Information Technology has an increasing part of our lives. In this thesis we will discuss how technology can relate to humans and human activity. We take our standing point in concepts like Calm Technology and Tacit Interaction and examine how these visions and concepts can be used in the process of designing an artifact for a real work practice. We have done work-place studies of truck-drivers and traffic leaders regarding how they find their way to the right addresses and design a truck navigation system that aims to suit the truck drivers work practice.

Information Technology has an increasing part of our lives. In this thesis we will discuss how technology can relate to humans and human activity. We take our standing point in concepts like Calm Technology and Tacit Interaction and examine how these visions and concepts can be used in the process of designing an artifact for a real work practice. We have done work-place studies of truck-drivers and traffic leaders regarding how they find their way to the right addresses and design a truck navigation system that aims to suit the truck drivers work practice.

This report, in which we have put an emphasis on the word communication, is based on a student software development project conducted during spring 2002. We describe how the use of design tools plays a key role in supporting communication in group activities and to what extent communication can be supported and enhanced by tools such as mock-ups and metaphors in a group project. We also describe a design progress from initial sketches to a final mock-up of a GUI for a postcard demo application.

Med denna uppsats vill vi (författarna) samla ihop 5 år av tankar, teorier och erfarenheter kring systemutveckling och lärande. Uppsatsen presenterar 8 projekt som är genomförda i Blekinge mellan 1995-1999. Med utgångspunkt i projekten behandlas en utvecklingsprocess för IT-system som är baserad på kreativitet och lärande miljöer. Särskilt lyfter uupsatsen fram behovet av att förändra processen för att möta slutanvändare av program och tjänster.

I detta arbete framlägger vi ett designförslag på hur ett diskussionsverktyg som stödjer ljud- och bildkommunikation kan se ut. Ett förslag som förbättrar och förenklar den distanskommunikation som idag sker med hjälp av mobiltelefoner, videokonferenssystem samt webbkameror anslutna till persondatorer. Den design vi föreslår möjliggör för mobila användare att visuellt föra flerpartssamtal med hjälp av PDA:er. Vårt designförslag har fått arbetsnamnet CU2 (see you too) och är tänkt att fungera i tredje och/eller fjärde generationens mobila nät. Vi har valt att genomföra vårt magisterarbete på företaget A Brand New World i Kista, Stockholm. Företaget utvecklar och säljer system inom mobilt Internet.

Rapporten huvudsyfte är att beskriva hur vi genom användning av språk och kommunikation har kunnat tillgodose våra användares krav på ett ärendehanteringssystem, samt på vilket sätt vi har använt artefakter för att kommunicera. Vi kommer att beskriva olika delar av projektet där språk och kommunikation har haft centrala "roller" och visat sig ha olika betydelse beroende på de personer som medverkar och i vilken miljö situationen har utspelat sig. Rapporten behandlar även hur resultatet av ovanstående har lett oss in i en utvecklingsprocess där vi försökt tillgodose användarens krav på bästa sätt. Vi kommer också att beskriva de kända och tidigare okända metoder som vi använt oss av för att uppnå vår målsättning, att överlämna en första prototyp av ett ärendehanteringssystem.

Att en dator hänger sig, inte gör som man vill eller bara är obegriplig är inget nytt fenomen. Dock är detta en del av vardagen på diariet i Regionens Hus i Mariestad, där de tre registratorernas arbetsprocesser innehåller ett antal problem som bland annat är datorrelaterade. Rapporten beskriver arbetet på diariet, de problem som finns, vem som äger problemen, och innehåller också en diskussion runt de befintliga problemen. Rapporten tar upp allt från postöppning till sökfel i programmet Diabas och mycket annat som ingår i arbetet som registrator. De problem som finns i arbetet på diariet har hopat sig över registratorerna som känner att det inte finns någon självklar part som de kan vända sig till för att få hjälp. Känslan av maktlöshet är alltid närvarande i arbetet när registratorernas datoriserade hjälpmedel inte gör som de vill. Rapporten är ett steg i att kartlägga problemen och vem som äger dem, och avsedd att bli en hjälp för registratorerna.

ABSTRACT System development has become more and more concentrated on development for the Web and this has resulted in larger target groups. It will most surely continue to be so considering that the Web will be the infrastructure of business and services in the future. A big target group involves that the owner of a system can earn a lot of money from the paying users, but that assumes that the system can meet user needs. If a system on the Web does not satisfy the user?s demands then they will use the competitor?s system instead because it is only a mouse-click away. That is why the business, already during the development process, has to take the role of the users seriously. Even if all users cannot take part in the process at least some users can and it would be a shame not to take advantages of this kind of expert knowledge. This report describes how a system development project can be practised and how a developer can do to satisfy each user?s requirements even though he or she are not specified, and also why a useful system is classified as an investment in the future.

