| 1. |
- Wiberg, Mikael, 1974-
(författare)
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In between mobile meetings : Exploring seamless ongoing interaction support for mobile CSCW
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is a collection of seven papers reporting a research effort that started in January 1999. The theme of the thesis is interaction support for mobile CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work). The interest in this theme is motivated by the trend towards a networked and nomadic society, the technical trends towards embedded, ubiquitous, and mobile technology, and the emergence of mobile CSCW settings. It is also motivated by current trends within the area of CSCW to focus on actual work practices, invisible and ubiquitous computer support, and mobile work settings where interaction with others is critical to get the work done.For some time now mobile technology has been widely used to support dispersed mobile interaction, and recently the importance of co-located ”mobile meetings” to get the work done, has been recognized in the area of CSCW. However, current technology is not well suited when it comes to support interaction in mobile work settings across co-located and dispersed settings. Here, this problem is approached from an informatics perspective. Informatics can be described as a theory and design oriented study of information technology use. The scope of this thesis can be defined as understanding transformations of work practice through the use of mobile technology, and how it might be supported. The overall research question is: What are the specific needs of interaction support related to mobile meetings and dispersed interaction, how might these be supported, and what are the implications for current interaction models and support within CSCW? To answer this question several activities have been undertaken. This thesis contains empirical studies of mobile work among service technicians at Telia Nära, models of mobility and mobile meetings, and design and evaluations of a prototype system called RoamWare.The overall conclusions related to the question stated in this thesis are that mobile interaction can be described as ongoing across mobile meetings, including both co-located face-to-face and dispersed interaction. Further, the interaction is maintained by the mobile workers through their efforts of re-establishing different threads of interaction across co-located and dispersed settings. Overall: There is a need to bridge co-located and dispersed meetings with sustained interaction support. Concerning the second part of the overall research question one conclusion is that sustained interaction across co-located and dispersed settings can be supported with mobile physical/virtual meetings support systems through the use of personal and public interaction histories. To illustrate and test this idea a prototype system called RoamWare was developed. However, evaluations of RoamWare revealed that synchronous support for sustained interaction divides users’ attention between co-located and dispersed interaction. As a consequence a second version of RoamWare was developed as an unobtrusive support for sustained interaction in between mobile meetings through seamless reestablishment of different threads of interaction, by offering support for converting interaction histories into project contexts. Finally, and according to the last part of the question stated above, this thesis concludes that current session management models need to be extended to handle sustained and dynamic sessions of interaction across co-located and dispersed mobile meetings and that, techniques for addressing groups need to be extended to enable dynamic addressing of participants in co-located mobile meeting. Finally, the exploration of how to support sustained interaction in between mobile meetings reveals important aspects to consider when trying to automatically frame spontaneous interaction with mobile technology.Directions for future work include questions of how to design filters to support: maintenance, participation in, and negotiation about participation in between, different mobile meetings. Further, more work is needed related to how to capture spontaneous face-to-face interaction technically. Finally, new methods are needed to enable good evaluations of the impact of IT in mobile work settings.
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| 2. |
- Croon Fors, Anna, 1967-
(författare)
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Being-with Information Technology : Critical explorations beyond use and design
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the thesis a theoretical exploration concerning the significance of information technology in everyday life is conducted. The main question advanced is how the reflexive nature of information technology can be envisioned. By this question attention is directed to transformative, experiential and dynamic qualities of information technology,i.e. unknown mergers of information technology and human experience. It is tentatively suggested that it is within everyday life that such transformative abilities are due to be significant. That is, depending on if and how people experience otherness in their relationships with information technology different strategies and responses of being a part of the whole are achieved. The main purpose of the thesis is to establish a theoretical base that both reveals such reflexivity and allows for further studies of the significance of information technology in everyday life. An extended purpose is to provide the critical tradition of Informatics research with an alternative view on what might count as critical ideals as well as make some suggestions about what should be subject to further research within this tradition. The framework#being-with information technology#emerges as a result of my insistence on grasping the relationship between information technology and human experience as a whole. Informed primarily by Martin Heidegger’s %1977& thinking on technology the framework ascribes primacy to meaning-making and sense-making processes. The framework also aspire to reach beyond notions of use and design by emphasizing the role and importance of the potential of information technology to transform human experience in new and significant ways. This potential is referred to as information technology as lifeworlds. Throughout the thesis, information technology as lifeworlds is recognized in a number of ways. At the same time it is argued that this is a never-ending, dynamic, open,complex, and often contradictory object of study. It is suggested that a focus on aesthetic experiences entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of information technology, meanings that all are intrinsic to information technology, but so far has received little or no attention. This suggestion is also a move away from a view of information technology as an object, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards a view of information technology as a relation to the world, to itself,and towards being human.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Arvidsson, Viktor, 1984-
