply participatory design invariably leads to questioning its relevance to present-day circumstances. It is suggested that new patterns of dominance must be revealed. The usability method known as 'personas' has been demonstrated to remedy the problems of including social and political issues in mass market software developments. This paper demonstrates how the application of personas to a mass market software development project failed because of patterns of dominance in the telecom branch which were unrecognised at the time. The identifying of these patterns of dominance contributes to a better understanding of some of the new patterns of power and domination in mass-market software developments that PD stands before. Copyright 2004 ACM.
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