When an accident is happening most of the time it is the person on the street that is reporting this to SOS Alarm, the instance that is controlling, for example, the ambulances. To ensure that as few mistakes as possible are made it us crucial that the communication between the caller and the ambulance via the SOS Alarm is as efficient as possible. Communication between the caller to SOS Alarm and the ambulance is done by passing through the operator at the SOS Alarm station and then on to the ambulance. Is this the way that it should be handled or are there optional ways that could be used? The technology has evolved since the system used today was installed and today cellular phones are very common and it is not unusual that it is possible to take pictures with these phones. Is this something that could be used to enhance the way information is sent between the caller and the ambulance? These are questions that this thesis tries to answer by using studies at SOS Alarm and Ambulance centrals as a foundation for the arguments.

Den här rapporten är ett resultat av ett kandidatarbete på 20-poäng. Projektet som rapporten handlar om, beskriver hur utvecklingen av ett webbutikssystem åt ett flertal företag gått till. De har i sin tur köpt webbsystemet från företaget Opti Use som givit oss uppgiften. I rapporten diskuteras hur utvecklingsprocessen gått till och hur ett arbete med ett befintligt system upplevts. Rapporten beskriver även hur lösningen på uppgiften har tagit form och hur utvecklingsprocessen påverkat den. Metoderna som används under projektets gång beskrivs utifrån hur de förändrats för att önskat resultat skulle uppnås. Titelns innebörd beskriver projektgruppens utvecklingsprocess under arbetet med projektet i förhållande till tidigare erfarenheter under MDA-utbildningen.

Internationally, universities are undergoing renewal because of technological and social changes that both increases the importance of open and flexible learning, as well as makes it practicable. Net-based education makes it possible to create courses where students can collaborate and share knowledge globally. Collaborative Learning in Virtual Communities, with the working title Sesame, is a cooperative project between Blekinge Institute of Technology, BTH, and University of Pretoria, UP that has intention to provide a course like this. The aim of this collaboration is to initiate research in, as well as to test, and evaluate methods for net-based collaborative learning to see how this can provide new perspectives for students and lecturers in both countries. One key concept in the project is ?internationalisation at home? and this means interaction and knowledge sharing between people from different countries, and cultures, without them having to physically leave their country. In this thesis we describe the phase of constituting Sesame focusing on the cooperation between the involved parties from the two countries.

The gender question in computer science is often presented as: "Why are there so few women in computer science and what can be done about that?" This question usually focuses on women. Sometimes 'men' or 'gender' enter the discussions. However, it is not common that the second part of the sentence - computer science - is considered. The papers in this thesis challenge, in different ways, how the gender question is usually perceived and discussed within the community of computer scientists, and where solutions are looked for. The approach taken is to move focus from women/gender to the discipline of computer science itself. This means the question is raised towards a more general level, towards "the science question", discussing the discipline, its paradigms and knowledge processes. Theories and methodologies from gender research, used within computer science, offer new possibilities to develop broader and more complex understandings of "the gender question in computer science".

Hur kan mobila användare studeras? Frågan blir allt mer aktuell i samband med att vi människor i större utsträckning blir mobila och därmed också använder mobila artefakter som en del av vardagslivet. Denna fråga är framförallt aktuell för de företag som utvecklar denna typ av artefakter. Vi har under detta kandidatarbete samarbetat med ett företag som dagligen ställs inför denna typ av frågor, och vi kommer i denna rapport behandla utvecklingen av en metod för att studera just mobila användare. Att studera användarna är naturligt, då det är de som är nyckeln till vilka tjänster och artefakter som just de har användning för. Vår metod influeras av tankar från den etnografiska traditionen och har utvecklats genom en studie av ungdomar i gymnasieålder och deras vardag. Ungdomarna har gett oss inblick i sina liv genom att fotografera och berätta kring dessa fotografier under seminarier som kontinuerligt genomförts under studien. Vi har valt att ha ett brett perspektiv under studien för att få en helhetsbild av de studerade ungdomarnas liv. Utifrån den ansenliga mängd information vi inhämtat genom att studera ungdomarna, har vi tagit fram en design av en funktion till mobilt användande av intresse för dessa ungdomar. Vår metod, som vi valt att kalla Kamerametoden, kan alltså med fördel användas vid framtagning av en design utifrån den inblick som fås i den studerades liv.

Summary This thesis consists of an ethnographic investigation of five Swedish household's everyday life in their kitchens during the spring 2001 and an analysis of this context, which for certain can be apt for the development of the smart home services of today. Finally some future opportunities on how to systematise ethnography for design use also are drawn. The focus of investigation of this thesis is to find out what actual happens in some situations in ordinary kitchens. Specific interest is showed for the articulation work, while most smart appliances of today supports only goal-oriented activity, hence evolved from the ground of the home PC interaction. The ethnographical investigation is focused on three specific events in a house hold which all are assumed to take place in the families kitchen. The events are: 1) When a family plans and books an amusement activity. 2) When a family plans it's shopping. 3) When a person solves a goal oriented task, for example details about cooking a meal.

