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Over The Last decade, new software processes have appeared that emphasize collaboration among people involved in creating successful software. For example, agile methods stress collaboration between development teams and business clients, 1 and DevOps emphasizes better collaboration between development teams and deployment teams.

We studied the nature of incident response teams in seven Operations Centers of varying size and types including service providers, a Security Operations Center, a Data Center, and two military training Operations Centers. All responded to incidents by forming teams. We asked: what is the context of incident response work? how can we model incident response work? and what are the implications for tool developers? Activity theory guided our research throughout. Using an ethnographic approach to data collection, we shadowed 129 individuals for a total of 250 h of observations, conducted 38 interviews, and facilitated 11 meetings with executives of Operations Centers. We produced rich descriptions of the work of operators and a model of incident team formation called the Tailor-made Teams in Operations Centers (T-TOCs). We position our results relative to other ethnographic studies and standards in the industry, showing how incident team formation has changed over time. Today's incident response team is ad hoc, i.e., tailor-made to the circumstances, and responsive to changing circumstances. Our model draws parallels between the incident response work of teams and human cognition. We conclude by pointing out that tools for tailor-made teams are in their infancy.

In the family therapy literature there is increasing interest in the dialogical approach, particularly as it becomes well-grounded in psychotherapy research. One embodiment is ‘open dialogues’, which has developed over a 30-year period in Western Lapland, Finland. This paper outlines my experience of visiting Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland, the birthplace of open dialogues. It explores the seven theoretical principles of open dialogues, associated elements of clinical practice, and the therapist use of self. The author utilises these aspects to reflect on dialogical moments through words and images based on three conceptual themes, which illustrate the relevance of open dialogues for family therapy practitioners and their contexts.

Agile software development is characterized by very intensive communication and collaboration among members of the software development team and external stakeholders. In this context, we look specifically at cardwalls, noting that despite the wide availability of digital cardwalls, most Agile teams still use physical cardwalls to support their collaborative events. This is true even though a physical cardwall hinders efficient distributed software development and causes extra effort to capture story artefacts into digital tools to meet traceability and persistence requirements. We conducted two empirical studies in industry to understand the use of existing digital Agile cardwalls and to find out the needs for an ideal digital Agile cardwall. The first study was with eight Agile teams of committed digital cardwall users. The study showed the reasons why some teams use projected digital cardwalls and their detailed experiences with them. The study showed that most digital cardwalls seem not be sufficient for the highly interactive and collaborative Agile workstyle. The second study was with eleven Agile companies. The study comprised of the development of aWall, a software prototype of a large interactive high-resolution multi-touch display that supports varied Agile meetings where cardwalls are used. The results of the study emerged with design considerations for digital Agile cardwalls from the evaluation of aWall in a user workshop. Both studies, which were conducted concurrently, began with an interest in new large interactive surface technologies which might have the potential to provide not only the required interaction possibilities to support intensive collaboration, but also the required large display format necessary for a collaborative space. The results of the studies collectively seem to confirm our assumption, that large interactive surface technologies could bring the support for the collaboration of Agile teams to a new level, potentially making the teams more productive.

This chapter relates to human factors in computer security, and how surface technology might support security analysis. This specific domain allowed us to investigate surface application design and development in an established context, and thus learn how the real needs of the domain might best be supported. Throughout, we were fortunate to have partners in industry and government working in the domain who were able to give us advice and feedback. A number of projects were conducted over the span of our research program, each one offering findings that informed later projects. In this chapter, we provide an outline of our work, summarizing each of the main projects and their findings. We cover: (1) a literature review. (2) Ethnographic studies of firstly operators and technicians in seven operations centres, and secondly a team of ten professional analysts working in the security domain; (3) ACH Walkthrough, a collaborative web-based decision-making tool; (4) Ra, a tool that supports rollback, playback and other explorative actions when using web applications like ACH Walkthrough; and (5) Strata, a tool that allows for the annotation of web applications, enabling the work of collaborative teams.

