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.

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.

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 follows recent science studies in theorizing information technologies as socio-material configurations, aligned into more and less durable forms. The study of how new technologies emerge shifts, on this view, from a focus on invention to an interest in ongoing practices of assembly, demonstration, and performance. This view is developed in relation to the case of the ‘prototype’, an exploratory technology designed to effect alignment between the multiple interests and working practices of technology research and development, and sites of technologies-in-use. In so far as it is successful, the prototype works as an exemplary artefact that is at once intelligibly familiar to the actors involved, and recognizably new.

For decades social workers have been largely indifferent to ethnomethodology (EM) and its slightly younger sibling conversation analysis (CA). The omission has been most unfortunate, yet perhaps it is to be expected. The authority and expertise provided by positivist and objectivist methodologies, that which Garfinkel (2002) has called ‘formal analysis ’ (FA), are often too seductive to be resisted, particularly by members of a profession who feel their power and authority continually questioned by other professionals. Given the seductions of power, prestige and expertise promised through use of the procedures of FA, Hall et al. have demonstrated no small degree of innovation and courage by bringing together authors who are prepared to apply the tools of EM and CA to social work. Constructing Clienthood conjoins the stigmatized realms of front-line social work with the equally stigmatized sociological practices of EM and CA. Just as front-line social work is immersed in face-to-face work with people in the torment of their everyday lives, those doing EM and CA are preoccupied to

This paper analyses aspects of socially organised conflict from an ethnomethodological point of view. In particular it examines the accomplishment of activities between civil and military Air Traffic Control operations at London's Air Traffic Control Centre. It will be shown how civilian controllers orient to, take account of, and manifest the interface of military and civilian operations in such a way as for that interface to be perceived and treated by controllers themselves as conflictual. Examples will be taken from observed decision making relating to military `rogue' planes. Some remarks as to the history of ethnomethodological examination of `accomplished' conflict are made and proposals for the respecification of conflict as an analytic object for the sociology of work exposited.

In this paper, we consider the problems of introducing computer-based tools into collaborative processes, arguing that such an introduction must attend to the sociality of work if it is not to impact negatively upon the work that they are intended to support. To ground our arguments, we present findings from an ethnomethologicallyinformed ethnographic study carried out in the context of the clinical trial of a computerbased aid in medical work. Our findings highlight the problematic nature of traditional clinical trials for evaluating healthcare technologies, precisely because such trials fail to grasp the situated, social and collaborative dimensions of medical work.

Abstract. 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. 1

A major achievement in the sociology and philosophy of science over the past two decades has been the recognition that science is a form of culture with its own creeds, language, material practices, perceptions, theories, and beliefs. Learning science then amounts to participation (from more peripheral to central ways) in the particular practices of this culture. We argue here that there are some fundamental, heretofore neglected, ways in which newcomers come to perceive and talk about natural phenomena. Beginning with ‘muddled ’ talk and supported by deictic and iconic gestures, learners isolate salient objects and events which are, in increasing ways, symbols) are competently used only later in the emerging communicative patterns. There is some evidence that these patterns of development transcend specific cultures. As such, there lies tremendous potential in science activities that focus on observational and theoretical language in the presence of the relevant phenomena. Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is a remaking. (Goodman, 1978, p. 6) Preface

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