Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-10: 1

Multimedia in Organisations

BUSS 213

Lecture 10Using Multimedia:

Communication & Organisational Communities

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Notices (1)Examination

the BUSS213 examination has been completed and it has been changed from the 3 hour examination (previously advertised) to a 2 hour examination

students are encouraged to re-check the examination timetable

further information about the design of the examination for this subject will be provided in the final lecture for this subject

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Notices (1)Marking & Submission of Assignment 2

Assignment 2 marks will be available next week. The delay in marking is due to the fact that I have only just arrived back in the country.

several students have obviously not submitted all relevant files- the consequence is that in several cases the submitted assignment 2 cannot be run and therefore cannot be marked- the following students should see Dr. Lawrie Schafe immediately

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Notices (3)Assignment 3

most students have again not indicated their preference for an assignment topic for Assignment 3

therefore, if you do not indicate your preference for a topic by the close of business today you will be automatically allocated irrespective of your personal preferences (as indicated in the Assignment 3 document)

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Agenda

last lecture we started to consider the difficult issue of the ‘user’ of multimedia in an attempt to better understand those aspects of multimedia systems which are absent from conventional systems especially Interaction/Interactivity and Usability/Actability

this week we are moving away from the interface to see how multimedia systems are used in organisations

in particular we consider how start to look at how multimedia systems promote communication within and between organisational communities

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Agenda (2)

the first problem is what is a user community- how do we find them in organisations- and what characterises them

traditional approaches are canvassed including what are referred to as content and function views of users, as well as user profiling

the second problem is once we find out who are users then how do we assess the impact that multimedia systems may have on user communities

as before there is surprisingly little about this in the literature- so we must consider these problems from first principles- in a similar fashion to how we considered interaction in the previous lecture

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Traditional Views of UsersContent and Form View of Users

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Traditional Views of Users (1)Identifying Users…

in this section, we are concerned with reviewing aspects concerning the identification of users doing so would seem to be a logical first step

in determining whether a multimedia system is appropriate

identifying users is likely to be very important in helping to evaluate a multimedia system

We concentrate here only on traditional views of users in the multimedia design literature (we base this discussion on Mok 1996, 140-143)

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Traditional Views of Users (2)…Identifying Users

according to traditional HCI informed approaches when we build multimedia we need to know: Who are the users? What are they accustomed to? What do they want? What is the user model?

we need to be able to: address these issues for any and all organisational multimedia

systems- independent of the theory we subscribe to we have seen that the answers to these questions are directly

relevant to interactivity and interface design issues but they are also very important for usability and actability in

organisational contexts

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Traditional Views of Users (3)Content and Function View of Users…

One way of thinking about who is the user is to think about the kind of functions that the multimedia system is likely to be called upon to perform-

the suggestion in traditional multimedia design is to assess the projects content to determine the functions the user will perform

from a traditional IS perspective this view is back-to-front- even using a traditional waterfall model of development (of which I am extremely critical) you should always know for whom you are designing

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Traditional Views of Users (4)…Content and Function View of Users… the following diagram attempts to show the

functions that the user will perform, it uses x and y axes to plot the specific behaviours of the interface

the example is drawn from Mok (1996) and supposedly ‘describes’ a medical information system- it would appear to be optimistic as there is nothing in this diagram that suggests this specific application

in fact it is so general as to simply indicated that this system is being used in an organisation- that is it is an example of an organisational multimedia system

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Traditional Views of Users (5)…Content and Function View of Users…

the diagram attempts to show each of these functions as providing a different yet overlapping experience

a person- note that they are construed as ‘individual users’- can be in a learning mode and in reference mode simultaneously

the main differences between these different functions- although it is not at all obvious from the diagram- are claimed to be how user-structured versus how sequential the activities are

interestingly browsing is construed to be central to all of these functions – in fact ‘reading’ or interface literacy is central but it is not defined by Mok and not theorised in general

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Traditional Views of Users (6)…Content and Function View of Users…

Learning Training

TeachingReference

Use

r-d

irec

ted

Sequential

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Traditional Views of Users (7)…Content and Function View of Users… Path: the path through the information should be

self evident or intuitive where this implies structured reasoning with logical steps or actions

Abstruseness: the level of information presented should respect user’s knowledge level, not just their intelligence Choices should be provided so the user can determine the appropriate level of information

Guidance: the controls and tools used to get through information should be scalable in relation to the complexity of the information presented. Relevant controls and support should be presented as they’re needed

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Traditional Views of Users (8)…Content and Function View of Users… Activity Level: How much passive reading or watching

is appropriate? How much active participation? Preferred Media Types: Some users may prefer to

browse through text and ring up accompanying graphics, video and animations at will, others may want to see graphics with text explanations available on demand actually this kind of argument is actually based on false

notions of complexity in the BHP project you we through all available and relevant

media at the user and allowed them to use there reading practices to screen out what they did not want- just like with web pages

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Traditional Views of Users (9)…Content and Function View of Users… Special Circumstances: a user may be right or left-

handed, colour blind or vision- or hearing impaired. A GUI can be designed to accommodate people’s needs through large text, controls arranged on one side of the screen or the other, high or adjustable audio levels etc. The difficulty still remains as to what set of functions ought to be used in the design!

