I n d e x
Research
Related Programmes
Aarhus University
Denmark
Susanne Bødker
Computer Science Department,
Aarhus University,
Ny Munkegade 116,
Building 540,
DK-8000 Aarhus,
Denmark
tel:+45 8942 3256(dir), +45 8942 3188(dept),
fax: +45 8942 3255,
e-mail; bodker@daimi.aau.dk
Computer Science Department
System Development Group
Research
During the last 20 years researchers from the system development group have been working with methods and theories for system development including, in particular, the involvement of users in the development and analysis of computing systems. These activities have mainly been part of large research projects involving a number of institutions.
Completed activities
The DUE and UTOPIA projects, which took place in cooperation with parts of the trade union movement, were concerned with creating a basis in order to enable employees to influence on the development and implementation of computing technology at their work place. This work consisted in a critique of the present development and implementation of technology (DUE) as well as alternative development of technology within the graphical area (UTOPIA). As a result of these projects "The Collective Resource Approach" was developed in the first part of the 80' s, a practical and theoretical foundation for cooperation with users in the design process. This work took place in cooperation with researchers from KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) and Arbetslivcentrum in Stockholm. The UTOPIA project, in particular, has been followed up in the second part of the 80' s by a cooperation over several years with the Department of Information and Media Science, Aarhus University and Xerox' research laboratories in Palo Alto, USA and in Cambridge, England with the object of developing better computer support for design with users. With special emphasis on theories, tools and techniques for visualising and making system descriptions tangible (envisionment) it is intended to enable future users to evaluate suggestions for design by trying out different types of models at an early state of the development process.
The aim of the MARS project, which took place in cooperation with several system developers from Danish firms, was to understand how to implement and manage system development. A result of this is a reference manual for system developers which presents
a method independent conceptual framework for the understanding of system development and several suggestions for the handling of typical problems arising in the system development process.
The Coop projects from 1987 to 1990 were part of the research program "Computer support for cooperative design and communication" which aimed at creating a framework for research projects in the field of advanced computer support for cooperative design and in the field of the communicative aspects of cooperative work. In addition, the research included experimental system development based on prototyping in cooperation with users. Furthermore, the research involved design and construction of prototypes of new computer based tools to support the cooperative work between professional developers and users, particularly at the early stages of system development. It also involved development of a theory for prototyping. The program has resulted in a number of theoretical articles about conditions and techniques for cooperative design and in the first prototypes of environments containing the above mentioned computing tools.
Current activities: DEVISE
Recently three research groups at the Computer Science Department established a research project, called DEVISE, on tools and techniques for experimental system development. The three participating research groups are the System Development group, the Programming Language group, and the Petri Net group.
The goal of the project is to provide support for increasing the productivity and quality in development of large complex systems. This goal will be realised through design and implementation of integrated computer based tools, development of techniques and methods for the use of such tools, further development of the theoretical framework for experimental system development as well as testing of results together with relevant users.
During the project, a new advanced environment for system development is developed. The environment consists of several powerful tools that support major aspects of the system development process including preliminary investigations, analysis, design (including experiments with prototypes as well as formal specification, formal analysis, and formal verification), documentation, implementation, and tailoring/further development of existing programs. A major goal of the project is to develop an industrial prototype of the environment with sufficient quality to make testing in real system development projects possible. The project will also result in an improved theoretical understanding and in the integration of a number of existing theoretical frameworks.
One of the application areas for the tools being developed will be cooperative work settings in organisations, since the DeVise group was a partner in the ESPRIT II project, called EuroCoOp. The EuroCoOp project aimed to develop powerful and effective systems for supporting distributed cooperative work. The approach has been to integrate elements of existing systems to develop new cooperative tools. The basis for the development is on the one hand a detailed analysis of a large user organisation, The Great Belt Link ltd. in Denmark, which encompasses many generic cooperation problems, and on the other hand a survey analysis of needs for such tools in a broad spectrum of user organisations.
The Devise group is currently initiating a number of new projects in the areas of human-computer interaction, object technology, and hypermedia.
More information about the department on www.daimi.aau.dk
Major recent references
Bannon L. & Bødker, S.: Beyond the Interface, Encountering Artifacts in Use, in J. Carroll (Ed.): Designing Interaction: Psychological Theory of the Human-Computer Interface. Cambridge University Press, pp. 227-253, 1991.
Bardram, Jakob E. and Olav W. Bertelsen, Supporting the Development of Transparent Interaction, in Blumenthal, Gornostaev, and Unger (Eds.): Human-Computer Interaction. 5th International Conference, EWHCI `95 Moscow, Russia,. Selected Papers. Berlin: Springer Verlag (LNCS 1015), July 1995.
Bødker, S. & Christiansen, E. Scenarios as springboards in design. In Bowker, G., Gasser, L., Star, S.L. & Turner, W. (eds.), Social science research, technical systems and cooperative work, in press.
