The emergence of ubiquitous computing as a new design paradigm poses significant challenges for HCI and interaction design. Traditionally, human-computer interaction has taken place within a constrained and well-understood domain of experience – single users sitting at desks and interacting with conventionally-designed computers employing screens, keyboards and mice for interaction. New opportunities have engendered considerable interest in “context-aware computing” – computational systems that can sense and respond to aspects of the settings in which they are used. However, considerable confusion surrounds the notion of “context” – what it means, what it includes, and what role it plays in interactive systems. This paper suggests that the representational stance implied by conventional interpretations of “context” misinterprets the role of context in everyday human activity, and proposes an alternative model that suggests different directions for design.

Although ethnography has become a common approach in HCI research and design, considerable confusion still attends both ethnographic practice and the criteria by which it should be evaluated in HCI. Often, ethnography is seen as an approach to field investigation that can generate requirements for systems development; by that token, the major evaluative criterion for an ethnographic study is the implications it can provide for design. Exploring the nature of ethnographic inquiry, this paper suggests that “implications for design ” may not be the best metric for evaluation and may, indeed, fail to capture the value of ethnographic investigations.

Context-aware computing is generally associated with elements of the Ubiquitous Computing program, and the opportunity to distribute computation and interaction through the environment rather than concentrating it at the desktop computer. However, issues of context have also been important in other areas of HCI research. I argue that the scope of context-based computing should be extended to include not only Ubiquitous Computing, but also recent trends in tangible interfaces as well as work on sociological investigations of the organization of interactive behavior. By taking a view of contextaware computing that integrates these different perspectives, we can begin to understand the foundational relationships that tie them all together, and that provide a framework for understanding the basic principles behind these various forms of embodied interaction. In particular, I point to phenomenology as a basis for the development of a new framework for design and evaluation of context-aware ...

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Mobile urban environments present a challenge for context-aware computers because they differ from fixed indoor contexts such as offices, meeting rooms, and lecture halls in many important ways. Internal factors such as tasks and goals are different---external factors such as social resources are dynamic and unpredictable. An empirical, user-centred approach is needed to understand mobile contexts. In this paper, we present insights from an ethnomethodologically inspired study of 25 adult urbanites in Helsinki. The results describe typical phenomena in mobility: how situational and planned acts intermesh in navigation, how people construct personal and group spaces, and how temporal tensions develop and dissolve. Furthermore, we provide examples of social solutions to navigation problems, examine mobile multitasking, and consider design implications for mobile and context-aware human-- computer interaction.

Pervasive personal communication technologies offer the potential for important social benefits for individual users, but also the potential for significant social difficulties and costs. In research on face-to-face social interaction, ambiguity is often identified as an important resource for resolving social difficulties. In this paper, we discuss two design cases of personal communication systems, one based on fieldwork of a commercial system and another based on an unrealized design concept. The cases illustrate how user behavior concerning a particular social difficulty, unexplained unresponsiveness, can be influenced by technological issues that result in interactional ambiguity. The cases also highlight the need to balance the utility of ambiguity against the utility of usability and communicative clarity.

The design of commercial products that are intended to serve millions of people has been a challenge for collaborative approaches. The creation and use of fictional users, concrete representations commonly referred to as ‘personas’, is a relatively new interaction design technique. It is not without problems and can be used inappropriately, but based on experience and analysis it has extraordinary potential. Not only can it be a powerful tool for true participation in design, it also forces designers to consider social and political aspects of design that otherwise often go unexamined.

ry design interventions into technology projects in the clinic of radiology. The adopted theoretical attitude of interweaving construction and reconstruction necessitates questioning and reconfiguring some of the taken-for-granted assumptions of disciplinary dichotomies and conventional frames of reference both with regard to ethnographic traditions focused on current practices as well as technology-centered and future-oriented system design. Radiology, with its ongoing and complex transition from film-based to digitally mediated work, has provided the concrete setting for thinking about the relations between researcher, designer and work practice practitioner in an attempt to find ways in which to sensitise system design towards everyday work practice. Establishing the relevance between ethnographic findings of work and design specifications requires a reformulation of work practice that appreciates the everyday fluency of work practice and recognises the endogenous change for the ne

This paper examines the way in which a knowledge management system (KMS)—by which we mean the people, processes and software—came into being and evolved in response to a variety of shifting social, technical and organizational pressures. We draw upon data from a two year ethnographic study of a sophisticated help desk to trace the KMS from its initial conception as a “Common Problems ” database for help desk personnel, to its current instantiation as a set of Frequently Asked Questions published on an intranet for help desk clients. We note how shifts in management, organizational structure, incentives, software technologies, and other factors affected the development of the system. This study sheds light on some of the difficulties that accompany the implementation of CSCW systems, and provides an analysis of how such systems are often designed by bricolage. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.3 [Group and organizational interfaces]: Computer supported cooperative work

Abstract. This article discusses the integration of work practice and system design. By scrutinising the unfolding discourse of workshop participants the co-construction of work practice issues as relevant design considerations is described. Through a mutual exploration of ethnography and participatory design the contributing constituents to the co-construction process are identified and put forward as elements in the integration of ‘systemic analysis ’ and ‘appreciative intervention’. The systemic analysis proposes collaboratively grounding the emergent understandings on an inductive and iterative analysis of actual technologically mediated work practice. The appreciative intervention, in turn, calls for envisioning images of future system and context through a recognition of presence and change intertwined in the existing ways of working. The identified elements are joined into three dimensions of interplay, namely the analytic distance, the horizon of work practice transformations and the situated generalisations, which reformulate new conceptualisations of what the integration of work practice and participatory system design is all about. It is suggested that these dimensions together with practitioner participation call into question some of the taken-for-granted assumptions and commonly forwarded intractable disciplinary dichotomies and contribute more generally to bridging work practice and participatory design.