Abstract. Software engineering is an intensely people-oriented activity, yet too little is known about how designers, maintainers, requirements analysts and all other types of software engineers perform their work. In order to improve software engineering tools and practice, it is therefore essential to conduct field studies, i.e., to study real practitioners as they solve real problems. To do so effectively, however, requires an understanding of the techniques most suited to each type of field study task. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of techniques, focusing on those for data collection. The taxonomy is organized according to the degree of human intervention each requires. For each technique, we provide examples from the literature, an analysis of some of its advantages and disadvantages, and a discussion of how to use it effectively. We also briefly talk about field study design in general, and data analysis.

We describe a Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagramming tool that uses an E-whiteboard, pen-based sketching interface to support collaborative design. Our tool allows designers to sketch UML visual modelling language constructs, mixing different UML diagram components, free-hand annotations and hand-written text. A key novelty of our approach is the preservation of handdrawn diagrams and support for manipulation of the diagrams using pen-based actions. UML sketches can be “formalized ” to computer-recognised and drawn diagrams, and exported to a 3 rd party CASE tool. 1.

Although organizational innovation with information technology is often carefully considered, bandwagon phenomena indicate that much innovative behavior may nevertheless be of the “me too” variety. In this essay, we explore such differences in innovative behavior. Adopting a perspective that is both institutional and cognitive, we introduce the notion of mindful innovation with IT. A mindful firm attends to an IT innovation with reasoning 1 Jane Webster was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Swanson & Ramiller/Innovating Mindfully with IT RESEARCH ARTICLE grounded in its own organizational facts and specifics. We contrast this with mindless innovation, where a firm’s actions betray an absence of such attention and grounding. We develop these concepts by drawing on the recent appearance of the idea of mindfulness in the organizational literature, and adapting it for application to IT innovation. We then bring mindfulness and mindlessness together in a larger theoretical synthesis in which these apparent opposites are seen to interact in ways that help to shape the overall landscape of opportunity for organizational innovation with IT. We conclude by suggesting several promising new research directions.

Abstract—Information systems (IS) researchers have begun to investigate how national culture, as articulated by Hofstede, affects a wide variety of issues. A citation analysis of IS articles that cite Hofstede’s research on national culture suggests that most research is focused on issues related to IS management and to IS, while issues related to IS development and operations and to IS usage remain relatively unexamined. Within the dominant categories, research is concentrated in the IS management and types of information systems subcategories. Furthermore, the dimensions of national culture outlined by Hofstede have not been frequently used to develop and to build theory. Research opportunities and approaches to develop a stronger cumulative tradition and theory for international IS issues are proposed. Index Terms—Citation analysis, Hofstede, information systems (IS), national culture.

Abstract. A major strength in object-oriented development is the direct support for domain modelling offered by the conceptual framework underlying object-orientation. In this framework, domains and systems can be analysed and understood using models at a high level of abstraction. To support the construction of such models, a large number of Computer-Aided Software Engineering tools are available. These tools excel in supporting design and implementation, but have little support for elements such as creativity, flexibility, and collaboration. We believe that this lack of support partly explains the low adoption of CASE tools. Based on this, we have developed a tool, Knight, which supports intuition, flexibility, and collaboration by implementing gesture based UML modelling on a large electronic whiteboard. Such support improves CASE tools, and can thus potentially lead to increased adoption of CASE tools and thus ultimately help improving the overall quality of development projects. 1

Rosetta is a tool that supports the creation of objectoriented design documents, and automatically checks the conformance of Java implementations to those designs. Rosetta is based on a novel WWW architecture, supporting collaborative use with heterogeneous development tools under a coevolutionary development process. Rosetta has been used extensively in our research group and in teaching at the first year university level, and is currently undergoing industrial field trials. Rosetta has proved successful, but its deployment over the WWW has not proved as transparent to users as we had hoped. 1.

This paper presents a study of collaboration in software design at a large software company. Ethnographic studies of development teams in the field are relatively rare, so this paper contributes to a small, but growing, body of knowledge about the collaborative activities involved in such design work. Five separate development groups were studied over a six-week period. The methodology included shadowing, interviews and communication event logging. A novel PDA-based application was used for real-time data collection. The results of the study indicate that designers communicate frequently, using a wide variety of communication and collaboration modalities. Designers prefer general-purpose tools to domain specific applications. In support of communication, designers frequently change their physical location throughout the day. Finally, designers frequently change the ways in which they communicate, changing their communication modalities and styles. 1.

Software engineers often use hand-drawn diagrams as preliminary design artefacts and as annotations during reviews. We describe the addition of sketching support to a domain-specific visual language meta-tool enabling a wide range of diagram-based design tools to leverage this human-centric interaction support. Our approach allows visual design tools generated from high-level specifications to incorporate a range of sketching-based functionality including both eager and lazy recognition, moving from sketch to formalized content and back, and using sketches for secondary annotation and collaborative design review. We illustrate the use of our sketching extension for an example domain-specific visual design tool and describe the architecture and implementation of the extension as a plug-in for our Eclipse-based meta-tool. 1.

In this paper, we discuss the issues preventing adoption of analysis, design and modeling (AMD) software development tools. We argue that AMD tools are experiencing the same problems observed with UI tools in the past. We recall those problems and outline the major developments that AMD tools should focus to achieve stronger market acceptance, in particular we argue that such an acceptance will only be possible with a new generation of developer-centric tools that clearly support UI specific activities.

Abstract. This paper describes a new unifying workstyle model for the usercentered design process, comprised of eight dimensions that we claim as fundamental to supporting the UCD process. Our proposal is new because it is the first workstyle model tailored to UCD. We also show the usefulness of workstyle modeling when evaluating the stage/effort of a project at a given time. Our workstyle model was based on the identification of the main obstacles to UCD and SE integration, current research results and extensive observation of HCI students involved in UCD projects. Though simple, it models the designer’s behavior and can be effectively and easily used to (a) choose adequate tool support for a given phase of a project and (b) drive the development of new UCD tools. 1