Bødker, S. & Grønbæk, K. Cooperative Prototyping Studies - Users and Designers Envision a Dental Case Record System. In J. Bowers & S. Benford (Eds.), Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory, Practice and Design, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers/North Holland. (pp. 315-332) 1991, and in J. Bowers & S. Benford (Eds.), Proceedings of the first EC-CSCW '89, UK. Computer Sciences Company (pp. 343-357).
Bødker, S. and Grønbæk, K. Users and Designers in Mutual Activity. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34(3), Special Issue on CSCW, pp. 453-478, 1991.
Bødker, S. Applying activity theory to video analysis: How to make sense of video data in HCI, in Nardi, B. (Eds.) Context and consciousness. Activity theory and human computer interaction, MIT press, pp. 147-174, 1996.
Bødker, S. Creating conditions for participation: Conflicts and resources in systems design, in Trigg et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of PDC '94, pp. 13-20, 1994, published in Human Computer Interaction, 1996.
Bødker, S. og Greenbaum, J. Design of Information Systems - Things versus People, in D. Pain et al.: Gendered by design?, Francis & Taylor, pp. 53-63, 1993.
Bødker, S., Ehn, P., Knudsen, J.L., Kyng, M., Madsen, K.H.: Computer Support for Cooperative Design, Proceedings of Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'88), Portland, September 1988. Also available as DAIMI PB-262, Aarhus University, August 1988. Also available in Marca, D., Bock, G. (Eds.): Groupware: Software for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1992.
Bødker, S., Grønbæk, K. & Kyng, M. Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandinavian Scene. In Schuler, D. & Namioka, A. Participatory design. Principles and practices, Erlbaum, pp. 157-76, 1993.
Bødker, S.: Through the Interface - a Human Activity Approach to User Interface Design Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, book, 1991.
Greenbaum, J., & Kyng, M. (Eds.), Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
Grønbæk, K. and Knudsen, J.L. Tools and Techniques for Experimental System Development. In Systä, K., Kellomäki, P., and Mäkinen, R. (Eds.) Proceedings of the Nordic Workshop on Programming Environment Research, Tampere, Finland, January 8-10, 1992.
Grønbæk, K. and Trigg, R.H. Design issues for a Dexter-based hypermedia system. Communications of the ACM 37, 2, pp. 40-49, Feb. 1994.
Grønbæk, K., Grudin, J., Bødker, S. and Bannon, L. Achieving Cooperative System Design - shifting from product to process focus. In Namioka, A. & Schuler, D. (Eds.). Participatory Design: Perspectives of Systems Design. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, USA, pp. 79-98, 1993.
Grønbæk, K., Kyng, M., and Mogensen, P. Cooperative Experimental System Development - cooperative techniques beyond initial design and analysis. In Proceedings of the Third Decennial Conference Computers in Context: Joining Forces in Design. Aarhus Denmark, August 14-18, 1995.
Grønbæk, K., Kyng, M., and Mogensen, P. CSCW challenges in large-scale technical projects - a case study. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '92), Toronto, Ontario, ACM, New York, pp. 338-345, November 1992.
Grønbæk, K., Kyng, M., and Mogensen, P., CSCW Challenges: Cooperative Design in Engineering Projects. Communications of the ACM,. 36(6), pp. 67-77, 1993.
Kyng, M. Creating Contexts for Design, Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, pp. 1-24. In Carroll (Ed.), Scenario-Based Design. John Wiley, 1995.
Kyng, M. Designing for cooperation - cooperating in design, Communications of the ACM, 34, 12, pp. 64-73, 1991.
Kyng, M. Making Representations Work. In L. Suchman (Ed.), Representations of Work, Monograph HICSS-27, (1994) Hawaii, pp. 19-35, CACM September, 1995.
Kyng, M. Scandinavian Design: Users in Product Development. In proceedings of CHI '94, Boston, ACM, pp. 3-9, 1994.
Mogensen, P. & Robinson, M. (In press) Triggering Artefacts. To appear in AI & Society.
Mogensen, P. Towards a Provotyping Approach in Systems Development. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 4, 31-53, 1992 b.
Mogensen, P., & Trigg, R. Artifacts as triggers for participatory analysis. In Kuhn, Muller, & Meskill (Eds.), Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC). Boston, MA, 1992.
Trigg, R.H, Bødker, S., & K. Grønbæk: A Video-based Analysis of the Cooperative Prototyping Process. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 3, pp. 63-86, 1991.
Trigg, R.H., & Bødker, S. From Implementation to design: Tailoring and the emergence og systematization in CSCW, in Futura, R. & Neuwirth, C., Proceedings of CSCW 94, ACM press, pp. 45-54, 1994.
Staff
Associate Professor Morten Kyng (leave),
Associate Professor Susanne Bødker,
Assistant Professor Kaj Grønbæk,
Assistant Professor Preben Mogensen,
Assistant Olav Bertelsen, Jakob Bardram, Niels Oluf Bouvin
Furthermore the group cooperates with the Programming Languages and the Petri Net groups in connection with the DEVISE project described above.
Curriculum vitae
Susanne Bødker
Born October 1, 1956.
