This paper surveys and evaluates some techniques for eliciting requirements of computer-based systems, paying particular attention to how they deal with social issues. The methods surveyed include introspection, interviews, questionnaires, and protocol, conversation, interaction, and discourse analyses. Although they are relatively untried in Requirements Engineering, we believe there is much promise in the last three techniques, which grew out of ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics. In particular, they can elicit tacit knowledge by observing actual interactions in the workplace, and can also be applied to the system development process itself.

Fantasy play and storytelling serve an important role in young children's development. While computers are increasingly present in the world of young children, there is a lack of computational systems that support children's voice in everyday storytelling, particularly in the context of fantasy play. This paper introduces StoryMat, a system that supports children's own voice in their own storytelling play. StoryMat offers a child-driven play space by recording and recalling children's narrating voices, and the movements they make with their toys on the mat. Empirical research with children showed that StoryMat fostered developmentally advanced forms of storytelling and provided a space where children engaged in fantasy storytelling collaboratively with or without a playmate. The paper addresses the importance of supporting children's fantasy play and suggests a new way for technology to play an integral part in that activity. Keywords: Storytelling, young children, interactive narrati...

We seek to take some initial steps towards a theory of information that is adequate for understanding and designing systems that process information, i.e., information systems in a broad sense. Formal representations of information are needed in designing, using and maintaining such systems, especially when they are computer based. However, it is also necessary to take account of social context, including how information is produced and used, not merely how it is represented; that is, we need a social theory of information. Ideas from ethnomethodology and semiotics, as well as logic and the sociology of science, are used to explore the nature of information.

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Although recent years have seen an explosion in educational technology, there is still a lack of computational tools specifically designed to encourage exploration of identity and communication issues. Storytelling is a good medium for this type of exploration as it enables reflection about the inner world. This paper presents a new approach to interactive storytelling: SAGE (Storytelling Agent Generation Environment), a construction kit that supports children's creation of their own wise storytellers to interact with. In this system, programming is a vehicle for the transformation of ways of thinking about communication as well as for constructing knowledge about technology. In order to encourage children's emotional engagement in the SAGE environment, the storytellers are embodied in an interactive stuffed animal --- a soft interface --- which is also programmable by the children. This paper presents some technical aspects of SAGE's design and implementation and focuses on empirical...

Abstract: This paper discusses the role of narrative in the expression and transmission of social knowledge as a specific type of tacit knowledge. Narrative is a central mechanism by which social knowledge is conveyed. Narrative provides a bridge between the tacit and the explicit, allowing tacit social knowledge to be demonstrated and learned, without the need to propositionalize it. Institutions can best maintain their stock of stories by providing occasions on which they can be told. Archival systems such as data bases, lessons learned systems, and video records are less effective, particularly when they attempt to store records or transcripts of oral stories. However, they can be improved by attention to key design dimensions, including appropriate allocation of the effort required from system administrators and users, and attention to translation between genres.

Abstract not found

This paper surveys and evaluates some techniques for eliciting requirements of computer-based systems, paying particular attention to how they deal with social issues. The methods surveyed include introspection, interviews, questionnaires, and protocol, conversation, interaction, and discourse analyses. Although they are relatively untried in Requirements Engineering, we believe there is much promise in the last three techniques, which grew out of ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics. In particular, they can elicit tacit knowledge by observing actual interactions in the workplace, and can also be applied to the system development process itself.

We argue that civic discourse can also be public storytelling and propose three reasons to consider this relationship: stories' relational nature -- their ability to represent uniquely human perspectives and emotions -- may ameliorate aspects of citizens' disinterest in civic life; the ability of stories to represent both individual perspectives and cultural norms may offer a form of public opinion that is relevant on both personal and collective scales; and the inherent transparency of familiar narrative forms may offer new ways to explicate unfamiliar aspects civic discourse. We propose a relationship between civic discourse and public storytelling and review one system called TexTales in relation to a developing model of "democratic stories." Author Keywords Public opinion, democratic stories, participatory design, community installation.