Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar

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BPR in the Pharmaceutical Industry
(2003) Simon, Kai Artur; Department of Informatics
This thesis investigates the use of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as a change approach in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing profound changes. New opportunities, e.g. in the field of bio-technology, price pressure from governments, insurances and through generic products have created a variety of dynamics in the industry. Today, pharma-companies are also closely monitored with regard to their R&D pipeline and their ability to execute efficient R&D projects. As a result, pharma-companies have been looking for approaches that would enable a substantial improvement of their R&D processes, among them Business Process Reengineering. During a study at Astra Hässle in Mölndal, a research subsidiary of Astra (now AstraZeneca), two change initiatives under the label of BPR were investigated and analyzed. The first one, FASTRAC, was a local project, aiming at improving research and development at Astra Hässle. CANDELA, the second initiative, was aiming at an overhaul of R&D at Astra corporate level. FASTRAC resulted in several IT initiatives, of which one was investigated in detail. This investigation identified several critical aspects of the implementation of a new data collection process and IT-solution for remote data capture (RDC). Furthermore, this thesis proposes measures that go beyond the concept of reengineering. It proposes a new conceptual model for clinical research and suggests a different way of technology use for supporting the clinical R&D process. It also describes organizational aspects of organizing R&D in alternative ways.
Breaking the Screen Barrier
(2000) Holmquist, Lars Erik; Department of Informatics
This thesis is based on an important development in human-computer interface design: the move from primarily screen-based interfaces – based on the Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointer (WIMP) and Graphical Users Interfaces (GUI) paradigm developed for desktop computers – to computer interfaces which take advantage of the richness of the user’s physical environment. A common thread in the thesis is the attempt to expand the user’s workspace, whether that expansion is kept within the limits of the computer screen or brings the interaction to devices outside the desktop – i.e. to “break the screen barrier”, figuratively or literally. The thesis consists of five papers. The first paper describes flip zooming, a visualization method that uses the workspace on a screen more effectively. The second paper puts flip zooming and other similar methods within a general theoretical framework, which is both descriptive and constructive. The third paper describes WEST, A Web Browser for Small Terminals, which was an application where flip zooming was implemented on hand-held computers. The fourth paper describes the Hummingbird, a mobile counterpart to desktop-based workplace awareness applications. The fifth and final paper gives a general theory for interactive systems where physical objects are used to access digital information that is not contained within the actual object. Additionally, the introduction discusses how the thesis relates to Simon’s science of the artificial, Dahlbom’s foundations for an artificial science, and the new informatics, the scientific discipline within which the work was performed. A spiral model of design, Verplank’s spiral, is used to describe the research process.
Communities of Distance Education
(2002) Svensson, Lars; Department of Informatics
Distance Education (DE) is the centre of attention for many educational organisations and recently many innovative examples of flexible educational designs that make use of the new information and communication technologies have surfaced. However, these new forms of DE have often suffered from big problems regarding, for instance, student dropouts and low levels of student performance. The thesis is based on a longitudinal action-oriented research project of Distance Educational program at a Swedish University College. The case setting is characterised by a learning-centre based DEconcept where DE uses a web based tool (DisCo) and videoconferencing as the technological infrastructure. This way of organising DE gives the students a social milieu that is a combination of co-located peers at the learning centre and a global and ITmeditated class community. Such a setting provides an interesting context suitable for studies of the social dimensions of DE practice. Consequently, the main objective that guided the research was to understand and support IT-mediated communities of distance education? This objective reflects a dual focus on both analysing and supporting DE practices. Furthermore, the longitudinal design has allowed a broad research approach that explores a rich spectrum of practices within the distance educational fabric. The main conclusions are: • The formation of a distributed Community of distance education should be understood as a gathering, where typified patterns of communication emerge when members become socially acquainted. Communitising behaviour, i.e. activities that draw attention to the existence of the community, supports community cohesiveness. • Communities change as a result of collective negotiations. Whereas most of these changes are slow and characterised by incremental innovations, it is also important to realise that the strength of the community resides in the collective attention it receives. Consequently, communities should be seen as energies that can fluctuate rapidly. • IT plays an important part in mediating and visualising social information, and adoption of IT applications are the result of collective processes of negotiating common sense of the use of said artefacts. Consequently, system malleability is important in order to allow such innovation-in-use. • IT-mediated DE practice has the potential of being more public, thereby creating a social landscape where students and teachers can develop new roles for collaborative learning. This also involves challenges for educational organisations and ITdesigners in order for DE practice to free itself from the physical boundaries of school buildings.