(författare)
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Digital transformation : the material roles of IT resources and their political uses
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As IT became ubiquitous, we recognized that IT was everywhere but in our theories. Despite significant efforts, Information System (IS) research is still in desperate search for the IT artifact. Recent reviews show that IS research first and foremost considers IT resources as a socio-technical and managerial concern. Analyses of inertia are restricted to cognitive limitations or technical challenges of IT development and use as separate activities. Hence, IS research assumes that more development resources, extended training, and better management could turn most failures into success. In this thesis, I posit that IS strategy research often treats normal failure as unexpected to maintain the rational idea that managers are in control and that IT does not matter in and of itself. I argue that planned and convergent views of change work well under stable and unitary conditions but in this way fail to account for the complexity of current IS strategy practice. To substantiate this claim, I demonstrate how IS research routinely neglects the material IT use story in the context of digital transformation (DT) studies and social informatics. Political conflict is a constant theme in IS strategy implementation research, yet few studies provided explanation for the apprehension that managers and workers display during the introduction of new IT resources; even as most managers remain men I found also no study that theorized gender politics as related to IS strategy outcomes. I argue in particular that the IS fields routine adherence to borrowed assumptions about the pace, linearity, and sequence of radical change have limited IS scholars to marginally improve on received DT narratives in which IT plays little or no part as IT appears as an agent mostly before and after DT. Though much is said about how IT triggers and enables organizational change, the actual processes and mechanisms that underlies IS strategy change enactments are thus poorly understood. To examine how the material roles of IT resources and their political use can be captured and explained, I summarize and synthesize insights grounded in empirics from four appended research papers. In this way, I chart avenues for material theorizing of micro-affordances and institutions, and develop an IS strategy-as-practice lens that attends IT use as a material practice. After developing this lens, I discuss how material practice perspectives afford deep understanding of the materialities through which actors create, sustain, and transform organizational practice with digital material, and highlight some opportunities to observe the social consequences of IT use in the context of critical studies on men and masculinities and digital gender.
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| 5. |
- Danielsson Öberg, Karin, 1977-
(författare)
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Att främja medverkan : Utmaningar och möjligheter för barns och ungdomars delaktighet vid design av digitala edutainmentproduktioner
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna avhandling inom interaktionsdesign handlar om användarmedverkan vid design av digitala edutainmentspel. Arbetet omfattar en aktionsorienterad forskningsansats där barns och ungdomars medverkan har främjats i tre tillämpade designprojekt. Genom observationer och intervjuer har utmaningar och strategier för användarmedverkan dokumenterats. Därtill även de bidrag som barnens och ungdomarnas medverkan innebar för design av edutainmentspel. Avhandlingen visar på två tydliga resultat. För det första, genom de utmaningar för användarmedverkan som designprocessen innebar och hanterandet av dessa utmaningar, så påvisas hur motiv till användarmedverkan kan förändras hos designteamet. Denna förändring är en pågående process som sker före, under och efter ett designprojekt. Motiv till användarmedverkan förändras med stöd av en förmedlare. En förmedlare bibringar synpunkter och designförslag mellan användare och designers. Förmedlaren anpassar även användarmedverkan till det sammanhang inom vilket designprojektet genomförs. Genom att delge designteamet dokument om och resultat av användarsessioner, så omvandlas förmedlarens kunskap om och erfarenhet av användarmedverkan till designteamets egen. Kunskap och erfarenhet vilka därefter förändrar motiv till design av fördel för användarmedverkan. För det andra så dokumenteras i avhandlingen betydelsen av att barn och ungdomar medverkar vid design av edutainmentspel. Dessa spel har under en längre tid utmanats av att finna balans mellan lärande och underhållning. Genom sin erfarenhet av målgruppens förväntningar på tekniken, samt av att bidra inom områden för design så som; koncept och innehåll, interaktionslösningar, samt utseende och känsla, så medförde barnens och ungdomarnas medverkan ett stöd för designteamet i att finna balans mellan lärande och underhållning. I resultaten framkommer att barnen och ungdomarna deltog i projekten i egenskap av informanter. Eftersom de inte hade ansvar för den utvecklade produktionen betraktades de inte heller som medlemmar i designteamet. Med sina resultat medverkar avhandlingen i diskursen om hur traditionella designperspektiv kan tillämpas vid design av digitala edutainmentproduktioner.
