This article discusses the conduct and evaluation of interpretive research in information systems. While the conventions for evaluating information systems case studies conducted according to the natural science model of social science are now widely accepted, this is not the case for interpretive field studies. A set of principles for the conduct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three published interpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature. The intention of the paper is to further reflection and debate on the important subject of grounding interpretive research methodology.

this document, text or image about?' Gradually moving from the left to the right in Figure 3.1, different understandings of this concept evolve

The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus.

This article explicates the interaction between implicit and explicit processes in skill learning, in contrast to the tendency of researchers to study each type in isolation. It highlights various effects of the interaction on learning (including synergy effects). The authors argue for an integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes. Moreover, they argue for a bottom-up approach (first learning implicit knowledge and then explicit knowledge) in the integrated model. A variety of qualitative data can be accounted for by the approach. A computational model, CLARION, is then used to simulate a range of quantitative data. The results demonstrate the plausibility of the model, which provides a new perspective on skill learning. The role of implicit learning in skill acquisition and the distinction between implicit and explicit learning have been widely recognized in recent years (see, e.g., Cleeremans, Destrebecqz, &

sengers at cs.cornell.edu, kab18 | sd256 | jofish at cornell.edu As computing moves into every aspect of our daily lives, the values and assumptions that underlie our technical practices may unwittingly be propagated throughout our culture. Drawing on existing critical approaches in computing, we argue that reflection on unconscious values embedded in computing and the practices that it supports can and should be a core principle of technology design. Building on a growing body of work in critical computing, reflective design combines analysis of the ways in which technologies reflect and perpetuate unconscious cultural assumptions, with design, building, and evaluation of new computing devices that reflect alternative possibilities. We illustrate this approach through two design case studies.

This paper re-examines a number of the approaches, origins and ideals of context--aware systems design, looking particularly at the way that the past influences what we do in our ongoing activity. As a number of sociologists and philosophers have pointed out, past social interaction, as well as past use of the heterogeneous mix of media, tools and artifacts that we use in our everyday activity, influence our ongoing interaction with the people and media at hand. We suggest that the past is thus part of one's current context, and can be seen as combining and interweaving the temporal and subjective patterns of individuals' use of heterogeneous media as well as objectively structured representations of individual media. Based on this theoretical discussion, we present a number of critiques, examples and suggestions for systems designs that reflect this historical aspect of context, and which make good use of the past in supporting ongoing user activity.

This study attempts to describe the notion of the "self " using dynamical systems language based on the results of our robot learning experiments. A neural network model consisting of multiple modules is proposed, in which the interactive dynamics between the bottom-up perception and the top-down prediction are investigated. Our experiments with a real mobile robot showed that the incremental learning of the robot switches spontaneously between steady and unsteady phases. In the steady phase, the top-down prediction for the bottom-up perception works well when coherence is achieved between the internal and the environmental dynamics. In the unsteady phase, con icts arise between the bottom-up perception and the top-down prediction; the coherence is lost, and a chaotic attractor is observed in the internal neural dynamics. By investigating possible analogies between this result and the phenomenological literature on the "self", we draw the conclusions that (1) the structure of the "self" corresponds to the "open dynamic structure " which ischaracterized by co-existence of stability in terms of goal-directedness and instability caused by embodiment; (2) the open dynamic structure causes the system's spontaneous transition to the unsteady phase where the "self " becomes aware. 1

Contents Danish Summary (Dansk Resumé) 1 Acknowledgements 4 1. Introduction 6 1.1 Background........................................................... ..................................... 7 1.2 Cooperative analysis ..................................................................... .......... 11 1.3 Notes on vocabulary ..................................................................... ........... 11 1.4 Progression of this thesis ..................................................................... ... 14 2. Empirical background 18 2.1 The AT-project........................................................... .............................. 20 2.2 The EuroCoOp and EuroCODE projects................................................ 31 3. Six approaches to analysis 46 3.1 Yourdon: Managing the System Life Cycle............................................ 47 3.2 Jackson: System Development ......................................................

What do young people want from information and communication technology? Why do they adopt some technologies but reject others? What roles do mobile technologies play in their lives as they move from childhood toward the adult world? Working from a social constructionist perspective, and on the basis of an extensive empirical research process, we are gaining insight into the variables heeded by young people during the earliest stages of technology use, stages we call ‘appropriation’. We propose a model that discusses appropriation in terms of the interplay between what young people desire, the capabilities and implications of technology and the situations of use that young people inhabit. Depending on the balance between these factors we are able to observe three outcomes: nonappropriation, appropriation and disappropriation. Conceptually we are describing technology use as a process of ‘personal construction’, quite different to the ‘construction ’ processes followed by the designer, but nevertheless equally important.

There is a form of representation that is naturally emergent in the organization of interactive systems. Interactive representation has claims to be the fundamental form of representation, from which all others are derivative. In particular, it naturally satisfies a meta-epistemological criterion that is not addressed by standard approaches in contemporary literature, and is arguably impossible to satisfy within any version those standard approaches. Furthermore, the interactive approach naturally avoids other multiple aporias that bedevil standard approaches. Much effort has been devoted in recent literature to attempts to satisfy a critical meta-epistemological criterion: representation must be capable of being in error. The criterion that I will apply is a strengthening of this one: representation must be capable of being in error in such a way that that condition of being in error is detectable by the agent or system that is doing the representing --- the meta-epistemological crite...