Community-based customer involvement for improving packaged software development
(2004) Holmström, Helena; Department of Informatics
Noting the widespread use of virtual communities for interacting with customers, this thesis explores the role of virtual communities for involving distributed customers in packaged software development (psd) and the opportunities and challenges that are associated with this. While the idea of involving customers in software development is not new, it is yet to gain momentum in psd. Here, customers are distant and unknown — making traditional methods for customer involvement difficult to apply. Instead, packaged software developers use indirect links, such as intermediaries and customer surrogates, to communicate with customers. However, while these are cost-effective approaches for involving customers, there are problems associated with them. For example, filtering or distortion of information may occur. In this regard, virtual communities constitute an interesting approach for involving distributed customers more directly in psd. In such communities, broad communities of interest, e.g., software customers, coalesce around products and services and instead of being involved only in idea generation, customers can co-create software, test software and provide each other with software support. Conceptually, this thesis is based on a « knowing-in-practice » perspective, viewing community knowledge, i.e. situated knowledge as enacted in use by distributed software customers, as critical for improving packaged software. In accordance with this conception, knowledge creation processes are understood as expanding beyond the level of the firm, and as suggested in this thesis, psd would benefit from utilizing also this knowledge. Methodologically, the interpretive case study is employed, using the hermeneutic circle as the guiding principle for the research process. Empirically, a Swedish computer game developer provides the context for assessing the role of virtual communities in psd. As a result of theoretical as well as empirical insights, this thesis presents community-based customer involvement as an approach for involving customers in psd. In embracing opportunities as well as challenges, this approach views community knowledge as critical for improving psd. For facilitating an understanding of the processes associated with community knowledge creation and transformation, the approach embraces a model for community use. In this model, community use is portrayed as a continuously ongoing interplay between the software firm and the software community. In this, knowledge creation and transformation processes are a result of commercial firm interests as well as voluntarily community participation. In understanding community use as portrayed in my model, there is the possibility to analyze how community knowledge is built, elicited and exploited from customer communities and hence, to what extent these can be used for involving customers in psd.
Competence Systems
(2002) Lindgren, Rikard; Department of Informatics
Today, more and more organizations rely upon the competencies of their staffs. This increasing reliance on competence has triggered many organizations to implement competence systems in order to support staff allocation and competence development. Competence systems can be characterized as systems that describe and present measures of individuals’ competencies. Even though the implemented competence systems are seemingly well-designed, it is apparent that such systems are only sporadically used in competence management practice. In spite of the fact that competence systems are aimed at supporting knowledge-based organizations, it seems that the systems do not fit this type of organization. This thesis is about how to design competence systems so that they achieve their intended effects in knowledge-based organizations. The main research question of this thesis is: How can competence systems be designed to support knowledge-based organizations? The objective of this thesis is to produce design-specific knowledge for successful competence systems adoption in knowledge-based organizations. This thesis is based on an action research study covering six organizations. The learning outcome of the first action research cycle was that successful integration of competence systems requires system features conveying a technology spirit more in line with organizational knowledge work practice. On the basis of the first action research cycle, the objective of the second action research cycle was to develop and implement competence systems prototypes in order to understand and improve competence systems adoption in knowledge-based organizations. Based on the evaluation of the prototype systems, the general lesson learned was that an activating technology spirit of competence systems would facilitate their adoption in knowledge-based organizations. The thesis demonstrates that conceptualizations of people’s interests are crucial for successful competence systems adoption in knowledge-based organizations.