Surface computing encourages exploratory interaction, and many applications are designed to work this way. In essence, the fluid interaction causes the user to ask “What if?” We suggest this requires support for recording the history of such explorations and allowing reversion to earlier states. There are currently a variety of related mechanisms, but they are either underpowered for the sort of interaction history management we suggest is needed, or are restricted to very specific domains. We present a prototype implementation of an interaction history manager: Ra is a JavaScript library for supporting this exploration and version tracking in web applications. We illustrate the interface for end users seen in augmenting simple web applications; we describe the underlying technical architecture, which uses ES6 Proxy objects to maintain access to the application’s model; and we present the API, which allows an existing application to include Ra with minimal code change.

In Agile software development, key artefacts used to support the process are the User Story (usually recorded on a Storycard) and Story Cardwall (usually a dedicated portion of a wall). These low-fidelity tools work together to help teams stay focused and self-manage their projects. The need to support distributed teams and team members makes the physical Cardwall impractical and teams are therefore migrating towards digital story management tools. We conducted field studies of 8 Agile teams using digital Cardwalls, and performed qualitative data analysis to understand patterns of usages and user needs. We identify issues to address in the design of digital Cardwalls.

Three studies were conducted to ascertain how quickly people form an opinion about web page visual appeal. In the first study, participants twice rated the visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 ms each. The second study replicated the first, but participants also rated each web page on seven specific design dimensions. Visual appeal was found to be closely related to most of these. Study 3 again replicated the 500 ms condition as well as adding a 50 ms condition using the same stimuli to determine whether the first impression may be interpreted as a 'mere exposure effect' (Zajonc 1980). Throughout, visual appeal ratings were highly correlated from one phase to the next as were the correlations between the 50 ms and 500 ms conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed within 50 ms, suggesting that web designers have about 50 ms to make a good first impression.

We study complex work environments to enable innovative improvements. In this paper we report on a technique we have created to depict the complex work environments of operators in IT operations control centers, developed after a 3-day field study in a large operations center. Because of security issues and tight time constraints on the operators' work, this environment is not accessible to software teams. The technique is a Day-in-the-life scenario, which extends on the work of personas and scenarios. The scenario has two forms: a narrative, and a diagram. Our narrative captures typical daily events in the life of the operator and conveys the gist of their day in terms of attentional focus and tensions between and within their activities. The Day-in-the-life diagram uses the UML sequence diagram notation to depict the narrative visually, bringing important details of the day to the fore. These techniques especially capture the many activities of operators and the subsequent demands on an operators' attention.

Data operations and command centers are crucial for managing today's Internet-based economy. Despite advances in automation, the challenges placed on operations professionals continue to increase as they work individually or in teams to repair or proactively avoid service disruptions. Although there have been a few studies of collaborative work in military supervisory control centers, due to the sensitive nature of work in operating centers, there have been few studies on the activities that take place in commercial data centers. In this case study of a large, complex data operations and control center, activity theory is used to guide and interpret observations of individual and collaborative work. This resulted in a model of data operations activities, and the identification of tensions that arise within and between these activities. This model is of value to interaction engineers in the first phase of a user-centered engineering methodology. Using this model, we provide some recommendations for reducing some of the tensions we found, and discuss significant opportunities and challenges in this new domain for the HCI community.

Collaboration is an important aspect of software creation work. In field studies of 8 teams in the early stages of novel project work at 8 organizations we focused on understanding collaborative work from the perspective of both the interaction designer and the developer. We found designer-developer collaborations, often occurring in the context of team collaborations, were extensive. While some collaborations were directed towards explicit alignment work, such as prioritizing tasks, we have studied implicit alignment work, which constitutes a larger part of the overall alignment work. The form of this work varied in some respects, but in general designer-developer interactions directed towards implicit alignment were remarkably similar. Our model shows how implicit alignment work is jointly achieved; we derived it from an extensive analysis of videos of 13 collaborative events, and verified it with our observation notes and interviews. The model is applicable to a wide variety of software creation settings, including agile and non-agile teams. Our analysis shows the implications of our observations of implicit alignment work, and we conclude organizations should take practical steps to support it, as is frequently done for explicit alignment work.

