Ambiguities, awareness and economy: a study of emergency service work

ABSTRACT

This paper derives from a study undertaken at an emergency service centre in Sweden. The studies have focused on features of work familiar to the CSCW community, including the documenting and analysing current work practices, understanding the properties of the technology in question, and perhaps most importantly how the technology functions in and through use. Our focus in this paper exemplifies these themes through the analysis of two cases. In the first, the issue in question is the way in which an emergency is identified and dealt with, it being the case that a typical problem to be dealt with by operators, and more commonly in the days of mobile telephony, is that of multiple reporting of a single case. Of particular interest here is listening-in, which is a function in the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system and by contrast that of 'overhearing', which is not. The second case focus on the relevance of wall maps, given the existence of computerized maps in these centres. Based on two cases from emergency service centres, we will show that the concept of awareness needs careful unpacking if we are to understand associated design issues.

REFERENCES

• 1: Anderson, R. J., J. A. Hughes and W. Sharrock (1989) Working for Profit: The Social Organisation of Calculability in an Entrepreneurial Firm. Aldershot, Avebury.
• 2: Artman, H. and Y. Waern (1999) Distributed Cognition in an Emergency Co-ordination Center. Fördelade kunskapsprocesser i ledningscentraler vid nödsituationer: koordination och situationsmedvetenhet. (eds.) H. Artman. Linköping, Tema Kommunikation, Linköping, Sweden: 183--199.
• 3: Johan Berndtsson , Maria Normark, The coordinative functions of flight strips: air traffic control work revisited, Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, p.101-110, November 14-17, 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, United States [doi>10.1145/320297.320308]
• 4: John Bowers , David Martin, Informing collaborative information visualisation through an ethnography of ambulance control, Proceedings of the Sixth European conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.311-330, August 1999, Copenghagen, Denmark
• 5: Button, G. (2000) The Ethnographic tradition and design. Design Studies 21(4): 319--332.
• 6: Goodwin, C. and M. Goodwin (1993) Formulating planes: Seeing as a situated activity. Communication and cognition at work. (eds.) Y. Engeström and D. Middleton. Cambridge University Press: 61--95.
• 7: Harper, R., D. Randall and M. Rouncefield (2000) Organisational change and retail finance. An ethnographic perspective. London, Routledge.
• 8: Heath, C. and P. Luff (1991) Collaborative activity and technological design: Task coordination in London Underground control rooms. ECSCW '91. Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, (eds.) L. Bannon, M. Robinson and K. Schmidt, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 65--80.
• 9: Heath, C. and P. Luff (1992) Collaboration and control: Crisis management and multimedia technology in London Underground control rooms. CSCW 1(1-2): 69--94.
• 10: John A. Hughes , David Randall , Dan Shapiro, Faltering from ethnography to design, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.115-122, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.143469]
• 11: David Martin , John Bowers , David Graham Wastell, The Interactional Affordances of Technology: An Ethnography of Human-Computer Interaction in an Ambulance Control Centre, Proceedings of HCI on People and Computers XII, p.263-281, January 1997
• 12: Normark, M. (2002) Using Technology for Real-Time Coordination of Work: A study of work and artifact use in the everyday activities at SOS Alarm. Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science. Stockholm, Royal Institute of Technology.
• 13: Abigail J. Sellen , Richard H.R. Harper, The Myth of the Paperless Office, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003
• 14: Suchman, L. (1993) Technologies of accountability: of lizards and aeroplanes. Technology in Working Order. Studies of work, interaction, and technology. (eds.) G. Button. London, Routledge: 113--126.
• 15: Suchman, L. (1997) Centers of coordination: A case and some themes. Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition. (eds.) L. B. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo and B. Burge. Berlin, Springer-Verlag: 44--62.
• 16: Jennifer C. Watts , David D. Woods , James M. Corban , Emily S. Patterson , Ronald L. Kerr , LaDessa C. Hicks, Voice loops as cooperative aids in space shuttle mission control, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.48-56, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240188]
• 17: Jack Whalen, Expert systems versus systems for experts: computer-aided dispatch as a support system in real-world environments, The social and interactional dimensions of human-computer interfaces, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1995

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.3 Organizational Impacts
          Subjects: Computer-supported collaborative work

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work; Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
awareness, centers of coordination, command and control, computer aided dispatch, control rooms, coordination, ethnography, time-critical work, workplace study