Designing Everyday Computational Things
(2001) Redström, Johan; Department of Informatics
The prospect of ubiquitous computing in everyday life urges us to raise basic design issues pertaining to how we will live with, and not only use, computers. To design for everyday life involves much more than enabling people to accomplish certain tasks more effectively, and therefore, traditional approaches to human-computer interaction that focus on usability are not sufﬁcient. To support critical discussion of, and reﬂection upon, the design of everyday computational things, both new design philosophies and a richer collection of design examples are needed. This thesis reports on the development of a design philosophy based on investigations of the design space of everyday computational things. Using experimental design, a collection of design examples illustrating how computational things can become integral parts of everyday environments has been developed. These investigations have been centred on: ampliﬁcation of things and environments using computational technology; different forms of information presentation; the use of everyday materials in the design of computational things; and the aesthetics of computational things in use. The speciﬁc results are a number of design examples, including support for local interaction, access to digital information using physical objects as tokens, information displays such as the ChatterBox and Informative Art, and examples of Slow Technology. The general results are presented as a design philosophy for everyday computational things. This design philosophy is aimed at design for meaningful presence, rather than efﬁcient use, and states that computational technology is a design material, that time is the central design parameter and that aesthetics is the basis for design for presence.
Designing the new intranet
(2002) Stenmark, Dick; Department of Informatics
Designing the new intranet is about exploiting web technology in an organisational context so that the users can better utilise the intranet from a knowledge management perspective. This means to take advantage of the specific features that characterise web technology, to take advantage of the tangible traces of everyday work activities, and to take advantage of the fact that actions on an intranet are not isolated events. The pervading theme in this thesis is how to design the intranet to activate the users rather than a preoccupation with technology per se. The ambition has been to understand why intranets are being underutilised and to influence the way intranets are understood. Another objective has been to design a new framework for intranet implementations in general and for knowledge creation and knowledge sharing in particular. The research described in this thesis has taken place in an industrial environment and in close collaboration with the members of the organisation under study. The results apply to and are relevant to large and/or geographically disperse organisations, where the members do not know or know of each other and the organisation as a whole does not know what it knows. Further, leveraging the knowledge of the employees becomes increasingly important in the post-industrial society, where organisations depend on networks, co-operation, and openness to achieve a competitive edge. This thesis consists of five papers and a framing introduction. Papers 1, 2, and 3 deal with enacted knowledge and competence, whereas papers 4 and 5 are targeted towards innovation and knowledge creation. The introduction places the papers in a context and presents the contributions; (1) the application prototypes, (2) the papers, and (3) the intranet design framework.
Doing Mobility
(2003) Weilenmann, Alexandra; Department of Informatics
Despite the widespread adoption of mobile information and communication technology, there are still relatively few studies of their use. Previous studies often fail to capture the situated practicalities of mobility. Further, many previous studies are work-oriented, viewing the office or the control room as a base, and see mobility as a means of transportation. This thesis contributes to our understanding of mobility by presenting five empirical studies, showing how people involved in various sorts of activities go about doing mobility. This thesis presents the argument that mobility is something which is ongoingly produced and maintained by the participants. The thesis presents a collection of studies in very different settings, ranging from practically stationary work to truly mobile leisure activities: the mobility of information inside and outside a traffic information central, mobile vehicle workers cleaning the runways from snow at a large airport, skiers testing a new mobile device, mobile phone use among young people in public places, and the mobility of a teenager seen through her mobile phone conversations. Methodologically and analytically the thesis draws upon the fields of computer supported cooperative work, ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The aim is to capture naturally occurring instances of mobility. Four approaches are identified to capture mobility: follow the actors, follow the technology, study a place, and study the virtual communication space. The findings from the empirical studies show how the advent of mobile technology has not made people independent of place. ‘Place’ and ‘the local’ is important in the mobile world. When communicating with remote others, a lot of work is done in order to negotiate a mutual understanding of the situation at hand. Context is interactionally and continually negotiated. Further, this thesis provides examples of the highly collaborative nature of mobility, and thereby questions some earlier assumptions about mobile technology being private and personal. Results are presented which point to the various ways in which mobile technology is shared, and also how those using the technology get a sense of shared ownership of the technology.