This report is our Master thesis. Our work has taken place at a one-stop-shop in Sölvesborg during the spring of 2002. We have conducted ethnographical studies concerning the one-stop-shops frontdesk and telephone exchange. During these studies we became aware of some differences under which the daily work was to be carried out. When operating the switchboard the staff usually work alone and perform the tasks individually. At the frontdesk there's usually two or more people from the workforce. They carry out their work in the form of a network, where the colleagues support each other in what seemed to be seamless cooperative work. We closely studied the work being carried out by the staff at the frontdesk in order to gain a deeper understanding for their handling of cases in their daily work. How do the staff achieve this seamless cooperative work, and how are the cues that trigger the cooperative work being relayed? In this report we describe aspects of cooperative work and different mechanisms that affects cooperation. With the aid of concrete examples, we highlight how the staff in this environment, design their language and their actions. We argue that cooperative work is formed and coordinated with the aid of various artefacts. In the concrete worksituation there are cues being communicated that plays an important role in the success of the work being carried out. These cues often carry an invitation to cooperative work as we mean that they function as a way to ask the colleagues for assistance in the handling of a case, or reversed, function as to show that one is available and can assist the colleague. To understand these mechanisms of cooperative work, some general and others more specific to the workplace we have studied, is of great importance to the understanding of how cooperation is established. We highlight aspects of cooperation that are important and must be considered when designing new technology intended to support cooperative work. All names on individuals have been changed, to protect their true identity.

Abstract This report is our bachelor thesis. Our work has taken place at a galvanising company in Sölvesborg. The company faced major changes, of which one was a computerisation process. The new system could involve changes in work practice and in specific tasks, affecting the workers. If the coming system was to support work, from the production personnel?s perspective, we felt a legitimate participation in the development and design of the future work practice, was a requirement that was not met. During our ethnographical studies we noted that conflicts arose between production and administrative -personnel. We investigated the conflicts closer in our pursuit to find what caused them. In that work we used various methods such as Future workshop and Brainstorming. Together with production personnel we identified information and functions that are vital in their work. Also, we tried to understand what impact these aspects had on different tasks, and to find an answer to the question, could computers support the production personnel in their work? To find an answer to this question, we have in depth, studied them and closely followed their daily work. We reason about the existing work practice, and possible scenarios in the future. We describe what we find to be important to consider when introducing computers to the workplace. The report also presents a possible draft, a sketch to design, of the future computer system. All names on individuals and customers have been changed, to conceal their true identity.

This Master Thesis looks into software development processes and the work activities these need to support. Hesitation against process support within Software developing organisations combined with a possibility to develop process support for such a company, made the foundation for this thesis. The reference company where the study took place is a large worldwide Telecom company where we focused on one design department with 25 people. Instead of using Participatory Design (PD) [Schuler, Namioka] as a method for Software development as traditionally, we used it for developing process support together with the people at the department. Three different supports for different project processes were created with PD and an evolutionary way of work together with the ?designers?. We came to a complex project environment which required control in several aspects such as project sponsoring, project management, line management, design maintenance etc. We saw a way of working that was following a common agreed way of work by the group that is formed by socio-emotional aspects and co-learning aspects [Hägerfors, 1995]. In contrast to this, the study showed that the available process support and also the use of the process support had a clear concentration towards a management focus ? the control function. The available process support and the use of this did not really consider the aspects of Socio-emotional or Co-learning. Existing process support was built around documents that became evidence for actual activities during the project. The process support developed during this study (by us and the designers) finally also got that concentration. A conclusion is that when the organisation puts high requirements on control of projects, this will also affect the way the organisation wants support for work. This is the missing point.

In this Bachelor thesis I explore sound and room as elements in design of user interfaces, both theoretical and practical in a specific application domain, to identify some of the advantages and disadvantage associated with these elements. As application domain I studied email clients and their usage at home amongst students at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In the study I found an activity, which seems to be highly distributed in the physical room where the user is located. The activity was notification of email and could take place in an arbitrary location of the home. I then augmented this activity with ideas from my theoretical assumption about room and sound. The result was a rule-based agent for notification of email, which primarily uses sound as interaction style.

This project has been devoted to design a computer system with a tangible user interface, in the context of future supervision of remote drop-in dialysis patients. The tangible computer system was developed as an example of how two concepts in human work, accountability and awareness, can be supported through tangible user interfaces. A current trend within CSCW discusses accountability in design in terms of how software should make its own actions accountable. We choose to use an alternative route, namely to use the tangible interface for explicating nurses and patients actions for each other. Explicating actions is key benefit with a tangible interface in work environments that is physical co-located. We conclude that our strategy can be investigated further in settings where the work is carried out in a physical co-located space.

Co-operation between research and industry and society, and the notion of innovation systems, are high on the agenda of national as well as international research politics. However, how to make co-operation between researchers and practitioners work, and what kind of research results could come out of such co-operation, is hardly discussed. The article uses evidence from three projects in the areas e-government and telecommunication to reflect on such co-operation. Scientific understanding and practices of design, development and use of ICT challenge and inform each other in these co-operative projects, which we have started to refer to as ‘situated innovation’. The article discusses the role of the researcher in such contexts, the character of the research results, and means to co-ordinate different rhythms and rationales in order to make research and practices of ICT development and use mutually enhancing.

