Dear friends, I am please to announce our latest IJSKD special issue on Human Work Interaction Design. I would like to have a special issue on the Internet of Things and Sociotechnical Design, if you would like to be a guest editor of this please send me a 500 word abstract/proposal and short BIO. You could always submit an individual paper reporting on research or reflecting on any aspect of Sociotechnology and Internet Studies. 5(3) will be out really soon as well. Best, José The contents of the latest issue of: International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development (IJSKD) Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association Volume 5, Issue 2, April – June 2013 Published: Quarterly in Print and Electronically ISSN: 1941-6253 EISSN: 1941-6261 Published by IGI Publishing, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA www.igi-global.com/ijskd<http://www.igi-global.com/ijskd> Editors-in-Chief: José Abdelnour-Nocera (University of West London, UK) and Constance Kampf (Aarhus University, Denmark) GUEST EDITORIAL PREFACE Special Issue on Human Work Interaction Design Arminda Guerra Lopes, Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal and Paola Amaldi, Department of Psychology, School of Life and Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, England, UK To obtain a copy of the Guest Editorial Preface, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/pdf.aspx?tid%3D89783%26ptid%3D71419%26ctid%3D15%26... PAPER ONE An Organizational Study into the Concept of “Automation Policy” in a Safety Critical Socio-Technical System Paola Amaldi (Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK) and Anthony Smoker (NATS, Southampton, UK) Although automation has been introduced in all areas of public life, what seems to be missing is a reflection at the organizational or societal level about a policy of automation. By this the authors intend appropriate declarations made at the level of rationale, future plans and strategies to achieve intended goals and most importantly how those achievements will impact on various aspects of societal life, from legal responsibilities to moral and socio economic issues. Implicit in this is what is expected of both the human and technical system actors. In some public spheres these issues are becoming quite controversial because automation opens up possibilities of profound structural re-organization; however, people lack a discussion across and within different work domains to help us review methods or even methodological principles needed to gather and organize knowledge towards the construction of automation policies. This paper uses the UK Air Navigation Service Provider in the Air Traffic Management Domain known as NATS, as a case study to illustrate an example of an organization currently undertaking critical self-reflection about automation policy or the lack of such, along with the illustration of some unresolved deep concerns raised by the development, introduction, and continued use of automation. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/an-organizational-study-into-the-concept-o... To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89786 PAPER TWO Speech Interaction Analysis on Collaborative Work at an Elderly Care Facility Tetsuro Chino (Corporate Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan), Kentaro Torii (Corporate Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan), Naoshi Uchihira (School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi City, Japan) and Yuji Hirabayashi (Institute of Technology, Shimizu Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) Nursing and care are central aspects of healthcare services, and improvements in the quality and efficiency of healthcare processes are important issues. Since these tasks involve both physical actions and information processing, they can be described as what the authors call “action-oriented intellectual services.” There are striking mismatches between such services and current information and communication technology systems, which are generally designed as tools for deskwork. In addition, almost all nursing and care services are realized by the collaborative work of multiple staff members in distributed locations in the field, a situation with which conventional communication media are of limited utility. A smart voice tweet system for nursing and care is proposed to overcome these problems. To realize this technology, one needs to understand how staff communicates to realize collaborative work in healthcare domains. The authors therefore observed bathing assistance, night shift operations, and handover tasks at a private elderly care home for 8 days. The authors collected approximately 400 h of recorded speech, 42,000 transcribed utterances, data from an indoor location-tracking system, and handwritten notes by human observers. The authors also analyzed speech interactions in the bathing assistance task. The authors found that (1) staff members were almost always speaking during tasks, (2) remote communication was rare, (3) about 75% of utterances were spoken to the residents, (4) the intended recipient of utterances was frequently switched, and (5) about 17% of utterances contained personal names. The authors also attempted clustering utterances into what the authors call “passages”, and about 33% of passages contained only one personal name. These results should be applicable in semi-automatic long-term care record taking. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/speech-interaction-analysis-on-collaborati... To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89787 PAPER THREE Work Analysis Methods in Practice: The Context of Collaborative Review of CAD Models Pedro Campos (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal), Hildegardo Noronha (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal) and Arminda Lopes (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal) Human work interaction design is an emerging discipline that aims to encourage empirical studies and conceptualizations of the interaction among humans, their variegated social contexts and the technology they use both within and across these contexts. In this paper the authors present a virtual reality system for visualization, navigation and reviewing of 3D CAD models within the oil industry domain. This system combines a large-screen interaction environment with remote mobile devices, thus allowing engineers in the field and teams in a control center to work in collaboration. To navigate through models the system uses the mobile device’s camera and inertial sensors and takes advantage of recent natural interaction techniques on large-screen environments. The authors describe and elaborate around the usage of different work analysis methods in this complex, real world work domain. The analysis is based on (i) input from experts in the oil platform engineering field, (ii) previous and related work and (iii) application of different methods considering the recent advances in technology. The authors conclude that hierarchical task analysis was not effective in obtaining a clear, common vision about the work domain. Storyboarding was the most useful technique as it promoted the discovery of novelty factors that differentiate the solution, while simultaneously supporting the human work at offshore engineering design and review sessions. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/work-analysis-methods-in-practice/89788 To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89788 PAPER FOUR Feedback Fidelities in Three Different Types of Crisis Management Training Environments Olga Druzhinina (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland), Ebba Thora Hvannberg (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland) and Gyda Halldorsdottir (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland) Designing feedback that trainees receive in a training simulator while practicing non-technical skills in complex cognitive domains is demanding but, though potentially productive, has received inadequate attention. This paper describes research which aims to understand the impact of fidelity on feedback provided during training for crisis management. More specifically, the goal was to learn whether there were differences between learning feedback types in three different environments, a real-life training exercise, a table-top exercise and a design of an experiential training simulator. The basis for the comparison was a framework of essential feedback types that emerged from the literature and three types of fidelities, physical, functional and psychological. The study showed that there were few occurrences of psychological fidelities of feedback. It also showed that high fidelity can be achieved in the absence of feedback forms categorized as psychological, and that loose organization of an exercise may lead to significant variation in learning outcomes in different learning environments. In addition, the research demonstrated how the fidelity analysis of feedback types can be useful for designing feedback for learners in a training simulator. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/feedback-fidelities-in-three-different-typ... To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89789 PAPER FIVE A Gestural Recognition Interface for Intelligent Wheelchair Users Ricardo Proença (Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, Escola Superior de Tecnologia, Castelo Branco, Portugal), Arminda Guerra (Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, Escola Superior de Tecnologia, Castelo Branco, Portugal) and Pedro Campos (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal) The authors present a new system that exploits novel human-machine interfaces based on the recognition of static gestures of human hands. The aim is to aid the occupant of a wheelchair to have access to certain objects in order to facilitate his or her daily life. The authors’ approach is based on simple computational processes and low-cost hardware. Its development involves a comprehensive approach to computer vision problems based on video image capture, image segmentation, feature extraction, pattern recognition and classification. The importance of this work will be reflected in the way that differently-able users, with the use of new models of interaction, and in a natural and intuitive way, will have their life significantly facilitated. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/a-gestural-recognition-interface-for-intel... To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89790 PAPER SIX A Web-Based Interactive Questionnaire for PV Application Zheng Dai (Realtime Targeting, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Kasper Paasch (Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg, Denmark) Questionnaire is a fundamental method for investigation and research, but participants get tired about it, because of the impression of being long and boring, which causes low quality of research. The authors developed an interactive questionnaire as an effective method to involve responder actively. The development of this tool is dynamic process, which goes with a research project called Sunrise-PV. The project is led by the University of Southern Denmark and is collaboration between local organizations to popularize PV system in both residential and the industrial buildings. For such an innovative research, the authors adopt participatory design as research method to develop the research tool in several iterations. Moreover, the authors get a balanced perspective between user needs, market viability, and technical feasibility, which guide their research focus on the artistic and usability aspects, and also raise product concepts and the concern of technical issues. To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/article/a-web-based-interactive-questionnaire-for-... To view a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below. http://www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=89791 **************************************************** For full copies of the above articles, check for this issue of the International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development (IJSKD) in your institution's library. This journal is also included in the IGI Global aggregated "InfoSci-Journals" database: http://www.igi-global.com/eresources/infosci-journals.aspx. ***************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS Mission of IJSKD: The overall mission of the International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development (IJSKD) is to provide a practical and comprehensive forum for exchanging research ideas and down-to-earth practices which bridge the social and technical gap within organizations and society at large. At the same time it will provide a forum for considering the ethical issues linked to organizational change and development. It will encourage interdisciplinary texts that discuss current practices as well as demonstrating how the advances of - and changes within - technology affect the growth of society (and vice versa). The aim of the journal is to bring together the expertise of people who have worked practically in a changing society across the world for people in the field of organizational development and technology studies including information systems development and implementation. Coverage of IJSKD: This journal will look for practical sociotechnical approaches that can assist practitioners, academics, researchers, and students. A particular focus will be on new ideas and approaches including studies of their practical implementation. Appropriate themes might thus include (but are not restricted to) a sociotechnical perspective on: * Applied Ergonomic Critical success factors (and key performance indicators) for organizations and technological implementation * Culture and trust within organizations and their relevance to technological artifacts * Design and technology development issues including requirements and stakeholder participation * E-government and democracy as affected by technological change * Empowerment and team development * HRM issues for innovation and knowledge sharing * Humanistic redesign and technological politics in organizations * Implementation issues of change and technology * Influence of human factors on operational efficiency * Information systems development * Innovation * Knowledge management systems * Knowledge sharing * Learning organizations * Managing organizational knowledge as a strategic asset * Organizational change * Performance and quality of working life * Quality assessment of computer information systems * Relevance of the worker’s perspective * Social aspects of automation * Sociotechnical systems * Systems failures * Technological forecasting and social change * Technology and its role in society and organizations * Technology in society * Using knowledge management principles to solve organizational performance problems IGI Global is pleased to offer a special Multi-Year Subscription Loyalty Program. In this program, customers who subscribe to one or more journals for a minimum of two years will qualify for secure subscription pricing. IGI Global pledges to cap their annual price increase at 5%, which guarantees that the subscription rates for these customers will not increase by more than 5% annually. Submission: Prospective authors should note that only original and previously unpublished articles will be considered. INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/journals/guidelines-for-submission.aspx PRIOR TO SUBMISSION. All article submissions will be forwarded to at least 3 members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal for double-blind, peer review. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically. All inquiries regarding IJSKD should be directed to the attention of: José Abdelnour-Nocera and Constance Kampf Editors-in-Chief International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development E-mails: jose.abdelnour-nocera@uwl.ac.uk<mailto:jose.abdelnour-nocera@uwl.ac.uk> and cka@asb.dk<mailto:cka@asb.dk> All manuscript submissions to IJSKD should be sent through the online submission system: http://www.igi-global.com/authorseditors/titlesubmission/newproject.aspx Dr. José Abdelnour Nocera Reader in Sociotechnical Design Institute for Practice and Interdisciplinary Research (INSPIRE) Head of Sociotechnical Centre for Internationalisation and User Experience University of West London St Mary’s Road, Ealing – London W5 5RF https://soc.uwl.ac.uk/~jabdelno<http://soc.uwl.ac.uk/~jabdelno>