KTH / CSC / ~artman
Ph.D.-students
Here I present my Ph.D-students, that I am currently supervising
or have been supervising. Want to become a Ph.D. student? Read
this and read the book.
Currently Supervisning
__________Anna Swartling
Anna is working on a Ph.D.-thesis on how different
actors in systems development projects affiliate and position
themselves as well as usability and user centered design processes
during large scale projects.
Hillevi Sundholm__________
Hillevi is working on a Ph.D.-thesis on how people interact in so
called interactive spaces.
__________Ulrika Dovhammar
Ulrika is working on a licentiate thesis on
responsibiliy for usability in large systems development projects.
Rosa Gudjonsdottir__________
Rosa is working on a thesis on requirements visualization and how one can make several different stakeholders understand the specifics
of the actual computer system.
Baked and ready made
My role has been co-supervisor.
__________Inger Boivie, Ph.D.
Abstract: A Fine Balance
IT systems with poor usability are a serious
problem in many workplaces. Many workers, particularly office
workers, spend a large part of their workday at the computer, and
usability problems can cause frustration and impact negatively on
productivity. This thesis discusses some of the problems associated
with addressing usability and users’ needs in IT systems development.
Usability issues and users’ needs are often
marginalised or even abandoned in systems development. Technical
issues and deadlines are given precedence, while usability
activities and user activities are cut back or cancelled. Research
shows that there are various obstacles to usability and user
involvement, including difficulties with understanding the usability
concept, insufficient usability expertise and a lack of time and
resources.
This thesis presents a number of studies that look
at the problem from different angles. The main question is why
usability and users’ needs are marginalised in bespoke systems
development, where IT systems are built for a specific work context.
The research presented in this thesis also addresses user-centred
systems design as a way of integrating usability issues and users’
needs into systems development. The thesis concludes with a
discussion about different ways of viewing and representing the
users’ work: the systems theoretical view and the view of work as a
social process. The former emphasises the formal aspects of work and
views users as components in an overall system, whereas the latter
focuses on work as a social process and people as active agents. The
discussion concludes with the argument that the conflict between
these two views is played out in the systems development process,
which may help explain some of the difficulties that arise when
working with usability and users’ needs.
Full text
Maria Normark, Ph.D.__________
The research problem explored in this thesis is how technology
and work practice are related in coordinative situations (collocated
and over distance). Further, the problem of how this kind of
research results can be transformed and used in the development of
new technology is discussed.
Air Traffic Control and Emergency Call Centers are the two
domains where the complex process of coordination in a time and
safety critical setting has been studied. The methodological
approach taken in the field studies is ethnographic, a qualitative
method with a descriptive outcome. Air traffic controllers focus on
keeping the airspace organized so that the aircraft are separated at
all times, as well as are given an economic route by e.g. slowing
down so that they do not have to wait in the air for traffic ahead.
In order to manage the control of the national airspace, it is
divided into geographical sectors each of which is controlled by 1-2
controllers. The aircraft cross many sectors during one flight and
each time they cross a sector border there is a handover of
responsibility between the controllers. The controllers have a large
number of tools that they orchestrate in order to maintain control
and keep records of the orders given to the pilots. The situation in
one sector has therefore been locally stored at their work position.
It is shown in the thesis how the social interaction and the
technology support are ordered to broadcast the locally stored
information.
Emergency call centers at SOS Alarm are in contrast to the ATC
centers fully computerized. The operators use CoordCom, a system
that is currently in the process of being renewed. When a telephone
call to the emergency number 112 is received in one of the 20 local
centers in Sweden, a receiving operator initiates the case by
interviewing the caller in order to categorize the incident. Often,
an incident consists of a number of conditions that together make an
emergency. It is shown that accountability of decisions and local
knowledge of the center’s responsibility area are two important
parts of coordination at SOS Alarm.
A question that has been of interest during the studies is what
possibilities ethnographic observations provide when used as a
starting point in a design project. The final study provided a
description of how the ethnographic material from the emergency call
center study was explored and transformed in order to create
concrete functionality and design.
The thesis contributes with examples from the workplace studies
of how people interact with each other through the technology and
how skills, local knowledge and professional concerns shape the
interaction. It also contributes with reflections on how
descriptions and experiences of work practice and technology use in
the field can serve as a foundation in shaping and designing new
ideas and new functionality for future systems.
The papers included in this thesis shows results on four issues
in relation to coordination and technology:
-Coordinative work practice and implications in using video/audio
in a distributed setting
-Support for accountability in decision-making in a distributed
setting
-The role of local knowledge and combined expertise in a local
collocated center
-The transformation of ethnographic observations in the design
process
The thesis also shows the importance of a further definition of
the dichotomy of collocated and distributed work in order to inform
technology. An analysis of the dichotomy based on the field study
results is presented in the thesis.
Full text
__________Erik Markensten, Ph. Lic.
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Abstract: Mind the Gap
Usability professionals seldom get a chance
to actually do their job. Instead, they have to argue that
usability is something important that should be attended to.
This was the initial problem that motivated this thesis. In
spite decenniums of evolution within HCI this problem is
still highly relevant, and existing approaches to solve it
yet have to prove their effectiveness. When approaches to
integrate HCI into systems development have been discussed,
there has seldom been a discussion about how a given
approach may be more or less useful in different development
contexts. Nor has there been much discussion about how HCI
activities relates to the overall procurement-development
process. One reason for this may be that existing approaches
to HCI integration are suited primarily for product
development and, to some extent, to in-house development. At
least these contexts are most common in existing case
studies.
In this thesis, I focus on the problem of
HCI integration in contract development. This context poses
particular challenges, mainly because two parties with
different goals are involved – the procurer and the supplier.
They regulate business relations and responsibilities via
the contract. In both existing practice and in research the
user-centred design (UCD) process has, at least implicitly,
been assumed to belong to the supplier side. It is the
suppliers, i.e. consultancy firms, that have employed
usability professionals and that have tried to integrate HCI
into their development processes. By taking a procurement
perspective instead, I question this assumption.
I present three case studies that start with
a survey of common problems in current procurement practice
and end with trying out an approach to work with UCD in
systems acquisition. While my interest initially concerned
successful HCI integration, I also discuss how the suggested
approach deals with several existing problems that procurers
face. In particular, the approach links abstract business
goals that any systems acquisition starts of with, to
detailed systems requirements that it aims at defining. This
facilitates for procurers to focus on the goals that the
future system should help enable and linking these goals to
the requirement specification that the contract is based on.
Full
text
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Mattias Arvola, Ph.D.__________
Shades of use
Full text
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