Mode of Expression: a user should find it easy to view whatever is important to him or her- in a medical reference CD-ROM, female users should have access to a female anatomical rendering- not just default white-male depiction

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Traditional Views of Users (10)…Content and Function View of Users… Locality: material in an interface should be

localisable for countries and regions, and easily translated into other languages. For a global audience, an interface should be as modular as possible, allowing developers to update specific features without having to apply their work to every file

Intelligence: in addition top allowing a user to customise it, a system ideally has the intelligence to customise itself. That is, it should be able to ‘learn’ about its users, ‘remembering between sessions where a user has been and where he or she might want to begin next time

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Traditional Views of UsersProfiling USers

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Traditional Views of Users (5)Profiling Users…

recall that this traditional approach first used media in order to determine use so as to be able to identifying who users are

in fact even identifying wants and needs (which is actually what Mok has been trying to say) presupposes that all users are identical in that all users needs and wants are elicited (collected) and describable in the same way (dubious)

a quite reasonable suggestion is to profile users- this is unfortunately not a specification of the solution as it is a description of the problem- how do we do this in organisations?

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Traditional Views of Users (5)…Profiling Users…

Nonetheless, Mok (1996) proposes some suggestions for identifying users and constructing profiles which would include identifying: Age: What age groups do potential users fall into? Personal History: What kind of information should a

system allow users to enter about themselves? How should questions be phrased? How will each user’s privacy be protected?

Access Selector: How will a user understand the differences among the ways to access information and make informed choices?

::

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Traditional Views of Users (6)…Profiling Users…

Flexibility: What happens if a user changes his or her mind at any point?

Terrain: How can a user navigate from choice to choice? How can a user return to the point of origin? Should a user be able to move around within a program?

Help: What kind of assistance is available? Is it appropriate for every user?

Subject Selector: How are choices made clear to a user? What if a user doesn’t know which choice to make?

::

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Traditional Views of Users (7)…Profiling Users…

Mode or Knowledge Level: Interactive products and services can fill reference, training, teaching, or learning needs. How can a system elicit the appropriate information from a user? How can a user be made to accurately describe his or her own knowledge level? What if a user is highly educated but looking for relatively simple information?

Delivery Channel: A system shouldn’t have to prompt a user to tell it whether it’s being used on a personal computer or a television. It won’t be long before interactive products are used on multiple platforms, so that a user can, say, retrieve information from a computer-based product and transfer it to a PDA, or switch from a PC to a television screen

Preference: How can a system, let a user choose media types or a level of interaction? How can a user define how passive or active an experience he or she wants?

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Traditional Views of Users (8)…Profiling Users (after Mok 1996)

Basic UserProfile

AccessSelector

SubjectSelector

Knowledge & Access

DeliveryChannel

Interaction &Pres. Media

MediaManager

Data

User Profile SystemData

Manipulation System

Data Formatting,

Organisation &Management

System

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New Views on Users

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Previously we introduced a set of related ideas which could be used to identify the kinds of options that might be used when describing user behaviour: what it is possible for a user to select- to describe

the range of options they have available to them at a given point in time- this is given a special name paradigmatic dimension

to describe the actual options and sequences of options that they do select- this is given a special name it is called the syntagmatic dimension

New Views on Users (1)Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Dimensions

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New Views on Users (2)Field Taxonomies & System Networks

Other concepts that we identified included:field taxonomies- the realm of the paradigmatic

dimension, together with a special graphical notation that can be used to

represent a field taxonomy we use a called a system network

Recall that field taxonomies and systems networks:reveal a very powerful idea implicit in paradigms that

the choices that users make constrain the kinds of actions that they can subsequently do

also we can describe the specific set of options that they take through the network – their usage syntagm

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New Views on Users (3)Contextual Theory of Use…

Previously we considered applying these ideas only to user interface selection possibilities- now we will consider applying them to users in organisation (who happen to be using multimedia systems)

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New Views on Users (4)Social Semiotics and Organisations

the approach we will describe is based on a discipline called social semiotics

it views all meaning-making practices- including as essentially social even when carried out in apparent isolation!

these necessarily include: information systems (including multimedia)

development, supply and use, and all organisational activities

but, how is it possible for a lone user to be behaving socially?