The when and where of participatory design has traditionally been set, primarily, by the software design project. However, modern IT networks with a variety of applications from different software providers, new web-design tools, and the integration of customization processes with on-going version management, are just a few of the developments that are moving participation around IT design issues beyond the traditional software project. Using examples from a research project focusing on existing work practices and IT in use in public service administration, we explore various understandings of design, which challenge some of the assumptions underlying the basic framework of participatory design. If design is seen as continually on-going, and intricately interwoven with use, this raises several important issues for participatory design. It highlights design for change. It points towards the need for reconsidering software design processes. It brings into focus issues of coordination between use, design in use and adaptation and development. Crucially, it raises issues about shop floor IT management, that is, organizational and technical support for local adapting, and continual design and development in use, of IT, and the need for models and methods for sustainable, distributed co-constructive design processes.

Projektets syfte var att undersöka om en handdator kan stödja distriktssköterskans arbete. I rapporten beskrivs hur vi tillsammans med distriktssköterskor har iakttagit i vilka situationer handdatorn kan vara ett hjälpmedel. Om patientjournalen är tillgänglig via handdatorn vid hembesök skulle det styrka de av oss utvalda nyckelorden som representerar distriktssköterskans yrkeskunnande; "seende", lyhördhet, kommunikation, flexibilitet, prioritering, beslutsfattande, dokumentation, framförhållning samt utveckla ett minne och självständighet. I rapporten skriver vi också om hur distriktssköterskorna tillsammans med oss har påverkat utvecklingen av det grafiska gränssnittet i designprocessen. Vi visar med mock-upbilder hur denna process har framskridit och vi pekar på hur viktig användarmedverkan är. Vår studie visar att man med metoder som etnografiska studier, workshops, mock-uparbete och participatory/deltagar design kan få en inblick i ett så traditionellt yrke som distriktssköterskans och se var, när och hu r handdatorn kan användas i den dagliga verksamheten.

This report gives a presentation of work in progress, a pilot study concerning the setting up of public services in the local context of the county of Blekinge, South-eastern Sweden. The main aim with this discussion is to support a more reflective and participatory attitude towards design and development of public systems among municipalities and other service producers/providers in the future. The way in which I will do this study is to examine a selection of methods, or types of needs analysis or needs assessments, used by different actors and producers of public services in order to get a picture of various needs among the users. One part of my study is to look at service providers and their use of explicit techniques, such as questionnaires, larger surveys and work carried out with the help of focus groups. A basic question to put forward is what role do these explicit surveys play for the various participating actors - including citizens - and, in the long run, for the design-choices? The mapping work described here is being carried out within the context of a larger on-going research and development project concerning the continuous design and development of IT in use in public service. [1].

This Master Thesis describes the problems with distributed co-operation and information flow with and without support of computer-based technologies. If computer-based technologies will be a success or a failure is not only de-pendent on the technologies, it is also dependent on the employees who are responsible for entering the information. If only one employee does not per-form his or hers obligation the idea with distributed computer-based tech-nologies will fail, but if they really use them and makes them reliable they will be effective tools for distribute co-operation and information. A question raised about computer support is: Different computer sys-tems can support distribution of information to employees working outside as well as inside the company, but how do we get them to be effective tools, and get the employees to take their responsibility for entering the informa-tion into the systems? The answer is that different computer systems do support employees working inside as well as outside the company and they will be effective tools if they contain the information the employees really needs and on their terms, since they are the once who will use them. The employees need to be a part of the decision of what kinds of information they will have in the systems and delegate who will be responsible for enter-ing the information into them. Different employees can view different in-formation. If the employees get some benefit from the systems and under-stand and feel that it is their responsibility and also sees that it affects their work in a positive way, then they will do the job. It is a question of democ-racy.

This Bachelor Thesis in the area of Computer Science and Work Science describes the process of design and development of an IT-tool between the municipality of Ron-neby and TietoEnator a development and consultancy firm, the Gothenburg office. The thesis focuses mainly on the cooperation between the consultant designer and the local municipal. Through cooperation, the organisation is incorporated into the tool and the tool is incorporated into the organisation. Concepts that are central in this thesis are design, cooperation and tailoring. A question raised is, if distance work and extensive cooperation might be a good way of working in the process of design and development, when the organisation is being incorporated into the tool. Advan-tages and disadvantages of this way of working are discussed. Our studies show that distance work is a good complement for personal meet-ings between designer and co-developer. There are several advantages and disadvan-tages with distance work. Through cooperation, the co-developer gains the advantage of being able to affect the tool through proposals of design. This also gives an in-creased opportunity for tailoring in the future. The support to the co-workers in the organisation is important for how the tool will be received. The long-term aspect of the process of design and development of IT is of importance when organisations continually develop and change over time. The IT-tool ought to be flexible and tailorable. In the end of this thesis, some proposals are given concerning cooperative proc-esses of design and development, on the basis of our studies during the work with this Bachelor Thesis.

