Work Activity

in

Human-Computer Interaction

Linda S. van Rens

Martha L. Haigler

Neill A. Kipp

(table of contents)

1. Itinerary

• Introduce science of ``Activity Theory''

• Explicate ``Ethnography''

• Discuss related topics
  • Participatory design (PD)

  • Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

2. Work Activity

Theory which says that people's actions cannot be seen separately from the environment in which and the circumstances under which they take place.

3. Ethnography

Method to study human behavior in its natural environment

Relation to Work activity: ethnography of work processes

4. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Category of computer applications built to help people in cooperative work

Relation to work activity: lot of personal interaction, so work activity theory can have a lot of consequences

5. Participatory Design (PD)

Way of designing with active involvement of people that will be affected by the new technology

Relation to work activity: designing computer systems

6. Case Study: the Work-Oriented Design project

Blomberg, Suchman, Trigg, 1995

• Why?
  • Explore possibility to link site-specific studies of work with technology design

• How?
  • Cycle between field studies, design, and user experience with mock-ups and prototypes

• Based on work activity theory

• Use of ethnography to perform site-specific studies

7. The Work-Oriented Design Project

``The Lawyers''

• Cooperation between:
  • Law firm

  • Research organization: new technologies

• Goal: design applications for image processing technologies, e.g. electronic forms, handprint recognition

8. The Law Firm

• 200 attorneys

• 300 support staff

• Why this firm?
  • Mix of technologies in use

  • Paper-oriented

  • Variety of documents and document-related activities

9. First step in Fieldwork

Interviews and guided tours

• Central activity: processing documents from client's files

• Junior attorneys review documents

• Litigation support workers create on-line index

• Design goal: support creation electronic index

10. Step 2 in Fieldwork

Interview attorneys

• subjective coding by junior attorneys

• objective coding by litigation support workers
  • date

  • author

  • recipient

  • document type

• routine work

• easily automated

11. Step 3 in Fieldwork

• Interview supervisor of litigation support
  • Result: coding not straightforward. Interpretation needed

• Observe work of document coders
  • Result: reading of documents, judgments made

12. Result Interviews and Observation

• Conclusion
  • Impossible to automate

• Solution:
  • Support only some aspects

  • Reduce objective work

  • Informed judgments by coders

13. Step 4 in Fieldwork

• Discussion, observation, prototypes

• Experimenting with alternative strategies

• Originally:
  • Relevant information on form by coder

  • Form in database by data entry workers

  • Database check with form by quality control workers

• Experiment:
  • Relevant information on documents by coders

  • Information in database by data entry workers

  • Database check with document by quality control workers

14. Prototype

• Possibilities:
  • code on machine readable forms

  • code on document pages

  • code on-line

• How?
  • forms scanned into system, interpreted

  • electronic form automatically filled as far as possible

  • circled information on document gathered on screen

  • paste into appropriate fields

  • check form or document on-line with handprint recognition

• Flexibility
  • characteristics of the task

  • document type

15. To conclude:

• Sometimes extensive studies needed

• Work activity theory, ethnography

• Justification of used procedure
  • Interviews with people closer to the job necessary

  • Observation over an extended period of time necessary