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| 6. |
- Fällman, Daniel, 1975-
(författare)
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In Romance with the Materials of Mobile Interaction : A Phenomenological Approach to the Design of Mobile Information Technology
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals analytically and through design with the issue of HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) with mobile devices; mobile interaction. Specifically, it is an investigation into and a capitalization on the multistable kinds of relations that arise between the threefold of human user, artifact, and world, and how dealing with this kind of technology and these relations in many ways must be regarded as different from mainstream HCI. This subject matter is theoretically, methodologically, and empirically approached from two to HCI unconventional outlooks: a phenomenological and a design-oriented attitude to research. The main idea pursued in this work is that while HCI for historical reasons follows a tradition of disembodiment, its opposite—embodiment—needs to come into view as an alternative design ideal when dealing with mobile interaction. The tradition of disembodiment in HCI, how it is applied within mobile interaction, and the conceptual switch in focusing on embodiment and human, technology, world relations are thoroughly analyzed and discussed. A proper understanding of these issues are seen as necessary for the primary purpose of this book: to provide designers of mobile interaction with the conceptual means needed to construct new and better styles of mobile interactions. To equip designers and researchers with the possibility of choosing an alternative path, the book provides a range of alternative conceptualizations for design, modeled primarily around phenomenological concepts such as embodiment, meaning, and involvement. In order to minimize the distance between these new notions and how they may be practically applied for design, four research prototypes are presented and discussed that all in different ways capitalize on these conceptualizations. The thesis concludes with an empirical-style study, which uses the Repertory Grid Technique to elicit the participants’ experiences of using a number of mobile information technology devices, including the research prototypes presented in this work.
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| 7. |
- Hedlund, Hugo, 1988-
(författare)
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Disentangling digital transformation : mechanisms of change in institutional logics
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digital transformation (DT) is en vogue, but vague: while consultants, policymakers and researchers stress that it is a major challenge to organizations of all kinds and sizes, how DT unfolds, or even what it entails, remains elusive. Previous research on DT frames it as a problem of strategic technology adoption or information technology (IT)-related change associated with business models and processes. While contributions in this vein are informative, they are suspiciously similar to previous studies in the information systems field of the effects of information technology on organizational workings. Further, this focus backgrounds potentially novel issues of institutional and wider societal change, such as the interaction between distinct social spheres and technology implicated in any setting affected by its introduction. Promising emerging research has adopted institutional theory to address these issues, but central questions at the intersection of digital technology and institutional change remain unanswered. In this dissertation, I draw on the theoretical perspective of institutional logics to theorize, explain, and illustrate digital transformation as a phenomenon cutting through diverse analytical levels and societal contexts. To this end, the research question guiding both the dissertation and the empirical studies (presented in four appended papers) that it is based upon has been:How do technology-associated generative mechanisms drive digital transformation in institutions? The research has identified generative mechanisms as non-deterministic forces that shape the outcomes we observe in the world around us. In this dissertation, I address DT of the public sector as an investigative institutional context to answer my research question. This setting has a long and ongoing history of digitalization characterized by shifting and often conflicting institutional demands. The first of the four appended research papers illuminates how research on digital innovation has informed the study of innovation in a problem setting characterized by institutional complexity (the public sector). The second examines how actors under differing institutional pressures and worldviews organize to innovate with digital technology. The third shows how technology-associated generative mechanisms drive DT in the public sector, and the fourth theorizes a novel perspective on digital transformation. Synthesizing and moving beyond the findings of the individual papers, in the dissertation I define the role of generative mechanisms in DT, explain how, when, and why mechanisms come to cause the phenomenon in institutions, and discuss their effects and implications for research and practice.