How could one understand and interpret the phenomenon of information technology, is the overall research question of this licentiate dissertation. The point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology. It is possible to identify two dominating discourses; the technical and the social. In the first paper, empirical material from the Women Writing on the Net-project is mirrored against these dominating discourses. In the second paper, the focus is on how the dominating discourses are translated into librarians´ work practices and how librarians shape and transform information technology. How could one understand librarians´ ways of talking about information technology where the two separate discourses of information technology identified in the official texts do not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? Feminist theories, feminist technoscientific studies and ´actor-network theory´ offer epistemological and analytical frames and screens necessary to understand information technology as a hybrid involving numerous heterogeneous elements. Introduction to the Papers Paper One, Discourses and Cracks - A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context, is the first paper where empirical material from a local IT project is used and discussed and where it is mirrored against the dominating discourses of information technology. The first part of this paper discusses information technology as a political and practical discourse which is in part shaped by the repetition of an exalted rhetoric. This repetitive discursive model can be distinguished in global, regional and local contexts and reflects an optimistic belief in technology as an independent power that automatically furthers democratic development. Is it really this simple? The analysis includes a discussion of the concept of ´universal citizenship´ in a context of women's experiences in Sweden. The second part of the paper presents empirical material and experiences from the Women Writing on the Net-project (this is included in the framework of the DIALOGUE project, which was partly funded by ISPO/EU). The aim was to create a virtual space for women on the Internet and to explore the writing process in terms of aim, tool and method. The method of approach incorporated reflections and discussions about empowerment, democracy and representation of women. This created a more complex understanding of the values of the predominant IT discourses, and revealed the "cracks" in, and possibilities of feminist redefinitions of these values. In Paper Two, Translating and Negotiating Information Technology: Discourses and Practices, I continue exploration of my overall research question "What is information technology?" I study the dominating discourses of information technology; these I call "the technical suit" and the "social suit." In my empirical field studies among librarians in southeast Sweden I explore how the two faces of information technology - the technical and the social - are translated into librarians´ work practices. I study a project which was defined by the librarians themselves as an information technology project. I investigate how this project complies with the social/societal definitions of information technology, and how it complies with the technical definitions of information technology. In my second empirical study, I use two case studies with librarians involved in constructing web sites on the Internet. The Internet and the web are often seen in part as an open and undefined landscape in which new actors can move freely and build new partnerships, and partly as a shadow landscape of existing structures and relationships which can close up new openings. In the concluding discussion, I state that information technology seems to be both an amoeba and a chameleon. One minute it is a very pure and complicated technical story told by technicians. The next minute, it changes and turns into a financial story told by business people. It subsequently turns out to be an educational story told by teachers. It is also, however, a household story told by computer people. I suggest that information technology is impure. It is a hybrid. Inspired by Donna Haraways´s technoscientific metaphor of cyborg I claim that information technology is a cyborg in itself. In the third paper, From Networks to Fluids and Fires - A Prelude to Actor-Network Theory, I discuss a method of analysis I have tried to apply to my empirical material. I explore the notions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). My point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology by stressing the technical aspects of IT; at the same time they present information technology as a motor and a driving force for many sectors of society. In my research, I have discussed with librarians how they shape and transform information technology in their own work practices. The problems of analysing this empirical material started when the librarians started to talk about people, machines and money all in one breath. How could one understand their way of talking about information technology where the two separate lines of information technology identified in the official texts did not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? How was it possible to understand the concept of information technology as it was used by the librarians, who seemed to involve all kinds of different heterogeneous elements which at first sight were very far away from information technology? It was when asking these questions that I discovered ANT and ANTA. In this paper, I present some basic ideas about these two research approaches by reading and analysing articles published between 1980 and the year 2000. In addition to the ANT and ANTA perspectives, I also introduce my own research questions: story telling and epistemological problematisations closely connected with feminist theories are, for example, closely intertwined in this paper.

The project takes place at the intensive care unit (ICU) in Malmö. It is a collaboration project between Interactive Institute and Malmö Academic Hospital (MAS). Their main interests are to explore and domesticate a learning and competence developing process. The main question in this project is to understand how the design process can support the effective implementation of a PDA information device for nurses. The design process does not stop at the technical level. It continues by the involvement of developers into nurses? technology learning process. We have developed a first prototype from the design guidelines supplied by Erling Bjarki Björgvinsson and Per-Anders Hillgren. This prototype has allowed the disposal of films done by nurses themselves to other nurses concerning medical machineries. Those films are used by nurses themselves to support the use of those machineries, fix them and teach other nurses the functioning of those medical machineries in the ICU. We have carried on research at ICU to understand what is required for nurses to know, the implication of their work for the functioning of those machineries, and the workloads, constraints and organisation. This has been done to see how to adapt the functioning of the PDA devices to the real circumstances of their work. As the matter of fact, we have indicated how IT developers have to work, as IT-facilitators in the use context if one want to arrive to a successful IT design solution.

