Designing to maintain human agency in context-aware systems

This paper describes a series of design games, specifically aimed at exploring shifts in human agency, how they are managed, and the impact this will have on the design of future context-aware applications. The games focussed on understanding information handling issues in dental practice with participants from the University of Queensland Dental School playing an active role in the activities. Participatory design activities reveal how technology solution impact on dental practices. By finding methods of representing technological possibilities in ways which can easily be understood we enhance the contribution that dentists can make to the design process.

Work at hand : an exploration of gesture in the context of work and everyday life to inform the design of gestural input devices

This research explores gestures used in the context of activities in the workplace and in everyday life in order to understand requirements and devise concepts for the design of gestural information applicances. A collaborative method of video interaction analysis devised to suit design explorations, the Video Card Game, was used to capture and analyse how gesture is used in the context of six different domains: the dentist's office; PDA and mobile phone use; the experimental biologist's laboratory; a city ferry service; a video cassette player repair shop; and a factory flowmeter assembly station. Findings are presented in the form of gestural themes, derived from the tradition of qualitative analysis but bearing some similarity to Alexandrian patterns. Implications for the design of gestural devices are discussed.

Maintaining human agency in the design on context-aware systems : Design games in a dental surgery

This paper describes a series of design games, specifically aimed at exploring shifts in human agency in order to inform the design of context-aware applications. The games focused on understanding information handling issues in dental practice with participants from a university dental school playing an active role in the activities. Participatory design activities help participants to reveal potential implicit technical resources that can be presented explicitly in technologies in order to assist humans in managing their interactions with and amidst technical systems gracefully.

Context and models for the analysis of individual and group needs

This paper summarizes the papers presented in the thematic stream Models for the Analysis of Individual and Group Needs, at the 2007 IAEVG-SVP-NCDA Symposium: Vocational Psychology and Career Guidance Practice: An International Partnership. The predominant theme which emerged from the papers was that theory and practice need to be positioned within their contexts. For this paper, context has been formulated as a dimension ranging from the individual’s experience of himself or herself in conversations, including interpersonal transactions and body culture, through to broad higher levels of education, work, nation, and economy.

Doctors and their patients : A context for understanding the wish to hasten death

There is a paucity of research that has directly examined the role of the health professional in dealing with a terminally ill patient's wish to hasten death (WTHD) and the implications of this for the support and services needed in the care for a dying patient. Themes to emerge from a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted on doctors (n=24) involved in the treatment and care of terminally ill patients were (i) the doctors' experiences in caring for their patients (including themes of emotional demands/expectations, the duration of illness, and the availability of palliative care services); (ii) the doctors' perception of the care provided to their respective patients (comprising themes concerning satisfaction with the care for physical symptoms, for emotional symptoms, or overall care); (iii) the doctors' attitudes to euthanasia and (iv) the doctors' perception of their patients' views/beliefs regarding euthanasia and hastened death. When responses were categorised according to the patients' level of a WTHD, the theme concerning the prolonged nature of the patients' illnesses was prominent in the doctor group who had patients with the highest WTHD, whereas there was only a minority of responses concerning support from palliative care services and satisfaction with the level of emotional care in this group. This exploratory study presents a set of descriptive findings identifying themes among a small group of doctors who have been involved in the care of terminally ill cancer patients, to investigate factors that may be associated with the WTHD among these patients. The pattern of findings suggest that research investigating the doctor-patient interaction in this setting may add to our understanding of the problems (for patients and their doctors) that underpins the wish to hasten death in the terminally ill.

Psychosocial predictors of intentions to engage in change supportive behaviors in an organizational context

This study utilized the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand employee change readiness. The extent to which attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control predicted employees’ intentions to carry out activities that were supportive of a change event were investigated. The impact of group norm was examined as a further predictor of change-related intentions. The context of the research was a sample of 82 employees in the early stages of a re-brand. Results indicated that direct measures of attitude and subjective norm, as well as group norm, emerged as significant predictors of employees’ intentions to perform re-brand behaviors. To capture the indirect beliefs underlying attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, participants also provided an assessment of their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs in regards to the change event, respectively. A series of MANOVAs revealed significant differences between moderate and high intenders on a range of underlying beliefs. Findings are discussed in terms of the application of the TPB for effective change management.