e-ducation
(1999) Nuldén, Urban; Department of Informatics
e-ducation is a study of information technology use in higher education. The aim of the research is to improve educational practice with information technology. The modern educational system was developed to teach the students the skills necessary and the facts applicable to survive in the industrial society; facts that would be true and skills that would be useful throughout their entire life. Today, schools need to help students develop conceptual tools to be self directed learners capable of learning new things and adopt to an increasingly dynamic, and also complex, work situation. Many educators believe in the immense potential of information technology as learning tools, but for the information technology to bring about a real and substantial change, its introduction must be accompanied by improvements in our understanding of learning and teaching. The research approach applied has been a “design oriented study of information technology use with the intention to contribute to the development of both the use and the technology itself.” This has been done through action research and experiments in educational settings. The thesis consists of six papers and an introduction. The main results in this research are the following four: (1) The education framework which can be used to understand important current trends in education. (2) The PIE approach (problem based learning, interactive multimedia and experiential learning), developed to enhance the problem based learning methodology. (3) The philosophy of Thematic Modules (TM), developed to structure collaborative educational activities in information technology based environments, such as asynchronous learning networks (ALN). (4) Concrete examples of alternative forms of computer supported assessment of learning and examination.
Flip Zooming. The Development of an Information Visualization Technique
(2000) Björk, Staffan; Department of Informatics
This thesis describes the development of a Focus+Context information visualization technique called Flip Zooming. Based on two initial examples of the technique, the work reported here expands the description and functionality of the technique by the development of a number of applications as well as by some theoretical contributions. The thesis consists of six papers and a frame. The first paper describes The Digital Variants Browser, which supports comparative studies of variants of texts. The second paper, Hierarchical Flip Zooming, describes how the technique can be generalized to support hierarchical visualization by use of nested instances of Flip Zooming. The third paper describes WEST (a WEB Browser for Small Terminals), an application of Flip Zooming for the visualization of web pages on hand-held computers. The fourth paper, PowerView, describes another application designed for hand-held computers; this application supports tasks that require several different types of information. The fifth paper introduces a framework for describing Flip Zooming and other Focus+Context visualizations as higher-order visualizations. The sixth paper identifies preconceptions about Focus+Context techniques that have become apparent during the work on Flip Zooming, and shows how these preconceptions can be transgressed to create novel visualizations. The frame relates the Flip Zooming technique to other information visualization techniques and describes the development of the technique by using Mackay and Fayard's model for research within Human-Computer Interaction. It concludes by presenting specific guidelines for developing future Flip Zooming applications, as well as general guidelines for developing other information visualization techniques.
From Workflow to Conversation
(1997) Ljungberg, Jan; Department of Informatics
This thesis is about designing information technology to support communicative work. The thesis has a theoretical focus, informed by two empirical studies, but the aim is not to formulate a grand theory, but rather to find new concepts and patterns of thought useful for design. It is based on five papers dealing with the phenomena work, organization, communication and design of information technology. Departure is taken in the view that the role of language is central in the postmodern arena, both as work (i.e. work is communication) and in constituting organizations. While there is research based on this assumption, there is still a great need to find new concepts and new metaphors when designing information technology to support communication and communicative work. The thesis examines, criticizes and elaborates communication models such as speech act theory, conversation analysis and genre theory as a foundation for design In doing this, there is a number of classical issues in industrial work design applicable to communicative work as well, e.g. deskilling versus learning, rule following versus empowerment, local or global control, routinization versus flexibility, workplace democracy, participation in design, etc. These classical questions of work organization and potential effects of information technology on individuals, and organizations are addressed as well.