The main interfaces for interaction with computers today are; keyboard, mouse and remote control. In order to interact with the presentation software Power Point, the presenter has to focus either on the computer or the buttons on the remote control. By doing this, the presenter often loses the contact with his audience and his or her flow of speech gets interrupted. This project has researched the possibility of using gestures for interaction with Power Point, by using an appliance that detects gestures. The purpose was that the interaction should be possible to realise by software, which we have done an introductory design of. We have focused on assisting presenters when they use Power Point and other applications when delivering presentation. To collect data and get an understanding of presenters, presentations and gestures we have observed presenters in action, done workshops together with future users and tested some gestures in real life. These are methods inspired from approaches such as ethnographic fieldwork and participatory design. During the whole project we have used video recording to collect and save data. To create an understanding and clear picture of what the future software should include UML-diagrams were used. We have separated gestures in two categories; natural and designed. The natural gestures occur naturally during speech and social interaction, while the designed gestures are gestures that you learn to use and express, often to perform a task. We discovered that it was the designed gestures that are best suited for gestural interaction with computer. Since the designed gestures are close to the natural way of gesturing we see them as easier to learn, remember and also more comfortable to use. We think the designed gestures have the potential to become second nature, therefore they are good to use for interaction with computers. Our research work led us to realise a need for an on/off function, to distinguish the designed gestures from the natural ones. By using a gestural interface during a presentation, the presenters can keep the focus on the audience and the message they want to convey. When gestural interfaces become reality they will introduce a paradigm shift in the way that people interact with computers and information.

In the DitA project, we are studying and actively working with the development of integrated services and IT design within the public sector. This is a research and development project that is being run in cooperation between Blekinge Institute of Technology, five municipalities, two consultancy firms and a Call Center. During nearly three years (April 2000 - December 2002), the DitA project is being financed by Vinnova, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems. The DitA project focuses on the continual design and development of supportive technologies for public services. We are especially interested in how these processes can be integrated in practice with the redesign and development of the contents and organisation of integrated public services on-line. There has been a rapid and widespread development of local Internet/intranet solutions for public services during the past few years. At the same time as the public sector is "going on-line", and interdependently with this, public service administration is having to come to terms with an on-going internal metamorphosis. New ways of managing and sharing information, and of constructing and organising public services within and between different service providers in the public sector, are being tested and explored. In the DitA project, we are studying how IT can be used to support local participation in the continual design and development of public services. The challenge is, as we see it, to explore how IT can contribute to creating an informated (that is, competent, well-informed and informative) rather than an automated public sector. During the initial phase of the project, we have mainly studied the daily use of computer support for service delivery at a number of different workplaces within municipal public service administration. We have also been studying at close hand the largely cooperative processes of design during the local development and tailoring of a document management part of a municipal intranet system. Now, during the second phase of the DitA project, we are focusing more on citizens' active participation in the design process than we have done previously.

Accountability is an important issue for design, in more than one sense. In software engineering literature, accountability is mainly seen as a goal for quality assurance of design processes. In ethnomethodological studies, accountability is a central concept for understanding how people organize their everyday actions and interactions. Where the different research approaches meet, in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) literature, new and hybrid understandings of accountability arise. In this paper, I explore and compare uses of the concept of accountability in a selection of texts. Finally, using a specific case as an example, I discuss what focusing on ethnomethodological understandings of accountability might imply for design of information technologies.

At present, I am involved in a three-year research and development project called Design of IT in Use; technologies for supporting services to the citizens (Design av IT i användning, or DitA for short). This project, which is being funded by the Swedish Council for Work Life, is about the use, design and continual support and development of computer support for public administration and information services offered by one-stop shops and call centers. The main focus is on the ongoing integration of such systems with public electronic information systems, and on new developments and design to meet the increasing complexity and diversity of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). One of the aims of our research is thus to participate in the developing of new forms for citizens' access to public information and public services via Internet. Our work in the DitA project is based on previous and ongoing longitudinal close-up studies of work practices and uses of technological support in actual physical locations such as one-stop shops and call centers. In our research work, we are actively involved in inter-organizational cooperation aiming to coordinate information and services on-line across and beyond old sectorial boundaries, both on the local, municipal level, and on a regional and national level. We are participating in the analysis and design of prototypes for on-line public information and public services, including the process of establishing focus groups and reference groups for the further development and testing of ideas, scenarios and prototypes. Through and beyond the challenges these developments are posing to traditional public service bureaucracies and their roles vis-à-vis the citizens?, we see more profound challenges to ways of understanding the use and design of modern technologies. We have found, in our research work, that we are having to search for new ways to grasp from where, whom, and what situation, these service centers are being contacted. The ?global access? offered by www is accompanied by a growing need to localize the user/citizen/person ? and for the user to be able to localize her- or himself - i. e. a need to design for and manage the specificities of the situation of use of IT. One concept we have been exploring recently, as a way of focusing this seeming paradox, is ?genius loci?, a concept used by architects and artists in reference to ?the spirit of the place?.

In this position paper for the MUM 2003 workshop in Norrköping, December 10th 2003, Designing for ubicomp in the wild: Methods for exploring the design of mobile and ubiquitous service, a brief description is given of methods used in connection with a series of ‘quick and dirty’ ethnographic studies of mobile ICT users. These studies were carried out as commissioned research during 2000. Because of predetermined constraints on the studies and resulting reports, alternative ways of describing and annotating interactions on the move were devised and tested. As a result, the initial single time line approach was abandoned and a number of messier, multi-branched chor(e)ographies of communication were developed. These were finally discarded at the time as failures. However, in connection with becoming more of a mobile ICT user myself, the issue of the social and situated construction of time, and the need for supporting several themes in parallel, along different time lines, has surfaced again, and now seems more relevant than ever.