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| 8. |
- Hoshi, Kei, 1970-
(författare)
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Here and now : Foundations and practice of human-experiential design
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis claims that an experiential approach to design really does promise the possibility of scientific design of everyday life. The purpose of this thesis is to show the promise. René Descartes conceptualized the classical formulation of a mind-body dichotomy. Various resulting and unbalanced dichotomies, such as subjective-objective, internal-external, experiential-practical and so on, raise serious concerns surrounding the concept of design. The thesis raises a crucial issue about the imbalance between technological and human concerns in the context of human-computer interaction, an imbalance that has been caused partly by the mechanistic aspect of informatics and its impact on designing human computer interaction. The thesis first explores the origin of design as a distinct activity during the industrial revolution, and reviews the tide of design history from then until today. The brief review of design history indicates that design is not merely the skill of making things or presentations. This gives direction to how design can be positioned in our modern information society. Second, the author starts a critical discussion about ordinary design approaches that, it is suggested, may have hindered true human-centred design, and then introduces an alternative approach to design and research, which the author calls Human-Experiential Design. Third, the notion of Tangible Presence in Blended Reality Space is introduced. The conceptual grounding that illustrates the experiential approach to interaction design is discussed. Fourth, the thesis presents use cases and provides examples of Human-Experiential Design in specific practical contexts. The concrete examples suggest that the emphasis on ‘balance’ or appropriate blending is very important in the development of better interactive systems for health, capitalizing on seamless combinations of the virtual and the physical in Blended Reality Space. As exemplified in the thesis, the human-experiential approach, striving for optimal combinations of tangibility and evoked presence, offers a promising tool in designing for special needs groups such as elderly people with some cognitive weaknesses, and children undertaking physical rehabilitation programmes. It is suggested that such virtual-physical blends will release human beings from the strain that existing perceived dichotomies bring. Finally, the author concludes by offering a way forward, a way that is neither subjective nor objective but rather a meaningfully integrated blend of the dichotomies, which responds to the question of what it means to be human.
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| 9. |
- Jakobsson, Mikael
(författare)
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Virtual worlds and social interaction design
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is a study of social interaction in virtual worlds and virtual world design. A virtual world is a synchronous, multi-user system that offers a persistent spatial environment for iconically represented participants. Together, these form an example of social interaction design. I have applied an arena perspective on my object of study, meaning that I focus on these socio-technical systems as places.I have investigated the persistent qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds. What I have found is that virtual worlds are as real as the physical world. They are filled with real people interacting with each other evoking real emotions and leading to real consequences. There are no fixed boundaries between the virtual and physical arenas that make up a participant’s lifeworld.I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance.As a theoretical foundation for design, I have used Michael Heim’s writings and practices as a base for a phenomenologically grounded approach, which provides an alternative to the dominating perspectives of architecture and engineering. Based on an explorative design project and the earlier mentioned findings regarding social interaction, I have formulated a model for virtual world design called interacture. This model takes the interaction between participants as the fundamental building material and the starting point of the design process. From there, layers of function and structure are added, all the time balancing the design between fantasy and realism.I have explored the possibilities of using ethnographic studies as the foundation for a participant centered design approach. I have aimed for an inside view of my object of study both as an ethnographer and as a designer. One outcome of this approach is that I have come to understand virtual worlds not just as places but also as processes where the experience of participating can change drastically over time as the participant reaches new stages in the process.In conclusion, the method of integrating ethnography with design and the understanding of social interaction as the fundamental building material is woven into a general approach to the study and design of socio-technical systems called social interaction design.
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| 10. |
- Jegers, Kalle, 1978-
(författare)
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Pervasive GameFlow : Identifying and Exploring the Mechanisms of Player Enjoyment in Pervasive Games
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Pervasive games are computer games that build, to various extents, on social interaction as a driving force in the game play, on integration between physical and virtual worlds and on constant access to constantly ongoing games from virtually every existing context (anytime, anywhere gaming). This new genre of computer games presents many challenges for both researchers and industry; one of the most important is how to understand enjoyable player experiences in this new kind of computer gaming. The purpose of this thesis is to identify and explore the mechanisms in pervasive game designs that are of most importance for creating enjoyable Pervasive gaming experiences, and further to translate the findings of the exploration into a playability model for pervasive games. My empirical work focuses on the most important aspects for creating enjoyable player experiences when playing pervasive games. Evaluation methods from the usability and playability area have been deployed in order to identify what factors and aspects the players consider of most importance for their experience when they play pervasive games. Three specific pervasive games have been studied; SupaFly, Pervasive Treasure Hunt and Furiae. Theoretically, the thesis departs from existing knowledge about Playability, and the most prominent and accepted frameworks for understanding player experiences in computer gaming have been considered. Of the existing models and frameworks, the GameFlow model was selected as a theoretical point of departure. The main contribution of the thesis consists of a model for understanding player enjoyment in pervasive games - the Pervasive GameFlow model. Pervasive GameFlow elaborates the GameFlow model by adding 14 new criteria identified in the empirical evaluations of three pervasive games, criteria of great importance for enjoyable Player experiences in pervasive games. Further, the thesis answers questions concerning how the players are putting the anytime, anywhere and mobility aspects of pervasive games into practice - how they perceive and handle games that offer constantly ongoing game play. The results also provide insights into the reach or impact of the novel Pervasive aspects of pervasive games and their importance for the players and player experiences. Finally, the thesis provides notes on how evaluation of pervasive games should be performed.
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