IT in Healthcare - Artefacts, Infrastructures and Medical Practices
(2000) Lundberg, Nina; Department of Informatics
Globally, health care is making huge investments in information technology. Several studies illustrate that IT implementations have been fraught with problems. Everywhere, the problems appear to be similar, irrespective of the national health care system. The full potential of these technologies is not achieved, and their use is thus limited. At the same time, it is reported that 60 % of the radiology departments in Sweden are planning to introduce Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) by the year 2002. The overall research question in this study was; how can we improve the design, implementation and use of PACS by studying the complex interrelationships between the medical staff, the technologies, the work practice and the Healthcare community as a whole? Four ethnographic field studies at different radiology departments in Sweden were conducted. These involved interviews, video documentation and observations of radiological practice and social interaction. As the theoretical framework, various concepts from Actor Network Theory and the concept of Borderline issues were applied to explore the complex interrelationship between medical staff, medical staff and technologies, and various technologies within Healthcare. The study illustrates that when analog films were replaced with PACS images, not only technical devices were integrated, but the people, work practices and organizations as well. It also shows that by studying how the properties of artefacts are used in work practice, we get an idea of the essential resources and prerequisites for the work being done. This knowledge helps us to understand what resources the new information technology should and could replace in a transformation, even if there is no guarantee that it will be used as expected. Furthermore, the study concludes that the larger the socio-technical medical network implementing PACS the harder it will be to coordinate the actions of all actors in a change. Therefore, the study suggests that the infrastructures and work practices can only be changed in a process where smaller parts, are replaced by new ones bit-by-bit. To achieve the “real” opportunities of PACS technology will take time. It is suggested that one way to improve PACS use is to consider it as a “work oriented infrastructure” (WOI). This term is supposed to draw our attention to the fact that these systems are developed to support specific work tasks. These infrastructures should be designed and implemented primarily by their users, based on their actual use of the technology. WOIs are constructed by linking artefacts together. The old and the new sociotechnical networks must be linked through interfaces, enabling networks with different technical solutions to communicate and interact. To summarize, firstly, to improve the application of PACS and RIS in medical practice, the design of computer systems has to be informed by a better understanding of all the roles and meanings of the x-ray films and paper request forms in work. Secondly, there is a great potential for improvements in performance of these systems through relatively simple means, by implementing the achieved knowledge in the medical actor network.
Mobile Knowledge
(2000) Fagrell, Henrik; Department of Informatics
Both the issues of “knowledge management” and “mobility” have received much attention recently. The interest in these issues is often motivated by the fact that work, in many organisations, has become “knowledge intensive” and “mobile.” However, so far these issues have been explored separately. The thesis is a collection of six papers that address these issues from an Informatics perspective. Informatics can be described as a theory and design oriented study of information technology use, an artificial science which focuses on the intertwined complexity of people and information technology as its subject matter. The scope of this thesis is delimited to the design of co-operative technologies. The overall research question is: how can we provide mobile workers with timely knowledge? Here, timely knowledge means knowledge that is relevant for the task at hand. The thesis contains empirical studies of mobile work, technologies for knowledge systems, and the design and validation of prototype systems. The studies mainly consist of observations of mobile service electricians and mobile news journalists. They show that current perspectives on knowledge management do not adequately accommodate mobile work. Furthermore, implications for design are derived. Technologies to capture and measure text and hyperlink data are developed and refined to be used in knowledge systems. The design implications and the technologies serve as base for the design of three knowledge systems. One of them has been validated in several workshops and under real working conditions of mobile news journalists. The final contribution is a generalised technological architecture, designed to be easily adapted to several mobile work settings and emerging mobile technologies. The architecture is derived from the summation of previous results and the first practical implementation is in the domain of mobile news journalism.
Networking
(1997) Ljungberg, Fredrik; Department of Informatics
The thesis is a collection of five papers that approach networking from the perspective of “the New Informatics.” Networking is a kind of working practice that typically is concerned with knowledge or service work, carried out by empowered employees who are engaged in highly co-operative efforts, and who rely extensively on the use of information technology (IT). “The New Informatics” is an artificial zcience that explores the possibilities for inventing new ways of using IT with the objective to produce elaborated ideas that seem likely to be applicable in several situations. The overall research question asked in the thesis is: What are the possibilities to improve existing and invent new ideas of CSCW technology use in networking? The research question is approached from an individual and a group perspective. These perspectives are investigated in two empirical studies exploring the work in a dispersed and mobile IT support group and a clinical trial management group. The field studies involved approximately 400 hours of ethnography and 20 qualitative interviews. One overall result is the empirically based analysis and confirmation of networking as an emerging kind of work. Exploring the research question from a group perspective revealed three overall results. First, networking individuals involved in close and continuous interaction with their personal networks and customers, experience difficulties in sharing experiences and co-ordinating work with the group they formally belong to. A second result is the design, implementation, evaluation, and detailed discussion of the potential use of the DARWIN application to resolve the conflict between networking and group work. The third result is MOSCOW, a development framework that in taking a unified approach to CSCW technology use seeks to reflect the condition of group work in networking. Investigating the research question from the perspective of the individual revealed two overall results. First, the study of the use of IT as an integrated part of clinical trial work shed light on novel problems. A second result is the exploration and development of the Collaboration Interface prototype, which is an attempt to unify the experiences from the fieldwork with theoretical claims in CSCW, to approach one of the obstacles explored in the field study: how to launch CSCW sessions appropriately.
