Jeanette Blomberg | IBM Research (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeanette Blomberg

Kluwer Academic Publishers eBooks, Dec 2, 2005

This paper reports on a work-oriented design project concerned with the question of how to migrat... more This paper reports on a work-oriented design project concerned with the question of how to migrate shared, workgroup document collections currently kept on paper online. Based in a civil engineering work group, the focus of our project is a document collection called the "project files," a heterogeneous mix of documents that serve as an ongoing resource for the group during a project's course as well as an archival record at its completion. We describe the dynamics of the standardized classification scheme in use for the project files, existing practices of document filing including routine troubles, and the prototype developed to move the project files online. The latter includes a configuration of hardware and software along with associated practices of document scanning, coding and search. We conclude with some reflections on the difficulties of maintaining alignment across paper and digital media in the migration to online document collections, and with a summary of the questions posed and answers provided by our project. ' The engineering team was initially composed of six civil engineers but has grown to more than 20 The prototype system we developed is intended to support the work of the entire team

Routledge eBooks, May 15, 2017

Synthesis Lectures on Human-centered Informatics, 2015

European Journal of Operational Research, 2020

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

... General Terms: Experimentation, Human Factors. Collaborative Colleagues: Jeanne C. Finley: co... more ... General Terms: Experimentation, Human Factors. Collaborative Colleagues: Jeanne C. Finley: colleagues. John Muse: colleagues. Lucy Suchman: colleagues. Jeannette Blomberg: colleagues. Susan Newman: colleagues. Randy Trigg: colleagues. ...

We report from an ongoing study of the design, development, and deployment of an intelligent work... more We report from an ongoing study of the design, development, and deployment of an intelligent workplace system in the IT services domain. We describe the system, which is designed to augment the complex design work of highly-skilled IT architects with the use of natural language processing (NLP) and optimization modelling. We outline results from our study, which analyzes feedback from architects as they interacted with various prototypes of the system. This feedback focuses on their sensemaking and uncertainty around: system actions; interactivity and system outputs; and integration with existing processes. These findings point to “explanation” as a multi-dimensional requirement. Such multi-dimensionality requires more careful articulation of the different types of explanations needed to support workers as they make sense of and successfully integrate smart systems in their everyday work practice. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Computing methodologies; Artificial intellig...

This paper proposes an anthropology of services with implications for service science and design.... more This paper proposes an anthropology of services with implications for service science and design. Contemporary services are often presented as a rupture with previous economic regimes such as manufacturing, a discontinuity that allows services to be conceptualized as a professional domain. We argue instead that services have long characterized the human condition and that they are always embedded in local contexts. An anthropology of services explicates these social contexts to develop more varied and grounded approaches to service encounters, notions of co-production and co-creation, value propositions, and service systems. Paradoxically, an anthropology of services draws attention to the conceptual and methodological messiness of service worlds and in doing so it contributes to expanding our understanding of the variety of services, the limits to their conceptualization as objects of design, and the possibilities for intervening in and around them to contribute to human betterment.

Many organizations face pressures to stay on the “cutting-edge,” that is, leverage emerging techn... more Many organizations face pressures to stay on the “cutting-edge,” that is, leverage emerging technologies to demonstrate currency and competitiveness in fast-changing, sociotechnical industrial environments. These challenges reside at the core of a growing array of organizations selling “innovation-as-a-service” offerings. These offerings capitalize on both clients’ ambitions and also insecurities over their ability to provide state-of-the-art products and services worthy of the label innovation. What is the work required to transform novel inventions into innovations? In this paper, we report on ethnographic fieldwork studying innovation-as-a-service activities at a large, global technology and services company. These activities focus on the integration of novel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities in service offerings aimed to provide “innovation” to clients. Our emergent findings center on: relationing (nurturing the various relationships implicated ...

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

A key challenge to the implementation and adoption of intelligent machines in the workplace is th... more A key challenge to the implementation and adoption of intelligent machines in the workplace is their integration with situated work practices and organizational processes. We examine these issues through a qualitative field study in the domain of information technology (IT) services procurement, where highly-skilled IT architects spend considerable effort reading and digesting client RFPs to design technical solutions. Our field study focuses on the design and development of an intelligent tool meant to augment architects’ design work. Along with usability issues and curiosity about the tool’s underlying intelligent features, architects raised a number of questions about how the tool would be used in relation to other processes and workflows that comprised their design work. Our findings consider how intelligent systems are actors within a sociotechnical system and how new relations emerge through their introduction, raising questions for future intelligent system design and integration.

Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion

As recent scholars have noted, there is little discourse amongst the HCI, interaction design, and... more As recent scholars have noted, there is little discourse amongst the HCI, interaction design, and UX communities on topics of AI and their relationship to design practice, a gap this workshop aims to address. Bringing together practitioners and researchers from a variety of backgrounds, this workshop sets out three goals: (1) identify case studies and projects at the intersection of HCI and AI, highlighting their ethical dimensions; (2) identify the chief challenges to HCI and AI collaborations and strategies to address them; and (3) foster a community for continued discourse and development on the intersections between AI Ethics, social computing, and design.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

This paper draws attention to the growing adoption of web and mobile apps in the enterprise, typi... more This paper draws attention to the growing adoption of web and mobile apps in the enterprise, typically supported by digital storage in the cloud. While these developments offer several advantages, they also pose challenges for workers who must make sense of increasingly complex software configurations – with apps accessible from multiple devices (typically supporting different features or capabilities) and used alongside legacy enterprise software. We investigate how workers navigate these environments through a qualitative study of the work practices of employees in an app-enhanced organization. Our findings focus on two sets of practices. The first involves appraising what software programs and software/device combos offer what features, what we refer to as software calculus . The second involves orienting towards data formats and database structures that underlie specific software programs and their interactions with specific devices, what we label data thinking . Building on prior work on the role of materiality in CSCW, our findings set out a call for further attention to the material and lively dimensions of software and the emergent challenges they pose for contemporary work practices.

2014 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2014

This paper presents a technique developed to forecast workloads in a business process. Business p... more This paper presents a technique developed to forecast workloads in a business process. Business processes such as the process of engaging on a service contract consist of multiple steps that are not necessarily sequential. There can also be multiple routes that work can take in transition. In order to forecast workloads at different steps of such business processes, one needs to predict dynamic movements of process instances within the system as well as the arrival of new instances from outside. By analyzing transition log data, we construct a Markov chain, which models the movement of process instances across different steps of the business process. Our approach takes into account the fact that an instance's prior trajectory may affect its future transitions. Via numerical studies, we demonstrate the overall performance of the proposed forecasting method. We also investigate how the performance of the forecasting method changes as various characteristics of the business process change. The proposed technique is general, and can be applied to a large class of business processes.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

This paper is motivated by a methodological interest in how to investigate information infrastruc... more This paper is motivated by a methodological interest in how to investigate information infrastructures as an empirical, real-world phenomenon. We argue that research on information infrastructures should not be captive to the prevalent method choice of small-scale and short-term studies. Instead research should address the challenges of empirically studying the heterogeneous, extended and complex phenomena of infrastructuring with an emphasis on the necessarily emerging and open-ended processual qualities of information infrastructures. While existing literature identifies issues that make the study of infrastructuring demanding, few propose ways of addressing these challenges. In this paper we review characteristics of information infrastructures identified in the literature that present challenges for their empirical study. We look to current research in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) that focus on how to study complex and extended phenomena ethnographically, to provide insight into the study of infrastructuring. Specifically, we reflect on infrastructuring as an object of ethnographic inquiry by building on the notion of "constructing the field." Recent developments in how to conceptualize the ethnographic field are tied both to longstanding traditions and novel developments in anthropology and STS for studying extended and complex phenomena. Through a discussion of how dimensions of information infrastructures have been addressed practically, methodologically, and theoretically we aim to link the notion of constructing the ethnographic field with views on infrastructuring as a particular kind of object of inquiry. Thus we aim to provide an ethnographically sensitive and methodologically oriented "opening" for an alternative ontology for studying infrastructuring ethnographically.

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Human-algorithm interaction is a growing phenomenon of interest as the use of machine learning (M... more Human-algorithm interaction is a growing phenomenon of interest as the use of machine learning (ML) capabilities in everyday technologies becomes more commonplace. In the workplace, such developments raise questions about how people not only make sense of algorithmic actions, but also figure out ways to collaborate with tools and systems that integrate algorithmic outputs. We draw on a field study of IT infrastructure design and report on the experiences of highly-skilled IT architects with the natural language processing (NLP) capabilities in an intelligent system under development to support their solution design work. While architects were supportive of the potential of NLP to enhance their solutioning work, they faced challenges in integrating such capabilities into their existing collaborative work practices. We discuss how these findings add nuance and complexity to discourse around the future of work.

Kluwer Academic Publishers eBooks, Dec 2, 2005

Routledge eBooks, May 15, 2017

Synthesis Lectures on Human-centered Informatics, 2015

European Journal of Operational Research, 2020

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

2014 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2014

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist in Residence Program, Aug 1, 1999

Chapter from "Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program," which chronicles F... more Chapter from "Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program," which chronicles Finley+Muse's collaboration with members of the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) Work Practice and Technology research group led by Lucy Suchman. The chapter includes a dialogue between the artists and the research group as well as complete transcripts of the three works that make up the trilogy entitled "O Night Without Objects": "The Adventures of Blacky," "Based on a Story," and " "Time Bomb!"