We studied collaborating interface designers and software developers engaged in multidisciplinary software creation work. Twenty-one designers and developers in 8 organizations were interviewed to understand how each specialist viewed team interactions. We also shadowed most participants as they worked on novel software projects with user interface design challenges. A grounded theory analysis of interview transcripts showed that designers and developers construct unique identities in the process of collaborating that provide meaning to their artefact-mediated interactions, and that help them to effectively accomplish the work of creating novel software. Our model of interactional identities specifies a number of aspects of joint project work in which an interactional identity is expressed. We suggest these identities are constructed to bridge a gap between how designers and developers were taught to enact their roles and the demands of project-specific work.

Agile processes emphasize collaboration. We were interested in studying collaboration in agile teams including interaction designers, since the integration of user interaction design processes and software development processes is still an open issue. This study focused on designer and developer collaborations in the early stages of project work at four workplaces. We found designer-developer collaborations were extensive and we developed a categorization scheme of collaboration forms and artefacts that support this relationship. While some designer-developer collaborations were directed towards planning, which has been extensively researched, a larger part was directed towards realignment work. This latter type of collaborative work took three basic forms: scheduled, impromptu, and chats. Regardless of the form of collaboration, designer-developer interactions were mediated by twelve categories of artefacts. These artefacts helped designers and developers to determine, more specifically, what to create. We discuss the implications of our observations on alignment work for theory and practice.

Objectives—A community intervention trial was carried out to evaluate the relative effectiveness of two methods of reducing playground hazards in schools. The study hypotheses were: (1) a health promotion programme addressing barriers to implementing the New Zealand Playground Safety Standard will reduce playground hazards and (2) the intervention programme will be more successful than providing information alone. Methods—Twenty four schools in Wellington, New Zealand were randomly allocated into two groups of 12 and their playgrounds audited for hazards. After the audit, the intervention group received a health promotion programme consisting of information about the hazards, an engineer's report, regular contact and encouragement to act on the report, and assistance in obtaining funding. The control group only received information about hazards in their playground. Results—After 19 months, there was a significant fall in hazards in the intervention schools compared with the control schools (Mann-Whitney U test, p=0.027). No intervention schools had increased hazards and eight out of 12 had reduced them by at least three. In contrast, only two of the control schools had reduced their hazards by this amount, with three others increasing their hazards in that time. Conclusions—It is concluded that working intensively with schools to overcome barriers to upgrading playground equipment can lead to a reduction in hazards, and that this form of intensive intervention is more effective than providing information alone.

Human migrations are a significant force in historical change. Large-scale migration, of Asians, Africans and Europeans, was central in fashioning the world of the nineteenth century, its world-wide empires and the establishment of global economic and political dominance by people of European origin. Twentieth-century migrations have been just as important, particularly in the creation of a post-World War and post-imperial world order. Asian peoples have been among the most central in these processes. By the last quarter of this century about nine million South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) and over 30 million Chinese are to be found living outside their country of origin as a result of migration or birth within a migrant community. There were also significant numbers of ‘internal migrants’, displaced within their home regions; such as the millions traversing the Indo-Pakistan borders after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and the Chinese who have moved into the predominantly Tibetan western reaches of the Chinese state.

The anxious or depressed patient not only disrupts his own life but also distresses his family and the community. The physician, then, must consider many factors before deciding whether to use psychotherapy, drugs, hospitalization, or a combination of these. He should also counsel the patient's family and marshal community resources to help his patient.

Excerpt Because depression may exist concurrently with medical illness, detecting those patients whose emotional distress requires special attention is a complicated task for both internists and ps...

Excerpt Since the days of hippocrates, depression has been recognized as a distinctive psychobiologic mode. Engel (1) said that depression, developmentally, is the latter of two basic biologic reac...