Analysis Patterns

The use of analysis patterns in the SAIK project turned out to be a strong tool by serving several purposes. First, analysis patterns support the focus on design as re-design. By studying the use of existing computer artifacts, which have been routinized into the work practices, various design solutions in these artifact can be documented as analysis patterns and subsequently used in the re-design of the system. Thus, analysis patterns work as a collection of knowledge about design solutions, which have turned out to be of high quality within a concrete work environment, and which probably will be so in the future as well. To put it plainly; analysis patterns try to prevent re-inventing the wheel again. In the Patient Scheduler, for example, the design concept of a “resource” is borrowed from the Green System, and the design of “folders” and “filters” is borrowed from traditional state-of-the-art email systems (which again have borrowed the idea from the Information Lens project).

Second, analysis patterns support generalization of the design knowledge developed during the design process. This fosters a reuse of the insights achieved in one project within other projects, which in the SAIK project was important, because design ideas “buried” in the Patient Scheduler were to be transferred to other design projects at KMD. For example, the resource allocation method in thePatient Schedulerwas fundamentally new, and an analysis pattern was created to document this design solution.

Third, analysis patterns proved to be a good way of coupling scenarios with design representations of the computer artifact, thereby contextualizing the design solutions. The problem of maintaining several design represen tations – scenarios, OOA&D models, prototypes, design descriptions, etc. – is not eliminated. However, in an analysis pattern these representations are not detached from each other, but are organized according to the work activity, which the pattern addresses. This gives a more logical organization of the design representations, and enables the designer to work with all relevant

design representations for one activity at the same time.

Some of the limitations to analysis patterns are the overhead of using time and effort in the present to create design representations, which might be useful in the future. Second, using the “old wheels” over and over again, might prevent you from “inventing a better wheel”. In the SAIK project, analysis patterns have not been used to the extent, and in a timeframe, which have enabled me to analyze such cost-benefits, which prevents me from making any further conclusions on these issues.

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In summary, the methods used in the SAIK project have been applied highly interlinked; detailed workplace studies have provided the basis for under-standing the activity systems at the different hospitals, and the use of existing artifacts, including the Green System. This understanding was documented in scenarios, which subsequently were used both as an input for prototyping sessions as well as in the documentation of recurrent work practices in the analysis patterns. Although resource demanding, these methods have proven useful for guiding the object-oriented modeling and construction of the Pa-tient Scheduler. At the same time, the presented methods have been shaped to support design as re-design, and have tried to extend the design process to encompass both the primary iteration as well as the secondary iteration in design. However, methods for closer interaction between the pri-mary and the secondary iteration in a design process have been wanted, but not found. This points towards future work, which might be inspired by methods used within other disciplines of IT development.

Chapter 6 Conclusions

An activity theoretical approach to, and methods for the design of computer support for cooperative work have been presented. This concluding chapter summarizes the contributions of the presented work, it relates these contri-butions to the research objectives of the Industrial Research Education as stated in the introduction, and finally it discusses directions for future work.

6.1 Contributions

The major contributions of the work presented in this thesis (including the following papers) can be summarized as:

• Design principles for the design and construction of computer sup-port for planning, scheduling, coordinating, and articulating coopera-tive work in Danish hospitals have been developed and presented. The design is illustrated in the Patient Scheduler, and the main design principles are documented as analysis patterns (Technical Report no.

4). These design principles include: (i) design for organizational struc-tures in hospitals, including resources, employees, and patients; (ii) design for requesting and booking examinations, internally as well as between departments; (iii) design for resource sharing, including access and reservation mechanisms for controlling the use of these resources;

(iv) design for planning and scheduling, and for saving “best practices”

by using templates and programs.

• Understanding the design activity as re-design and as a collaborative activity, involving two interrelated iterations has been argued for (chap-ter 5). The focus on re-design emphasized a focus on existing work practices and the use of existing artifacts as a basis for further develop-ment. The need for conceptualizing the seconday iterative process in a system development process, and the need for engaging a much wider audience in this secondary design iteration have been discussed.

• Design methodsfor understanding work practices, for cooperating with users, and for re-using design principles, have been developed and dis-cussed. Emphasis has been put on turning “passive” understanding of existing cooperative work practices into “active” representations and activities for re-design of these work practices. For this purpose, de-tailed workplace studies were used as the foundation for scenarios, which again formed the basis for scenario-based design [5], organi-zational prototyping [1, 2], and subsequently for creation of analysis patterns. The value of these methods in a real-world setting has been evaluated and discussed (chapter 5).

• Activity theory was introduced as a theoretical foundation for CSCW research, and it has been shown how this activity theoretical basis helps inform CSCW design. This was partly done by building upon the work of Bødker (1991) and Kuutti (1994), and partly by present-ing aspects of activity theory, which helps us address the notion of

“cooperative work”. Activity theory was related to other relevant the-oretical approaches often used within CSCW, namely Situated Action, Distributed Cognition, and the Social Action framework (chapter 3).

• Based on this activity theoretical foundation, a framework for under-standing coordination of collaborative activities has been developed.

Generic intra- and interdependencies in distributed, collaborative work have been identified as well as different types of coordination (chapter 4) [3, 4, 6].

• Subsequently, a collaboration artifact was defined as an artifact medi-ating a collaborative activity, and medimedi-ating the activity-based

dination of this activity. Three generic aspects of activity-based coor-dination were identified: shared object, shared tool, and shared com-munication. This definition was related to other relevant approaches to CSCW, namely the frameworks of Coordination Mechanism, Shared Material, and Common Artifact.

• It has been demonstrated how this framework can be used to design CSCW technologies, by providing several propositions concerning the design of a collaboration artifact (chapter 5) [3, 6].