New information technology is developing faster than the models, metaphors and methods in use for conceptualizing the sharing and managing of information in organizations, in communities and in society in general. The way we utilize information technology today does not seem to succeed in supporting the everyday work practices through which organizations accomplish their work. In this PhD dissertation, the results of a research project about skill, cooperation and computer support in public service one-stop shops are presented and discussed. Based on these results, alternative metaphors are presented for understanding the constructive aspects of front office work practices, One hypothesis is, that there is added value in not only being aware of multiperspectivity as an issue, but of making use of it in design. A problem here is that many traditional research methods, as well as most methods for systems development, are designed to diminish rather than make use of ambiguity and diversity. The metaphor of inverted indexicality of language is introduced in order to conceptualize the construction of meaning in action. New ways of conceptualizing IT management on the shop floor - including design issues - are proposed. Metaphors like the art of IT management, gardening and caring for are indicative of the issues at stake.

The chapter begins with a sketchy overview of what I see as the major shift during the past century in mainstream social theorizing, and a comparison of this to recent and on-going developments of IT and software practice. These themes are then brought together in a brief personal narrative of experiences from four research and development projects I have been involved in during the past four years. 'Genius loci', interpreted here as 'the spirit of the place', is a metaphor borrowed from architectural discourse and Greek mythology. It is used in this context as an analytical tool for re-conceptualizing the relationship of the user to the development, design and use of public information systems accessible via the Internet. The use of this metaphor, and of the concept of 'strong subjectivity', is a way of exploring if it is possible to objectify and instrumentalize the actions, rather than the actors, in the on-going discourse around human-machine interaction.

As technology is developed and evolves over time in use, research areas focusing on technology, and technology in use, must develop their metaphors, models and figures of thought. Ethnomethodology, the study of how people organize their everyday lives, is a sociological approach that has come to play an important role in research on human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW)in recent years. In this presentation, some examples are given of how detailed studies of people's actions and interactions can be used to problematize current models and figures of thought concerning organizations and the organization of work. What would happen if we focus on relationships and activities, instead of formal representations of hierarchical decision structures? If we see organizations as constantly on-going activities and cultivating of relationships? How might effective computer support be designed for such an organization? The concept of 'accountability', which is central in ethnomethodology, ís used here to discuss new figures of thought and metaphorical models as a basis for developing mobile services.

In this panel, social scientists and computer scientists who have been involved in different ways in the work of challenging traditional understandings of abstraction in software design and development discuss the tensions between narratives and abstraction, metaphors and models, moods and modes – and more.

During the twenty-some years since ethnographic field studies in the workplace first began to be taken seriously as having possible relevance for the design of information technology, accountability has been one of the recurring concepts in the literature exploring these areas. Like usability and actability, accountability sounds like an important issue but proves a difficult feature to define. Of what exactly is it an attribute? Who defines it? For whom? Under what conditions? In this paper, I explore and compare a few of the various uses of the concept of accountability that I have come across in ethnomethodological and CSCW literature. In the third section, I tentatively indicate what focusing on accountability, in one or several different interpretations of the concept, might imply for design of IT in some specific cases. These brief and sketchy examples, aiming to be thought-provoking rather than analytically thought-through and articulated, are selected from recent development projects and on-going research work with which I have been involved or come in contact.

In the inter-disciplinary research and development project Design of IT in Use; supportive technologies for citizens? services (DitA), we are studying the use, design and continual support and development of computer support for public administration and information services offered by one-stop shops. Our main focus is on the ongoing integration of such systems with public electronic information systems, and on new developments and design to meet the increasing complexity and diversity of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). One of the aims of our research is to participate in developing new forms for citizens' access to public services via Internet. The DitA-project is funded by the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA, During our ethnographic field studies of work practices in public service one-stop shops, we have observed how closely interwoven people?s on-going choices of action and use of technology are with issues of accountability. This, in turn, has lead us to question whether the importance of considering and supporting accountability issues and needs is perhaps underestimated in the design and development of ICT. Even when designers deliberately focus on use- and action-oriented concepts such as usability and actability, it doesn?t necessarily follow that accountability surfaces as an explicit issue for design. When it does, it is often narrowed down to questions of human-computer interface design, and focused on system accountability versus the user (form and content of feedback information, etc). However, accountability issues, when explored in specific use contexts, are closely linked to social and organizational issues on a number of different levels. Accountability itself, when focused through the prism of people in action, becomes multifarious and ambiguous, begging further exploration of context and involved relationships. In the DitA project, we have deliberately attempted to focus on the concept of accountability in action and how it can be supported and mediated by the design of ICT infrastructures.

Problem-based learning is emphasized in teaching as well as in research at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, where we come from. Students work in projects, often in collaboration with businesses and other organizations in the region. Cross-disciplinary course modules and co-operative projects are offered, involving students and staff from different subject areas. As far as possible, student projects are linked to on-going research projects, and research, too, is carried out in close cooperation with the surrounding society, the public sector and enterprises/industries in the region. Consequently, when we decided to offer a net-based summer course in 2002, an important aspect was how we could continue to link our on-going interdisciplinary research cooperation to the course in a constructive way, such that the students could be involved in problem-based learning of relevance to both their own situations and our research work. In this paper, we describe and reflect on some of the experiences from our first net-based summer course, in which we used three main themes and a combination of individual and group tasks to support reflection and dialogue around the literature and the students? own contributions to the course. The course was net-based, but also included F-2-F; three consecutive days of ?live? lectures and seminars at the university campus in Ronneby.

