Ebook: The Locales Framework: Understanding and Designing for Wicked Problems

So much technology works, not by good design or by being a good fit to purpose, but because people make it work because they have to for some reason. We humans are incredibly creative and resourceful when it comes to getting something done. There are numerous stories we could all tell of the ingenious work-arounds we've developed to make something do what we want it to; or the enormous amount of time we've spent trying to find out how to make some technology work as we want, e.g., trying to find out how to turn off auto-editing commands in a word processing package when all we want is for it to 'do what we tell it'. A good example of this principle was what motivated me to switch from neural networks to the area of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for my PhD research. I had undertaken a case study looking at the deployment of a multi-million dollar health information system throughout a hospital network.

---

This book presents the Locales Framework - and its five aspects of locale foundations, civic structures, individual views, interaction trajectory and mutuality - as a way of dealing with the intertwined problem-solution space of wicked problems. A locale is based on a metaphor of place as the lived relationship between people and the spaces and resources they use in their interactions. The Locales Framework provides a coherent mediating framework for ethnographers, designers, and software engineers to facilitate both understanding requirements of complex social situations and designing solutions to support these situations in all their complexity.

---

This book presents the Locales Framework - and its five aspects of locale foundations, civic structures, individual views, interaction trajectory and mutuality - as a way of dealing with the intertwined problem-solution space of wicked problems. A locale is based on a metaphor of place as the lived relationship between people and the spaces and resources they use in their interactions. The Locales Framework provides a coherent mediating framework for ethnographers, designers, and software engineers to facilitate both understanding requirements of complex social situations and designing solutions to support these situations in all their complexity.

Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The Wicked Problem of Design....Pages 3-13
The CSCW Design Challenge....Pages 15-45
Front Matter....Pages 47-47
The wOrlds System....Pages 49-54
Systems Engineers at Work....Pages 55-62
How Systems Engineers Accomplish Work....Pages 63-76
Moving from Space to Place....Pages 77-86
Front Matter....Pages 87-87
Introduction to the Locales Framework....Pages 89-95
Locales Framework Aspects....Pages 97-141
Locales Framework Approach....Pages 143-152
Front Matter....Pages 153-153
Distributed Research Work: A Tale of Two Groups....Pages 155-170
Designing for Telehealth....Pages 171-187
CSCW Environment Design: Orbit and Tickertape....Pages 189-201
Conclusions, Reflections and Future Work....Pages 203-222
Back Matter....Pages 223-242

---

This book presents the Locales Framework - and its five aspects of locale foundations, civic structures, individual views, interaction trajectory and mutuality - as a way of dealing with the intertwined problem-solution space of wicked problems. A locale is based on a metaphor of place as the lived relationship between people and the spaces and resources they use in their interactions. The Locales Framework provides a coherent mediating framework for ethnographers, designers, and software engineers to facilitate both understanding requirements of complex social situations and designing solutions to support these situations in all their complexity.

Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The Wicked Problem of Design....Pages 3-13
The CSCW Design Challenge....Pages 15-45
Front Matter....Pages 47-47
The wOrlds System....Pages 49-54
Systems Engineers at Work....Pages 55-62
How Systems Engineers Accomplish Work....Pages 63-76
Moving from Space to Place....Pages 77-86
Front Matter....Pages 87-87
Introduction to the Locales Framework....Pages 89-95
Locales Framework Aspects....Pages 97-141
Locales Framework Approach....Pages 143-152
Front Matter....Pages 153-153
Distributed Research Work: A Tale of Two Groups....Pages 155-170
Designing for Telehealth....Pages 171-187
CSCW Environment Design: Orbit and Tickertape....Pages 189-201
Conclusions, Reflections and Future Work....Pages 203-222
Back Matter....Pages 223-242
....