Towards an activity-oriented and context-aware collaborative working environments

1. Presented by: Ince T Wangsa (i.t.wangsa@staffs.ac.uk) Supervised by: Prof Lorna Uden and Stella Mills Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium 22nd and 23rd March 2010 Place photo here Towards an activity-oriented and context-aware collaborative working environments

2. Introduction • Collaboration and service innovation • Collaborative working environments (CWE) and groupware • New generation of groupware system / collaborative software, but also offer new paradigm in assisting current organisations complex collaboration activity Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

3. Introduction • Focus mostly on the technical and application infrastructure aspect of CWEs. The human factors of CWEs are ignored. • Studying the multiple aspects of stakeholders’ activities and interactions with technological tools - in particular social-cultural contexts and the historical development of their activities - will establish a deep understanding of the users’ requirements and achieve sufficient usefulness of the system Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

4. Research Problem • The key research question that this report set out to investigate is: What makes AT possible to be the underlying principle or theories for the framework development? • Secondly, what are the inputs and benefits that AT can bring to CWE requirement engineering research and practice? Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

5. Aims • to investigate in further the possibilities of activity theory (AT) as a powerful descriptive tool in facilitating the design of collaborative working environment (CWE). • to develop a framework through the use of activity theory to model the requirement analysis and the design of CWE. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

6. Objectives • To investigate activity theory to explain inter-relational aspects of relationships between the various stakeholders of collaborative working environment for research collaboration and understand their needs. • To apply activity theory in the analysis of the interactions and activities of the multiple stakeholders with their environment and the collaborative working environment, within a particular embedded socio-cultural context. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

7. Objectives • To develop a framework based on activity theory which models the multiple stakeholders’ requirements and the design of collaborative working environment. • To test and evaluate the developed framework by implementing a prototype of a collaborative working environment. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

8. Motivation • The theoretical motivation of the study to generate a better understanding of how requirement engineering operates and an activity based framework used to inform the design requirements in a real world setting • Activity theory has been recognised to effectively provide significant inputs to system design, it is quite difficult for the system designer to understand and use them in the system design process. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

9. Research Methodology • Framework Testing • Prototyping • Using KMO Group as a case study • Requirement gathering : interviews, • questionnaires and observation • Operationalising the developed • framework • Initial Investigation • Literature review- CWE • Literature review- RE • Literature review - AT Framework Development • Framework Evaluation • Questionnaires and interviews • Result : analysed and • synthethised for framework • improvement Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

10. Current Research Finding • Early requirements engineering approaches for collaborative software utilise the formal and semi formal technique which do not allow proper mapping of ethnography contextual approaches • Few attempts to synthesise requirements engineering techniques for interface design. In addition, the current approach to RE cannot be easily used to elicit and analyse the interface design requirements since it is mostly utilising the formal and semi-formal specification techniques. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

11. Current Research Finding • The traditional cognitive approach to HCI may well be important in understanding the lower, more basic functions of the brain, but they have been unsuccessful in informing scientists about human behaviour in the real world. • The task analysis lack of understanding the structure of human cognition and provides no systematic way for dealing with the rich social and physical context in which activities are embedded. Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

12. Current Research Finding • Cognitive ergonomics - cognitive work analyses of individuals rather than groups of stakeholders involved in team activities, performing their cognitive tasks in collaborative systems. • Distributed Cognition - accords equal weight to people and things (or objects) and ignores the fact that individuals have consciousness. • Activity theory – tool mediation, context, contradiction Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

13. Provisional PhD Thesis Table of Content Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

14. Provisional PhD Thesis Table of Content • Chapter 1 : Introduction • Chapter 2: Literature Review Part 1 – Collaborative Working Environments • Chapter 3: Literature Review Part 2 – Requirements Engineering • Chapter 4: Literature Review Part 3– Theories for framework development • Chapter 5: The Proposed Framework • Chapter 6: The Prototyped Development Part 1 • Chapter 7 : The Prototyped Development Part 2 – User Requirements Gathering • Chapter 8: Discussion • Chapter 9: Evaluation • Chapter 10: Conclusion Service Science and Innovation Doctoral Colloquium

15. Thank You