| Increasing sensitivity towards everyday work practice in system design | ||
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I have used the above experiences as a fieldworker who first learned the role of participant observer and then turned into a participant interventionist in the development of a tool for design practice, namely the WPASED (Work Practice Analysis, System Evaluation and Design) workshops. The tool has been used in work practice based participatory interventions to support the participants in communicating and co-constructing shared understandings of work practice, system use and further technology development.
The development of the tool was inspired and informed by several researchers’ work. The proposition to foster a joint enterprise of three perspectives, namely practice, research and design collaborating simultaneously in workshops (Suchman & Trigg 1991), was possibly the most important single idea of inspiration and influence. Jordan and collaborators" work on Workplace Interaction Laboratories (WIAL) (Cefkin & Jordan 1994) assured and gave ideas for grounding the collaborative activities in the workshop on an analysis of actual work activities. The incorporation of both existing ways of working in the video collage has been inspired by the three layers of time: past, present and future used in developmental intervention processes in Change Laboratories (Engeström et al. 1996). However, instead of using the predefined categories of ‘historical forms of work’ (Engeström 1995) it was considered important to represent the existing forms of work practice, which in this case were mediated by different technologies. Piispanen"s work on Simulation games (Piispanen 1995) was of great help in planning the practicalities of the workshops. Participatory Design techniques and methods (e.g. Bødker et al. 1993) provided ideas for a workshop kind of intervention. In planning the workshops the issues of participation, shared object and collaborative activities were carefully considered (see also Karasti 1997c, publication III, pp. 5-9).
My contention was that the workshops should be multiparty undertakings comprising of practitioners, designers and fieldworker/researchers. Not for the sake of each party attending to their area of responsibility but so that all participants with different backgrounds and situated positions could contribute with their views and knowledges into the collaborative process of constructing shared understandings.
In addition to the professional designers and other members of the initial design team the aim was especially to encourage the involvement of work practice participants in the workshop. Practitioner participation was considered with regard to their situated and partial views from within the ‘working division of labour’ and their experiences with the everyday use of the experimental teleradiology system, though some consideration was also given to practitioners’ positions within the health care institutions, their (medical) specialities and degrees of experience with different technologies.
We were fortunate to negotiate the participation of all occupational groups involved in the teleradiology practice, hence all situated views and local experiences with the system were covered. Participation from both locations of teleradiology service would enable the practitioners to learn what actually took place in the other end of the teleradiology connection and to collaboratively develop their working together on the level of everyday routines and work activities. As video recordings of actual work activities were to be used in the workshops, the participation of those individuals whose work was presented on the tape was encouraged.
The foremost idea for the workshops was to ground all collaborative activities on an analysis of existing work practice. In thinking about representing radiology work practice for system design I pondered upon what was essential in the everyday radiology work and how it could be made visible and intelligible for system design. Video was chosen as material for representing work practice because it provided for rich, detailed, naturalistic information and preserved the features of situated work context thereby allowing for an analysis of actual unfolding activities. Furthermore, video also seemed a more easily shareable and understandable medium for collaborative activities than, for example, graphical or written descriptions of work.
Inspired by the work of Wall & Mosher (1994), Brun-Cottan & Wall (1995), Cefkin & Jordan (1994) and Blomberg and Trigg (2000) on using video collections to stimulate participation by designers and users, I came up with the idea of video collages. I have used the term without artistic connotations in the meaning of an assembly of diverse fragments placed in juxtaposition; their rather unfinished and technically often imperfect character is to emphasize their role as a medium and material for collaborative activities. They bear similarities to ‘video collections’ (Cefkin & Jordan 1994, Jordan & Henderson 1994) as they are edited collections of instances of work activities recorded during fieldwork. Video collages are based on the fieldworker’s analysis and in them she offers her understanding of the work practice and technology use to the other participants.
The analytic work that goes into preparing video collages starts already during fieldwork comprising the construction of a participant observer’s understanding of work practice during fieldwork (see sections 3.1 and 3.3) and continues in the more design-oriented analysis and evaluation of forming an adequately detailed comprehension of the potential (re)design issues (see section 4.2).
The video collage encompasses the fieldworker’s understanding in several ways (for a more detailed discussion see Karasti 2001, publication V, pp. 11-13). Firstly, it reflects the participant observer’s inside-outside view by making visible both the multiple partial views and situated locations of practitioners from within the actual practice (emic) as well as it integrates an overall account of work as it is edited according to the fieldworker’s outside, analytic and synthesized view (etic) (see sections 3.3.3, 3.3.4 and 4.2.5). It presents entire sessions of actual work practice ‘as it is’ including the unfolding smoothly organising routine ways and the problems encountered and handled in the course of working, and it relies on the categories ‘from within’ in the selection of work instances (see section 3.1.3).
Secondly, the video collage embodies the two perspectives of observation and intervention in which the fieldworker engages by including clips meaningful from the point of view of both practice and design, i.e. it contains material for the analysis of what is essential in everyday practice (section 3.1.3) and for the evaluation of how usable the system is in everyday work (see section 4.2.4), as well as for the formulation of redesign issues (see section 4.2.2).
Lastly, the video collage presents co-existing contexts of work which are differently technologically mediated to allow for their juxtaposition (see section 4.2.3) and the identification of endogenous change (see section 4.2.1). The sequential order of viewing was made use of in starting the video collage with the traditional way of working. This allows the participants to familiarise with the existing routines and smoothly organising ways of working as well as with the practitioners’ local knowledge and lived experience of film-based work practice to establish a common ground before proceeding to the new way of working.
Based on experiences gained in stimulated recall interviews with radiology practitioners some informed conjectures and tentative assumptions were made about the interaction between video collage and workshop participants.
Video collage would form a shared object of interest and activities for the participants in the workshops. The co-viewing of videotaped work activities would be interleaved with discussion which would help the participants in retaining a connection with the everyday work practice, though analysis was carried out removed from the actual sites of work. In these discussions the participants would comment, ask questions, offer interpretations, share experiences, and recount related knowledge. Manifold interpretations of the same sequence of work were to be expected on account of heterogeneous participants with various backgrounds and points of view.
The order of video collage, having first the film-based way of working followed by the emergent teleradiology work practice, would encourage the participants to proceed from the analysis of technologically mediated work activities to the evaluation of system use situations by having a possibility to compare the two existing ways of working. The multiparty participation would secure both work practice and system design issues to be raised in envisioning an improved future system.
As a participant interventionist my aim was to make visible and intelligible work practice, especially the tacitness of everyday work which practitioners find difficult to articulate, in a way that enhanced its analysis, created dialogues and stimulated discussions in system design. By presenting my understanding of work practice in form of a video collage I could also concentrate on facilitating others in collaboration and supporting all participants in partaking in and shifting between the foreseen major activities of analysis, evaluation and envisioning.