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New Views on Users (5)Communication & Community…

… according to Lemke's (1988) argument: meaning making is only possible because we

make use of social resources such as language and the conventions characteristic of the communities in which we live and work

Indeed our language, grammar, semantics, dialect, idiom accent and spelling all mark us as members of particular communities, and

any use of - for example, language - will be socially meaningless unless to a very large extent it reiterates familiar semantic combinations of meaning in the course of familiar social activities

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New Views on Users (6)…Communication & Community…

In each sub-community in an organisation, there are characteristic uses of, for example, written language, characteristic styles, familiar topics and formats

communicative ability to be effective is generally based on many previously familiar communications

in order to explain some of these theoretical criteria and to demonstrate what they might mean in practice, it is useful to consider an example…

This aspect of prior familiarity is referred to as intertextuality by Kristeva. The concept is based on the

work of Bakhtin particularly the concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia (see Crowley 1989).

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New Views on Users (7)An example …

Consider for example a lone user in an office working on a report with their word processor using their computer, the worker is engaged in a

fragmentary, internal dialogue this dialogue is fragmentary, as the worker concentrating

on the task at hand is operating non-verbally as well as verbally

the user can become oblivious to the mechanics of the process and the rigourous enactment of the rules of composition, relying upon habit and the materiality of the writing process (the 'feel' of the keyboard, the habitual patterns of action to format a paragraph in a preferred way)

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New Views on Users (8)…An example …

this type of fragmentary internal dialogue, appears to be an ideosyncratic mixture of language, protolanguage and non-verbal activity

in fact, most information systems researchers would construe this type of situation as belonging squarely in the realm of cognitive psychology

but while social semiotics accepts that cognitive psychology and indeed psychology are practices, it rejects them as autonomous domains of theory

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New Views on Users (9)…An example …

while hardly recognised as a criteria within the information systems literature, a critical theoretical step in social semiotics was an interrogation of the prevailing notions of the subject.

Henriques et al (1984, 2) define the subject as: ... the generic term used in philosophy for what in lay

terms would be 'the person', 'individual' or 'human being' and what in psychology is referred to as 'the individual'. Recently the term 'theories of the subject' has tended to refer to approaches which are critical of psychology's assumptions about individuality, theoretical approaches which emphasize the way in which the social domain constitutes subjects rather than the other way round

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New Views on Users (10)…An example …

a social semiotic conception of this situation rejects notions of the 'subject' of psychology -the individual- or in this case the individualistic (lone) user

by replacing the ‘subject’ of psychology with that of the social subject, the apparently ‘cognitive’ processes in which our lone user is engaged are in fact: ... semiotic practices embodied in a socially constructed

subjectivity. We 'think' in the same words and in a register of the same language in which we talk. There is no autonomous semantics of thought apart from that of social meanings generally. We 'think' non verbally with the same semiotic resources for meaningful action, be they those of depiction of any activity structure, that are observable in outward action. The 'inner' forms may be specialized, but they are part of the same total social system of meaningful practices ... (Lemke 1988, 8)

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New Views on Users (11)…An example …

there are still real methodological difficulties which need to be faced if we are trying to understand what the ‘lone’ user is doing with this social resource

Several strategies might be attempted to attempt to indirectly understand the ‘inner’ semiotic practices in which the ‘lone’ user is engaged.

One way is by the use of remote keystroke logs in order to determine what users, such as a lone word processing operator, might be doing

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New Views on Users (12)…An example …

but here we are faced with a conundrum of knowing in great detail the actions that have taken place while knowing very little about why these actions are being performed

although this type of indirect observation is useful, it tells us more about the suitability of the user interface than it does about the work to which it is being applied

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New Views on Users (13)…An example…

Siochi and Ehrich (1991) produced session logs constituting a complete record of time-ordered user input actions and system responses for precisely this reason

they identified in the session logs so called maximal repeating patterns (MRPs), and their hypothesis was that these repeated sequences of actions can indicate problems in the design of the user interface

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New Views on Users (14)…An example…

Alternatively, we might be able to rig up a voice activated tape recorder and request that the worker 'speak as they type’ chances are that this type of observation would be at best only a

partial record of what they are doing we do not normally talk to ourselves while we work- it is an

unusual enough an activity to considered odd or excentric when we occasionally encounter it.