Software Practice Improvement
(2002) Pourkomeylian, Pouya; Department of Informatics
Software Process Improvement (SPI) is a systematic approach used to improve the capabilities of software organisations. One basic idea in SPI is to assess the organisations’ current practice and improve their software processes on the basis of the competencies and experiences of the practitioners working in the organisation. Implementing improved software processes in practice is, however, difficult. The new processes must be made available on different organisational levels and approached as frameworks for better software practice. A major challenge for a unit working with SPI efforts is to create strategies and mechanisms for managing knowledge about software development. Knowledge Management (KM) insights are therefore potentially useful in SPI efforts to facilitate the creation, modification, and sharing of software processes in an organisation. A number of studies have, in fact, argued for and illustrated the usefulness of applying KM to SPI. However, much needs to be done to further explore the practical use of KM in the context of SPI. This thesis reports on research in which KM was used to reflect upon and inspire SPI efforts in a software organisation over a two and a half-year period. The SPI efforts started with an assessment to establish the current capability of the organisation’s software practices. On the basis of the findings of that assessment, improvement efforts were planned and carried out to create new software processes. An implementation strategy was developed and different activities were planned and conducted to implement the new processes in different software projects. Further, two complementary approaches to KM, the codified and the personalised, were used to develop a KM strategy and different facilities to support knowledge sharing and continuous SPI efforts in the organisation. The study can be classified as research in the field of Information Systems (IS), focusing on the practical use of KM insights in SPI efforts and aiming to find answers to the following questions: 1) How can we make SPI happen in practice? 2) What are the main challenges in SPI from a KM perspective? 3) How can KM insights support SPI practice? The study illustrates that SPI in practice is about managing software knowledge. The key findings are: · To understand the main challenges in SPI from a practice point of view and make it happen in practice we need to distinguish between processes and practices and between process knowledge and practical knowledge and study the interaction between these types of knowledge as improvements are made. · SPI initiatives should emerge through personal growth, through knowledge creation, through knowledge adaptation, and through knowledge transformation on the individual level. · To address the practical issues of managing knowledge in SPI, the efforts should be organised as a project supported by a KM strategy focusing on the most characteristic features of the organisation in question and on improving practice in a stepwise manner. The strategy should include both codified and personalised approaches and change as the software organisation matures.
The evolution of a new(s) genre
(2004) Ihlström, Carina; Department of Informatics
This thesis describes and analyzes how the online newspaper genre has evolved since its inception on the Internet in the mid-nineties. The overall research question is: What characterizes the online newspaper genre evolution? The thesis is based on both synchronic and diachronic studies with a multimethod approach (including six diﬀerent studies involving, e.g., interviews, questionnaires and web site analyses) intended to provide a comprehensive picture of this genre evolution. On the basis of genre theory, the thesis proposes a framework for understanding online newspaper genre evolution, integrating design (layout) aspects with publisher and audience views. Applying this framework to the collected empirical material, the thesis presents a comprehensive and integrated view of this evolution. Over time, online newspapers have evolved into a speciﬁc digital genre, with genre characteristics such as content and form, distinguishing them from other digital genres. However, this rapid development has also lead to diversities in form and function, triggering both academics and practitioners to seek ways to design for consistency within the genre. Several factors have inﬂuenced the online newspaper genre evolution, e.g., inhouse attitudes, business model shifts and technological progress at the publishers’ side. The audience demographics, habits and preferences have also changed. The layout of the online newspapers has been altered into long pages stuﬀed with content like news streams, headlines, photos, and services not possible in the printed edition. There has also been a shift towards frequent updates throughout the day and more content produced for the web. In addition, the thesis contributes to digital genre theory by modiﬁcations relevant to the online newspaper genre. For example, the concepts of genre awareness and genre interdependence are elaborated, a framework for identifying genre characteristics is proposed, and the concept “positioning” is introduced. Further, the thesis also contributes with implications for online newspaper design and publishing with longitudinal mappings of online newspaper layout and the habits and preferences of the audience.

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