Proceedings of the ECSCW 2009 Workshop on Collaborative Infrastructuring – Conceptualizing Emergence and Design of Information Infrastructures (original) (raw)
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Studying Information Infrastructures
The Social Study of Information Systems
As a result of a steady increase in reach, range, and processing capabilities, information systems no longer appear as independent, but rather as integrated, parts of large scale networks. These networks offer a shared resource for information delivery and exchange to communities, which appropriate them for their respective purposes. Such information infrastructures are complex in several ways. As they are composed of a variety of different components, their openness and heterogeneity make them inherently uncontrollable; through their expansion, these various interconnected networks enter new interdependencies; while they are based on extending existing technical and social networks, they also need to develop and grow over a long period of time; and, they are developed as a distributed activity. Examples of such information infrastructures include the Internet, National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiatives and industry-wide EDI networks, as well as corporate-wide implementations of enterprise systems.
Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces
Information Systems Research, 1996
We analyze a large-scale custom software effort, the Worm Community system (WCS), a collaborative system designed for a geographically dispersed community of geneticists. There were complex challenges in creating this infrastructural tool, ranging from simple lack of resources to complex organizational and intellectual communication failures and tradeoffs. Despite high user satisfaction with the system and interface, and extensive user needs assessment, feedback and analysis, many users experienced difficulties in signing on and use. The study was conducted during a time of unprecedented growth in the Internet and its utilities (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994), and many respondents turned to the World Wide Web for their information exchange. Using Bateson's model of levels of learning, we analyze the levels of infrastructural complexity involved in system access and designeruser communication. We analyze the connection between systems development aimed at supporting specific forms of collaborative knowledge work, local organizational transformation, and large-scale infrastructural change.
Designing Collaborative Infrastructures to Support Distributed Work
2010
A growing proportion of contemporary organizational work takes place in the context of distributed collaborative environments which involve the interaction of multiple organizations with distinct areas of expertise, technologies, and work practices. In this research-in-progress, we develop a three-part model of the facets of collaborative infrastructure that support such distributed collaborative environments. We argue that collaborative infrastructures inherently reflect the interplay of practices, artifacts, and discourse. Specifically, our model asserts that the development of shared practices and artifacts by organizations engaged in collaboration is mediated by the emergence of common discourses between the parties. The preliminary theorizing developed in this paper is based on multiple case study analyses of collaborative projects in the areas of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and software development and implementation. Our initial research suggests key areas of consideration by collaboration leaders in the development of collaborative infrastructures for distributed work.
An Afterword to 'Infrastructuring and Collaborative Design'
. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices, 2018
This issue of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (vol. 27, no. 2) is the second and final part of the three issues focusing on the topic of ‘Infrastructuring and Collaborative Design’. The first part of the special issue was published as a double issue (vol. 26, nos. 1-2) in 2017. Eight articles were published in the first part, and this second part includes four articles, making a total of twelve articles. Amidst the wealth of journal special issues and edited books on (information) infrastructures (Edwards et al. 2009; Lee et al. 2010; Graham and McFarlane 2014; Monteiro et al. 2014; Appel et al. 2015; Karasti et al 2016; Harvey et al 2017; Jensen and Morita 2017), these special issues in Computer Supported Cooperative Work are the first to focus particularly on research that engages with a processual (in-the-making) perspective and/or design-oriented engagement with information infrastructures. We have developed this under the rubric of ‘infrastructuring’. In this afterword to the special issues, we first introduce the remaining four articles, and then review the collection as a whole. Drawing on the special issue articles and existing literature, we discuss dimensions of infrastructuring relating to analytic, methodological and design issues. Further, we consider what this collection of articles tells us about the state of the art in CSCW’s understanding of Infrastructuring and Collaborative Design. We conclude by looking forward to the challenges and opportunities still on the horizon.
1994
This paper analyzes the initial phases of a large-scale custom software effort, the Worm Community System (WCS), a collaborative system designed for a geographically dispersed community of geneticists. Despite high user satisfaction with the system and interface, and extensive user feedback and analysis, many users experienced difficulties in signing on and use, ranging from simple lack of resources to complex organizational and intellectual trade-offs. Using Bateson's levels of learning, we characterize these as levels of infrastructural complexity which challenge both users and developers. Usage problems may result from different perceptions of this complexity in different organizational contexts.
Infrastructures from the bottom-up and the top-down: can they meet in the middle?
2008
Abstract Based on a study of participatory design in the development of cyberinfrastructure involving the rapid composition of open source software and web services, we consider cases where researchers create their own ad hoc infrastructures out of available software. We compare'top-down'and'bottom-up'cyberinfrastructure development and speculate on whether the two approaches can be productively combined.
2019
The paper builds on an ongoing research project striving to reduce hospitalization of elderly citizens with dementia (ECwD). In the research project sensor technologies are used to gather large amounts of data to speak on behalf of the ECwD about change in their behaviour. But in order for the data to create value, network-building efforts made by the project researchers is needed, as the case illustrate. Inspired by the framework of participatory infrastructuring we illustrate how front-stage as well as back-stage activities leads to negotiations and translations of concerns and data in a process of network-building together with a multiplicity of users and other actors such as ECwD, their loved ones, caregivers, sensors, researchers, municipalities, companies and nursing homes.
Projecting an Information Infrastructure - Shaping a Community
2013
The classification of building information is often seen as a key enabler for interoperability and a common information infrastructure in the sector. This paper studies how a community develops an infrastructure using standards and classification. It takes issue with inclusion/exclusion of actors and analyzes relations between the technical and the social. The paper draws on a longitudinal case study of three attempts to create a classification and standards for interoperability of building information within a particular socio-material community – the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) community in Denmark. This involved examining the interdependencies between human and material elements in the two failed attempts – embodied in a series of socio-material ruptures and conflicts – along with the third, ongoing attempt of designing a standard for building information classification, property data, information levels and metrics. Our analysis shows the crucial role played...
Spatial and Organizational Dynamics Discussion Papers, 2011
This paper discusses infrastructure as a bridging mechanism between organization design and software engineering. By focusing attention on the properties and characteristics of information infrastructures as socio-technical systems, organization designing is presented as an activity equivalent to infrastructuring. In parallel, information systems design also stands to benefit from the intellectual platform known as work-related infrastructure, mainly due the capacity afforded by such a platform to make work-related connections and dependencies visible. The paper proposes a framework which enables the distinction between three layers of the organizational infrastructure (infrastructural background status, work development and design-in-use) and two modes of organizing (planning and situated). The distinction between infrastructural background and work development highlights the effects of the organizational legacy on all forms of work development, thereby informing information systems and organization design, at the macro level. The distinction between work development and design-in-use, which arises from another novel conceptpoints of infrastructure -brings in a host of a new opportunities in terms of improvements to organizational and information systems effectiveness.