Requesting users to ‘speak as they type’ must surely be an interruption to any usual patterns of work.

Even if done- unlikely to record stretches of language which would exhibit some or any of the features usually associated with work oriented langauge (see Holmqvist and Andersen 1987)

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Contextual Theory of Use

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Contextual Theory of Use (1) Example: Global Navigation

One major problem in Web site development (simply a form of multimedia development) is that we have no way of knowing how to design these global navigation schemes- we desperately need methods

So what kinds of methods can we or should we use as developers?

there is a key insight we should realise- that global navigation divides up content for particular groups

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Contextual Theory of Use (2) Example: Global Navigation

in a very real way groups are defined by how the speak and how they write

we know what situations we are in by the language that is used

therefore, we should look to methods from semiotics and linguistics to suggest item that should be used for global navigation design

we will borrow the concept of field from systemic functional linguistics – a semiotic model of language- to provide a method

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Contextual Theory of Use (3) Analyse Field- Social Actions/Activities

identify groups by their social actions and activities (field)

analysis involves finding indexical lexical items- words used only in specific circumstances by particular groups I do, ring, priest bet, win, trifecta

need to search and analyse many spoken or written language texts- construct a field taxonomy using a system network

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Contextual Theory of Use (4) Analysis uses Spoken/Written Texts

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Contextual Theory of Use (5) Field Taxonomies & IS

distinct groups in organisation- like those of Site A and B- will have distinct ways in which they communicate, including specific forms, documents etc. as well as distinct ways in which these communications are used

Site A Field Taxonomy

Site B Field Taxonomy

Before Integrated IS

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Contextual Theory of Use (6)After Deployment- Multimedia System

You can also use exactly the same methods to identify some of the ramifications of deploying a system into the workplace- look for changes in the patterns of communication that occur

Site A Site B

Relict Field TaxonomyNot all of Site A taxonomy is subsumed by the IS

Site B Field TaxonomySubsumed by the new IS field taxonomy

IS Field TaxonomyIntegrated IS spanning sites A and B

After Deployment

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global navigation in websites should be relevant to specific communities that use them in organisations

applied semiotic methods to written and spoken language to extract so-called system networks

used system network to develop global navigation on several test websites

Contextual Theory of Use (7)Global Navigation Methods

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Contextual Theory of Use (8)Communities Communicatively Identified

unlike educational pedagogic theory we described earlier, a contextual theory of use has no problems with describing what users do because we now have an understanding of the choices they can possible make

these field taxonomies (represented in system networks) are social resources for meaning making- and so this level of description is highly appropriate in organisational contexts

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Conclusions

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Conclusions (1)

just as it has proved difficult to pin down what characterises the basic concepts behind multimedia (like interactivity) so to it has proved difficult to define how multimedia is used by workers and others in organisations

here we a let down by the fact that although there is a lot of educational (pedagogic) research into multimedia use: there has been woefully little research conducted into the

organisation nature of multimedia systems (an observation we identified in the previous lecture wrt usability)

while information systems research has not investigated how these systems relate to user communities and to communication in organisational contexts

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Conclusions (2)

an organisationally relevant theory of multimedia use must be contextual- a similar conclusion to that which we found in considering interactivity

any evaluation of the suitability of a multimedia systems must be related to the communication between particular organisational groups who directly or indirectly use it

we describe a contextual theory of communication relevant to user communities in organisational contexts, which shares some of the dame theory and methods as those previously discussed in association with user interfaces (paradigms and syntagms)

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Conclusions (3)

with respect to the theory being used here it should be noted that: in traditional approaches to evaluation of

systems (also multimedia systems) use entirely different theory to that used in usability studies of multimedia interfaces

in contrast a considerable advantage of a contextual theory of communication for looking at multimedia system use in organisations is that the same theory can be applied to study multimedia usability (as we saw in the previous lecture)

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Readings

Crowley, T. (1989) “Bakhtin and the history of the language” in Hirschkop, K. and D. Shephard eds/ (1989) Bakhtin and cultural theory Manchester: Manchester University Press 68-90

de Joia, A. and A. Stenton (1980) Terms in Systemic Linguistics: A Guide to Halliday Foreward by Michael Halliday London, U.K.: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd

Henriques, J.; Hollway, W.; Urwin, C.; Venn, C. and V. Walkerdine eds/ (1984) Changing the Subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity London and New York: Methuen 203-226

Lemke, J. L. (1988) “Towards a Social Semiotics of the Material Subject” Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, Working Papers 2 (1-2) Sydney: University of Sydney 1-17