Over the last decades there has been a dramatic change in the design agenda within the field of IT design. With the increase of mobile and wireless devices and the massive expansion of Internet availability the classic object of design - is about to vanish. Even if we conceive the setting where information technology is used as a 'system', this system can hardly be seen as the outcome of a system design process. Arguably, IT design is today guided by new design agendas. Ubiquitous computing and from the user side information ecologies seem to be more appropriate labels for the emerging technology. The objects of design has correspondingly been changing from systems to devices, tools or information appliances. This radical opening of the question of what to design has led to an apparent confusion on how to design. Just as the field of information systems is about to mature with a broad and widely accepted repertoire of design approaches and methods, ranging from workflow analysis to user involvement, this battery of approaches is loosing ground in favor of more techno-centric explorations, such as Tangible Computing. In our view there seem to be a growing divide between mainly North American contributions to IT design emphasizing new information technology concepts such as ubiquitous computing, tangible interaction and augmented reality, and mainly European contributions emphasizing the role of particular information technology applications in the light of in-depth studies of the potential contexts of use.

There is a high drop-out rate in distance courses. One of the reasons for this is that students miss the informal and collegial contact with other students that can be provided in on-campus courses. The presented study is based on an assumption that if students could be promoted to give each other more personal online feedback the students would also take initiatives to informal and collegial contact via collaboration tools. The presented experiments demonstrate that a combination of assignments during distance courses will highly increase the amount of spontaneous feedback between students.

Artikeln presenter ett VideoBord med några VideoKort. VideoBordet är ett mötesbord som möjliggör kollaborativ utforskning och bearbetning av videomaterial under designsessioner via ett gripbart gränssnitt för många användare. VideoKorten är papperskort med en stillbild och text som tillsammans representerar viktiga nyckelsekvenser i videomaterialet. Respektive nyckelsekvens kan spelas upp genom att en knapp, som finns monterad på varje VideoKort, trycks in av någon deltagare i design sessionen. VideoKorten kan ligga utspridda på VideoBordet tillsammans med andra fysiska objekt. Därigenom kan mötesdeltagarna blanda "länkade" fysiska representationer av videomaterial med andra fysiska artefakter under brainstormsliknande designsessioner. Därigenom hanteras den utmaning som ligger i att blanda videons lite ogripbara och kortlivade karaktär med fysiska artefakters mer bestående och påtagliga gripbarhet. Implementeringen bygger på passiva RFID-taggar (Radio Frequency Identification) som är permanent monterade på varje enskilt VideoKort. RFID-taggen är dock modifierad så att aktivering enbart sker genom att användarna, via en knapptryckning på respektive kort, explicit ger uttryck för att man önskar få den speciella videosekvensen uppspelad. Preliminära observationer under en design workshop indikerar att den direkta fysiska manipulationen av VideoKorten tillsammans med dess direkta koppling till respektive videosekvens möjliggör den mix mellan fysiska artefakter och digital video som eftersträvades.

Rationale

A previous short-term study showed that a computer-based training in eating and nutrition increased the probability for hospital inpatients at undernutrition (UN) risk to receive nutritional treatment and care without increasing overtreatment (providing nutritional treatment to those not at UN risk).

The aim of this study was to investigate if a computer-based training in eating and nutrition influences the precision in nutritional treatment and care in a longer-term perspective.

Method

A preintervention and postintervention study was conducted with a cross-sectional design at each time points (baseline and 7 months postintervention). Hospital inpatients > 18 years old at baseline (2013; n = 201) and follow-up (2014; n = 209) were included. A computer-based training was implemented during a period of 3 months with 297 (84%) participating registered nurses and nurse assistants. Undernutrition risk was screened for using the minimal eating observation and nutrition form-version II. Nutritional treatment and care was recorded using a standardized protocol.

Results

The share of patients at UN risk that received energy-dense food (+ 25.2%) and dietician consultations (+ 22.3%) increased between baseline and follow-up, while fewer received oral nutritional supplements (-18.9%). "Overtreatment" (providing nutritional treatment to those not at UN risk) did not change between baseline and follow-up.

Conclusion

The computer-based training increased the provision of energy-dense food and dietician consultations to patients at UN risk without increasing overtreatment of patients without UN risk.

RATIONALE: This study aimed to explore whether a computer-based training in eating and nutrition for hospital nursing staff can influence the precision in nutritional treatment and care.

METHOD: A pre-intervention and post-intervention study was conducted with a cross-sectional design at each time point. The settings were one intervention (IH) and two control hospitals (CH1 and CH2). Hospital inpatients >18 years old at baseline (2012; n = 409) and follow-up (2014; n = 456) were included. The computer-based training was implemented during a period of 3 months in the IH with 297 (84%) participating registered nurses and nurse assistants. Nutritional risk was screened for using the Minimal Eating Observation and Nutrition Form. Nutritional treatment and care was recorded using a standardized protocol RESULTS: In the IH, there was an increase in the share of patients at UN risk that received energy-dense food (+16.7%) and dietician consultations (+17.3%) between baseline and follow-up, while fewer received feeding assistance (-16.2%). There was an increase in the share of patients at UN risk that received energy-dense food (+19.5%), a decrease in oral nutritional supplements (-30.5%) and food-registrations (-30.6%) in CH1, whereas there were no changes in CH2. 'Overtreatment' (providing nutritional treatment to those not at UN risk) was significantly higher in CH2 (52.7%) than in CH1 (14.3%) and in the IH (25.2%) at follow-up.