Academic degrees
Cand. scient. in Computer Science with Mathematics, Aarhus University, 1982. Ph.D. in Computer Science, Aarhus University, 1987.
Research areas
Participatory design, tools and techniques for system development with active user involvement (participatory/cooperative design); Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW); rapid prototyping and user interface design; object oriented tools and techniques for system development; human-computer interaction.
Main organizer of Working Conference on Development and Use of Computer-based Systems and Tools, 1985, IRIS 1989, and Computers in Context, 1995. Member of the following program committees for international conferences: 2nd Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 12th Information systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia, IFIP WG8.4 Conference on Multi-User Interfaces and Applications, IFIP WG9.1 Conference: Human Jobs and User Interfaces, COSCIS '91 (Collaborative work, social communications and information systems), ECSCW '91 (European conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work), PDC '92 (Participatory Design Conference), IFIP WG8.2 conference, 12th Interdisciplinary workshop on Informatics and Psychology, 13th Interdisciplinary workshop on Informatics and Psychology, , PDC '94 IFIP conference on Women, Work and Computers, ACM DIS '95: designing interactive systems, IFIP WG8.2 conference - IT and Changes in Organizational Work, ECSCW '95, PDC '96, CSCW '96, ECSCW '97, Interact '97, DIS '97.
Editorial advisory boards, journals: ACM Interactions, CSCW Journal, Mind, Culture and Activity
Participation in Cotech workgroup IMPACT 1994-1996.Local coordinator Erasmus network on Human centered design.. Local coordinator of Human Capital and Mobitity programmet ENACT. Danish representative of COST 14 Cotech Management Committee.
Departmental adminstration: Member and chair of Aarhus University, and Science Faculty equal opportunities commitees, various borads and committees regarding undergraduate studies and curricula, department library committee.
Major projects
UTOPIA, a research project in cooperation with Arbetslivscentrum and the Royal Technical University in Stockholm and the Nordic Graphic Workers' Union (1983-94).
The research programme on Computer Support for Cooperative Design and Communication. Supported by an FTU grant from the Danish Natural Science Research Council and by the Danish Humanities Research Council. (1987-1989).
The AT-project, a collaboration project with the Aarhus office of the Danish National Labour Inspection (1990-1993).
The DEVISE project developing support for Experimental System Development, supported by Danish Research Programme for Informatics, grant no. 5.26.18.19. (1990-1994).
The EC Esprit project EuroCODE: Development of a CSCW Open Development Shell. (1992-1995).
Currently involved in: Center proposal for Grundforskningsfonden on Human-Computer Interfaces.
Selected publications from the last 5 years.
Bødker, S. & Grønbæk, K. (1991). Cooperative Prototyping Studies - Users and Designers Envision a Dental Case Record System. In J. Bowers & S. Benford (eds.), Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory, Practice and Design, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers/North Holland (pp 315-332).
Bødker, S. & L. Bannon (1991). Beyond the Interface, Encountering Artifacts in Use, in J. Carroll(ed.): Designing Interaction: Psychological Theory of the Human-Computer Interface. Cambridge University Press (pp. 227-253).
Bødker, S. & Grønbæk, K. (1991). Cooperative Prototyping: Users and Designers in Mutual Activity. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34, Special Issue on CSCW.
Bødker, S., Trigg, R. & K. Grønbæk (1991). A Video-based Analysis of the Cooperative Prototyping Process. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 3, (pp. 63-86).
Bødker, S. (1991)Through the Interface - a Human Activity Approach to User Interface Design, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bødker, S., Grønbæk, K. & Kyng, M. (1993). Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandinavian Scene. In Schuler, D. & Namioka, A. Participatory design. Principles and practices, Erlbaum, pp. 157-76.
Bødker, S. og Greenbaum, J (1993). Design of Information Systems--Things versus People, in D. Pain et al: Gendered by design?, Francis & Taylor, pp. 53-63.
Bødker, S. (1993). Historical analysis and conflicting perspectives - contextualizing HCI. In Bass, L., Gornostaev, J., Unger, C. Human-Computer interaction. 3rd International Conference, EWHCI '93, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol 753, pp.1-10.
Bødker, S. (1994). Creating conditions for participation: Conflicts and resources in systems design, i iTrigg et al. (red.) Proceedings of PDC '94, pp.13-20, be published in Human Computer Interaction, 1996.
Trigg, R, & Bødker, S (1994) From Imlementation to design: Tailoring and the emergence og systematization in CSCW, in Futura, R. & Neuwirth, C: Proceedings og CSCW 94, ACM press, pp-45-54.
Bødker, S. (1996). Applying activity theory to video analysis: How to make sense of video data in HCI, in Nardi, B. (red.) Context and consciousness. Activity theory and human computer interaction, MIT press, pp 147-174.
Bødker, S. & Christiansen, E. (in press). Scenarios as springboards in design. In Bowker, G., Gasser, L., Star, S.L. & Turner, W. (eds.), Social science research, technical systems and cooperative work. Erlbaum.