18345527
Groupware and the Social Infrastructure of Communication
Communication technologies can supplement, but never supplant, the value of social bonds and trusting relationships.
32525185
Don't Emancipate, Exaggerate: Rhetoric, Reality and Reengineering
7232664
Designing in the dark: the changing user-developer relationship in information systems development
Although user involvement can be problematic for all types of information systems development, the situation has become even more difficult with the recent spread of information technology to senior organizational levels. Better theoretical conceptualization of the dynamic relationship between developers and users in systems development is needed to understand how this relationship shapes, and is shaped by, various constraints. Drawing on Giddens’ work on constraints on human action and interaction, a theoretical conceptualization of the dynamic relationship between developers and executive users is proposed. This is grounded in empirical studies of the executive information systems development process in two organizations. The paper seeks to illustrate the “enabling” properties of the constraints and their ongoing production and reproduction. Such constraints may vary in their malleability and some appear to be relatively resistant to change by developers. Nevertheless, through improvisation and ingenuity, developers can often find ways to overcome them.
19544571
Too close for comfort? Distance and engagement in interpretive information systems research
In this paper, we seek to explore the implications of the assumptions underlying interpretivism for the preferred relationship between the researcher and the research phenomenon. The growing interest in interpretive information systems research has drawn attention to the need to gain access to the interpretations of social actors. Various data-gathering methods are available to the researcher to achieve such access. These may be seen as located on a spectrum in terms of the degree of engagement between the researcher and the research subject. While engagement is not without its drawbacks from a research perspective, it may be argued that it enables good access to the sorts of data that interpretive researchers are seeking. Most of the research reported in the information systems (IS) field, however, has adopted relatively distant methods by which the researcher avoids intervention in the research context. Some of the characteristics of more engaged forms of research are illustrated through a discussion of a participant observation study of executive information systems development. This research has highlighted a number of issues that can be seen to be common to other data-gathering methods. Reasons for the neglect of engaged data-gathering methods are explored, and it is suggested that consideration of the issues it raises may contribute to more reflexive interpretive IS research practice.
9893455
Interactive Modelling in Decision Support Systems
Abstract In the past, the use of computer models in decision support has involved the interpretation of written reports derived from the output of the model. In recent years, however, the development of micro-computers and istributed computing systems has made it possible for decision-makers to be provided, not with a written report, but with a copy of the model itself. The new relationship between the user and the model, which this development establishes, has important implications for the way in which decision support systems (DSSs) are designed and used.
46877382
"Please Turn ON Your Mobile Phone" - First Impressions of Text-Messaging in Lectures
Previous work by Draper and Brown [3] investigated the use of specialized handsets to increase interactivity in lecture settings. Inspired by their encouraging findings we have been exploring the use of conventional mobile phones and text-messaging to allow students to communicate with the lecturer as the class proceeds. In our pilot-study, students were able to respond to MCQs and send free-text comments and questions to the lecturer via SMS. Through observations and interviews with students and lecturers, we gained useful impressions of the value of such an approach. Students enjoyed the opportunity to be more actively involved but voiced concerns about costs.
15315903
An Evaluation of Techniques for Browsing Photograph Collections on Small Displays
In this paper we evaluate techniques for browsing photographs on small displays. We present two new interaction techniques that replace conventional scrolling and zooming controls. Via a single user action, scrolling and zooming are inter-dependently controlled with AutoZoom and independently controlled with GestureZoom. Both techniques were evaluated in a large-scale, 72-subject usability experiment alongside a conventional thumbnail grid image browser. Performance with the new techniques was at least as good as that with the standard thumbnail grid, even though none of the subjects had prior experience with such systems. In a number of cases – such as finding small groups of photos or when seeking for images containing small details – the new techniques were significantly faster than the conventional approach. In addition, AutoZoom and GestureZoom supported significantly more accurate identification of subsets of photographs. Subjects also reported lower levels of physical and cognitive effort and frustration with the new techniques in comparison to the thumbnail grid browser.
3268647
A digital library of conversational expressions: helping profoundly disabled users communicate
Digital libraries are for everyone. This paper describes the development of a digital library for a user who has a profound physical disability that means she cannot communicate verbally, and cannot use conventional communication tools.
23406227
Toward an understanding of similarity judgments for music digital library evaluation
This paper presents an analysis of 7,602 similarity judgments collected for the Symbolic Melodic Similarity (SMS) and Audio Music Similarity and Retrieval (AMS) evaluation tasks in the 2006 Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX). We discuss the influence of task definitions, as well as evaluation metrics on user perceptions of music similarity, and provide recommendations for future Music Digital Library/Music Information Retrieval research pertaining to music similarity.
13870178
Simplifying and improving qualified types
Qualified types provide a general framework for constrained type systems, with applications including type class overloading, subtyping and record calculi. This paper presents an extended version of the type inference algorithm used in previous work, that can take account of the satisfiability of constraints to obtain more accurate principal types. The new algorithm is obtained by adding two new rules, one for simplification and one for improvement of constraint sets. In particular, it permits a better treatment for the previously troublesome multiple parameter extensions of Haskell type classes. For example, a form of parametric type classes, proposed by Chen, Hudak and Odersky, can be viewed as a special case of this work.