This Bachelor?s Thesis concerns 20 points at the MDA educational program (People, Computers and Work) at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Ronneby. The MDA educational program focuses on how people use Information Technology and its design and development. Volvo Car Corporation is looking at the future possibilities of their development of their Drivers Information Module, DIM . Today all their instruments are analogical and as time go by, new features are added in the car. This overflow of instruments and information is more likely to confuse the driver than to assist him. Instead Volvo wants to focus on showing only the relevant information for the driver. So Volvo is designing a new Drivers Information Module, which works like a computer monitor. This gives a new perspective on how to show information for the driver. Our goal in this project is to give ideas on how the information can be displayed in this new version of the DIM and in what situations.

When a computerized artefact is introduced as a tool in an activity it is not possible to only consider the design of this tool to understand the actual use of it. It is also necessary to study the context in which it is used and to rig the environment to support the use of this tool. This I have tried to show in this master thesis where I have studied how travellers behave in the check-in process, using or not using Self Service units for check-in at airports in Sweden and Norway.

Many of those who buy a PDA today do it for the purpose of time management. The PDA is meant to replace other artifacts like paper diaries and notebooks but in practice the PDA cannot be used as the sole resource for time management. We think that to succeed in making time management with a PDA more useful the design has to be grounded in an understanding of the existing technology and how it is used in practice. We achieved this understanding of the time management with a PDA by conducting an ethnographical study to find out how the PDA is used in practice, making a technical investigation of the PDA and cooperated with the PDA users throughout the design process. In this thesis we describe our design suggestion that improves the applications for time management in the PDA and take it a step closer to be the replacement for other time management artifacts that the users wanted.

Field studies, interviews and participative observations have been the main methods in this master thesis where the author has studied, and partially participated, in the development process of a booking system called FRI. Idavall is the small company that develops this suc-cessful software despite small resources. Characteristic for Idavall is in the way they manage to involve their about 1300 users in the development process. The development process is highly flexible which is required when rapidly changes are common. The overall question in this thesis is: How do Idavall manage to develop this software in a flexible way and successfully involve their users in the development process? Idavall arranges FRI-meetings, courses and demonstrations where users meet each other and a representative from Idavall. All participants discuss FRI and have the opportunity to propose changes, improvements and report bugs. One of the most important parts of the busi-ness idea of Idavall is to offer a proper, friendly and professional support. The support is one of the most important possibilities to be informed about the users? needs, wishes and propos-als. This, what I called, user driven development has a lot of common with Participatory De-sign (PD) where users participate in the design of new software. PD implies that users of software should take part in decisions that affect the system and the way it is used and de-signed. Idavall make use of a kind of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is a concept used in the marketing arena. The objective of CRM is to create a strong, mutual and trustful relationship between supplier and customer. By using CRM in combination with PD it is possible to enhance the user participation and enable user driven development. The company has a flexible development process, which is built on an informal way of driving the process. Informal meetings are common where decisions about changes and im-provements are taken quickly. New versions are delivered about 20 times a year. The employ-ees meet several times a day in the central located coffee room and discuss problems. The development process has a lot of common with Extreme Programming (XP), which is a software development methodology that aims to make software development more flexi-ble and focus on highly flexible environments with quickly changing requirements. XP is de-scribed briefly and comparisons are made to the development process of FRI as well as short-comings of XP in the context of PD.

Computer supported collaborative learning, CSCL, is a relatively new focus for research within Instructional technology. It focuses on the process of learning in a computer supported collaborative environment. In this report I will use a model for designing effective learning-environments, called Cognitive Apprenticeship to highlight areas of importance when arranging CSCL-environments. Cognitive apprenticeship is an attempt to combine apprenticeships and in-school-work. It focuses on the facilitation of development of theoretical and practical skills in an in-school-setting. But even though the model has been described as successful, there are some drawbacks. Different conditions for school and work makes it difficult to transfer the successful apprenticeship-model to an in-school-setting.

Many companies invest large amount of money in developing new technology, without knowing how it will be used. To succeed in making these technologies useful it is necessary to understand the context that gives meaning to the artifact. In the case of generic products, especially in new domains, the context is not obvious. This bachelor thesis analyses what Usability Engineering, Participatory Design and Ethnography can contribute to the problem of learning about the context of usage for generic artifacts. Understanding and identifying details of context is considered to be important to achieve usability in software development. The experience is that most recommendations on usability methods concern situations of specific users in a specific context. In order to find important aspects of the real-world use of generic products, we suggest that ethnographic studies can be conducted in contexts where behaviors relevant to the design are thought to be found. The problem of not knowing the context was experienced in usability work practiced in a large software engineering project. The project task was to develop a web browser for Symbian's ?Quartz? reference design for handheld devices. Methods used were taken from participatory design and usability engineering.