The social life of engineering authorizations

ABSTRACT

We may view documents, not only as containers for information, but also as active participants in organizing and sustaining communities. This paper discusses our experiences in designing a web-based tool for writing and managing engineering authorizations, and the social perspectives influence on our understanding of the problem and the design of our system. It presents observations based on our fieldwork with users, and the evaluation of a set of prototype systems. It shows how these observations changed our central metaphor for the system, moving it from a machine model to a society of agents metaphor. Finally, it illustrates the way this new metaphor changed our system functionality and architecture.

REFERENCES

• 1: Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. The Social Life of Documents. First Monday: Peer-reviewed Journal on the Internet. 1 (1) www.firstmonday.dk.
• 2: NWC Technical Business Practice 404: Engineering Authorization System. Sandia National Laboratories. September 1, 1999.
• 3: Richard Coyne, Designing information technology in the postmodern age: from method to metaphor, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995
• 4: William A. Stubblefield, Patterns of change in design metaphor: a case study, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.73-80, April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/274644.274656]
• 5: Blomberg, Jeanette, Giacomi, Jean, Mosher, Andrea, Swenton-Wall, Pat. Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design. In {7}
• 6: Hutchins, Edwin. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press. 1994.
• 7: Douglas Schuler , Aki Namioka, Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1993
• 8: B. A. Huberman, The ecology of computation, Elsevier Science Inc., New York, NY, 1988

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Systems analysis and design

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Web-based interaction

General Terms:
Documentation, Management

Keywords:
community, design ethnography, documents, metaphor, system design