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In this case study we take a Nordic perspective on the tension between increased digitalisation of public services and the insufficient support for citizens with limited digital literacy. Volunteer-based IT helpdesk services in public libraries have emerged as an attempt to address this tension. Drawing on examples of volunteering in public library-based IT helpdesk services in two Nordic countries, this paper considers the IT helpdesks as quasi-public services. Based on interviews, observations and workshops, we explore: the work of IT helpdesk volunteers, the characteristics of helpdesk services offered, and the implications of these services being offered by volunteers. The services offered are of acceptable quality to the users while the ambiguity and lack of institutional support is making the service fragile. In spite of the challenges of the quasi-public IT helpdesk service we also note how it offers a potential platform for the co-design and support of new public services.

The Covid-19 pandemic struck the world in spring 2019 and affected most people in the world. One group that suffered the most was older adults and others ‘weak’ citizens. In Sweden where the reported-on study was situated, especially people living in nursing homes and other care facilities suffered immensely, especially in the early stages of the pandemic. In this paper we report on perspectives and lessons learned from a survey compiled by 13 care managers in eleven Swedish municipalities followed by a workshop with ten of these municipality health managers. Our study showcase how technology has been a valuable tool for these organizations during the pandemic. While Internet-cameras in some instances has been used in private homes to facilitate ‘remote monitoring’, many of our findings points to aspects of managing care – a less studied aspect within the Pervasive health community.

International audience

In this paper, we compare two cases of collaboration within healthcare in two European countries,Denmark and France respectively. In each of these two cases, we conducted a design case study, and wefound that collaboration is ad hoc, temporary, and shifting with regards to collaborators, aims, andprocesses. We argue for the relevance of knotworking and its analytic potential for investigating thekind of collaborative work we observed. We also argue that our two cases present a higher complexitylevel than how knotworking has previously been described in the literature. We describe complexknotworking as having three characteristics: 1) collaboration happens between a dynamic number ofactors (who are usually loosely connected), 2) collaboration happens in episodes, and 3) cooperativework arrangements are constantly negotiated. Using the concept of complex knotworking for acomparative analysis of our two design solutions, we outline generic design guidelines for developingcomputer support to manage complex knotworking situations. In this paper, we compare two cases of collaboration within healthcare in two European countries, Denmark and France respectively. In each of these two cases, we conducted a design case study, and we found that collaboration is ad hoc, temporary, and shifting with regards to collaborators, aims, and processes. We argue for the relevance of knotworking and its analytic potential for investigating the kind of collaborative work we observed. We also argue that our two cases present a higher complexity level than how knotworking has previously been described in the literature. We describe complex knotworking as having three characteristics: 1) collaboration happens between a dynamic number of actors (who are usually loosely connected), 2) collaboration happens in episodes, and 3) cooperative work arrangements are constantly negotiated. Using the concept of complex knotworking for a comparative analysis of our two design solutions, we outline generic design guidelines for developing computer support to manage complex knotworking situations.

The internet has long been a core infrastructure especially for the western societies. In the last decade, the usage of the internet changed from a mainly communication infrastructure giving mainly access to static information to become a platform to full-scale applications implemented as services. Even more recently we can observe a growing use of the internet to collect and provide data: social media platforms and search engines collect, use and sell data about their usage and users; online shops use data to recommend goods to the buyer; municipalities and other public organisations provide data through open data interfaces so it can be used by companies, e.g. to provide advice for car drivers searching for a parking lot. The data infrastructure making data accessible, though, requires IT expertise.In this position paper we explore the implication of this development from a participatory design perspective and argue that we need to engage in infrastructuring in order to make the common data a common good.