CONCLUSION: The computer-based training seemed to increase the probability for patients at UN risk in the IH to receive nutritional treatment without increasing overtreatment.

Studies have shown that computer-based training in eating and nutrition for hospital nursing staff increased the likelihood that patients at risk of undernutrition would receive nutritional interventions. This article seeks to provide understanding from the perspective of nursing staff of conceptually important areas for computer-based nutritional training, and their relative importance to nutritional care, following completion of the training. Group concept mapping, an integrated qualitative and quantitative methodology, was used to conceptualize important factors relating to the training experiences through four focus groups (n = 43), statement sorting (n = 38), and importance rating (n = 32), followed by multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. Sorting of 38 statements yielded four clusters. These clusters (number of statements) were as follows: personal competence and development (10), practice close care development (10), patient safety (9), and awareness about the nutrition care process (9). First and second clusters represented "the learning organization," and third and fourth represented "quality improvement." These findings provide a conceptual basis for understanding the importance of training in eating and nutrition, which contributes to a learning organization and quality improvement, and can be linked to and facilitates person-centered nutritional care and patient safety.

Sketching is a most central activity within most design projects. But what happens if we adopt the ideas of collaborative design and invite participants that are not trained to sketch in to the design process, how can they participate in this central activity? This paper offers an introduction to how design material based on ethnography can be understood as sketching material. It suggests a process where the sketching tools are constructed within the scope of the project. Some practical details of how the design material has been co-authored will be explored. Finally, this paper shows how the design material has been used to co-author possible futures within the scope of design sessions.

The spatial organization of the workplace affects the work going on there. The technology used, changes the work practice. This paper describes a design process where different aspects of workplace design for project-based office work have been combined into one multi-stakeholder project, integrating the spatial aspects, the furniture, the information technology, and the IT-services that are connected to work. To have several different partners with different interests and competencies collaborating in a future oriented design process puts certain demands on the setup of the process and the tools being used. Taking a starting point in existing work practice, we have driven this project with techniques most often used for user-involvement. Scenario building played a crucial role in tying the process together. The concrete result is a completed concept proposal for an actual “office of the future” layout, which integrates advanced information technology and service solutions. The case shows that it is possible to reach innovative consensus-anchored results with the described design method.

Within the Participatory Design community as well as the Computer Supported Cooperative Work tradition, a lot of effort has been put into the question of letting field studies inform design. In this paper, we describe how game-like approaches can be used as a way of exploring a practice from a design point of view. Thinking of ethnographic fieldwork as a base for sketching, rather than descriptions, creates openness that invites collaborative authoring. The concept of playful collaborative exploration suggests certain ways of interacting with material from field studies so that it becomes a design material for an open-ended design process. We have carried out field studies, transformed the field material into design material, and set up a design game for working with it together with the people we followed in the field. The design game builds on an idea about the power of narratives and the benefits of constraining rules. We believe that this framework for collaboration opens for playfulness, experimentation, and new design ideas.

During the last few years personas has become an established design technique within the IT-design field. Using personas has proven itself as a valuable approach for designers to switch between a developer's perspective and a user's perspectivein the design process. The technique is claimed to help designers in keeping a clear focus and shaping a consistent user-interface by making ‘the user’ present in the design work. In this paper we report on a number of projects where we have elaborated on the persona approach for collaborative design. With the goalof creating ‘user presence’ in the design process, we have developed an approach building on a combination of ethnographic exploration, participatory inquiry, and collaborative design. This paper carries two interrelated points: the grounding of personasin existing practice; and the notion that ‘the user’ is created as an ongoing process throughout the design work.

This paper outlines design ideas from a project dealing with different interaction concepts for the design of a computer based navigation system for truck drivers. The incentive for thinking about interaction concepts is that programming of navigation systems often occurs while driving, since that is when the support is needed. We have been working with ethnographical studies of truck drivers driving both over short and long distances. There has been quite a lot of work done in the field of cars and navigation, in this paper however the main theme is not navigation in cars as such, but the truck environment as an example of a high-demanding room for work activities. This lead to a design situation where the artifact and the activity has to go together, the artifact has to ‘melt-in’ to the work practice. We discuss how the design of computational power can melt-in to the work-practice without demanding too much of the attention needed for driving the truck safely.

This position paper outlines design ideas gained from a project dealing with different interaction concepts when designing a computer based navigation systems for truck drivers working over large areas and where the delivery and pick-up points from time to time are unfamiliar to the driver. The extension of this previous project includes more ’untraditional’ technology, but has the same approach and uses the same basic concepts. Both the original design and the new design are based on an empirical study of truck drivers work practice.