This paper stresses the need for more research in the field of Participatory Design (PD) and in particular into how to design Health Information Technology (HIT) together with care providers and -receivers in multicultural settings. We contribute to this research by describing a case study, the ‘Health-Cultures’ project, in which we designed HIT for the context of home care of older people with a migration background. The Health-Cultures project is located in the city of Genk, Belgium, which is known for its multicultural population, formed by three historical migration waves of people coming to work in the nowadays closed coal mines. Via a PD approach, we studied existing means of dialogue and designed HIT that both care receivers and care providers in Genk can use in their daily exchanges between cultures in home care contexts. In discussing relevant literature as well as the results of this study, we point to the need and the ways of taking spatio-historical aspects of a specific healthcare situation into account in the PD of HIT to support multicultural perspectives on healthcare. IDE Limburg Design Fund

Organisations are looking for new service offers through innovative use of data, often through a Service Design approach. However, current Service Design tools conceal technological aspects of service development like data and datasets. Data can support the design of future services but is often not represented or rendered as a readily workable design material. This paper reports on an early qualitative study of the tools used to work with data and analytics in a medium-sized organisation. The findings identify the current representations of data and data analytics used in the case organisation. We discuss to which extend the available representations of data and data analytics support data-driven service innovation. A comparison of our findings and current Service Design representations show that Service Design lack to represent data as design material. We propose the notion of expansiveness as a criterion to evaluate future data representations for data-driven Service Design.

peer-reviewed The idea behind this Special Issue originates in a workshop on HCI and CSCW research related to work and non-work-life balance organized in conjunction with the ECSCW 2013 conference by the issue co-editors. Fifteen papers were originally submitted for possible inclusion in this Special Issue, and four papers were finally accepted for publication after two rounds of rigorous peer review. The four accepted papers explore, in different ways, HCI at the boundary of work and life. In this editorial, we offer a description of the overall theme and rationale for the Special Issue, including an introduction on the topic relevance and background, and a reflection on how the four accepted papers further current research and debate on the topic. peer-reviewed

In this paper, we analyse the challenges of working between organizations and established information infrastructures. The Care Hotel is a municipal healthcare facility where persons, typically following a hospital stay, undergo rehabilitation to enable them to live independently at home. Admission, stay, and discharge from the Care Hotel entail numerous coordination activities with a variety of frequent and sporadic, heterogeneous, external collaborators, including general practitioners, relatives, and hospitals, some of which are already part of large information infrastructures, whereas others are too small or shifting to allow for stable arrangements. Hence, work at the Care Hotel may be characterized as ‘collaboration in-between’. We propose a design solution for flexible use to further stimulate reflection on design implications, and how to meet the challenges of collaboration in-between. As large infrastructures continue to develop, we posit that many ‘in-between settings’ will encounter similar challenges to collaboration. Healthcare providers in contexts of fragmented healthcare are also likely to face such challenges. In this paper, we analyse the challenges of working between organizations and established information infrastructures. The Care Hotel is a municipal healthcare facility where persons, typically following a hospital stay, undergo rehabilitation to enable them to live independently at home. Admission, stay, and discharge from the Care Hotel entail numerous coordination activities with a variety of frequent and sporadic, heterogeneous, external collaborators, including general practitioners, relatives, and hospitals, some of which are already part of large information infrastructures, whereas others are too small or shifting to allow for stable arrangements. Hence, work at the Care Hotel may be characterized as "collaboration in-between". We propose a design solution for flexible use to further stimulate reflection on design implications, and how to meet the challenges of collaboration in-between. As large infrastructures continue to develop, we posit that many "in-between settings" will encounter similar challenges to collaboration. Healthcare providers in contexts of fragmented healthcare are also likely to face such challenges.

More and more care, for example of older adults, is performed at home.Municipality home-care workers and novel technologies support this translocation of care. At home, an important care provider is also the immediate family. A recent trend is to formalize this volunteer-, and family-based care. However, this formalization requires new support systems for collaboration and communication. Also, when informal care turns formal there is a risk that a caring family-member might have to give up professional goals such as a career, or suffer economically as one may not be able to work fulltime while caring for another family member, such as an older parent. Hence it is both in the society and the individual’s interests that future supportive care technologies consider already at design time how to support care while not impede the everyday lives and possibilities for the caring family.