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A detailed investigation of 9-1-1 operations, using participant observation and video recordings, when taken together with other naturalistic studies of practical human conduct, suggests that the prevailing cognitivist approach to decision making has a number of limitations. This observational and video data provides a framework for an ethnomethodological respecification of the phenomenon.

This naturalistic study of the ordinary work practice of sales representatives employed by the call centre of a large office-equipment company focuses on the actions of those sales reps during their calls with customers. We show how this work performance is organized through an improvisational choreography of action involving not only the turn-by-turn interchange with customers on the telephone but also the concurrent utilization of a variety of tools and artefacts. While 'improvise' and 'choreograph' may appear to be conceptually incongruent, our analysis demonstrates that even though these teleservice workers recurrently fabricate their actions out of materials and means that are conveniently on hand, the convenience is often carefully arranged to afford such extemporaneous composition. Finally, we conclude from this analysis that the traditional topics of 'work routines' and 'routinization' need to be respecified in order to take into account how any 'routine' is a contingently produced result (and in this centre, a craft-like performance). KEYWORDS: Work; labour; ethnomethodology; technology; computers

This paper studies intelligibility in constructive design research, in which the main instrument of knowledge creation is design. Constructive design research is situated between design practice and research, meaning it has to build on practices that make it intelligible to many audiences. We call this multiple intelligibility, examining it through the case of an empathic design program in Helsinki, Finland. The case focuses on how the designers in the program have managed to build a practice that is intelligible for different audiences. By looking into the practical grounds of the research program as a topic of analysis, we study theoretical practices that create connections to research, methodic practices that create a connection to practice and recipient design practices that lie at the heart of intelligibility in empathic design. Based on the findings of the case, we suggest policies for constructive design research to manage multiple intelligibility across different audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative arrangements between users and designers today are enacted in a broadening array of circumstances. These include extended, even years-long projects within corporations, the public and third sectors, as well as open-ended, peer-to-peer open design initiatives. Building on a literature review and analysis of four concrete participatory design projects, in this paper we argue that besides skills in selecting and implementing co-design methods, there is a larger repertoire of issues that need attention, if one takes the promises and limits of participatory design seriously. We elaborate on how these issues have purchase in the interplay of four interrelated domains: the strategic considerations that drive all those implicated, the mundane acts involved in co-design work, the choice of methods that is conditioned by strategic and mundane issues, and the producing of design outcomes permeated in turn by all the above. These domains co-constitute each other in such a way that one domain cannot easily be considered apart from the others. Participatory design understood from this perspective is not about facilitation skills, but rather skills to translate among strategic, mundane, method and design domains, and being aware of how they qualify and permeate each other in order to achieve results [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of pollinator-mediated selection in the maintenance of pollen color variation. Topics discussed include site-specific pollen color preference in pollen color polymorphism in Erythonium americanum showed by bee pollinators, prevalence of light-colored pollen in Campanula americana; and determination of pollen color by flavonoid and carotenoid compounds that accumulate in the pollen grains.

By examining mobility in remote Arctic areas, we analyze how challenging environmental conditions, while affecting technology performance, evoke people's creativity and efforts as technology users. Based on historical materials and ethnographic observations of user inventiveness in the transport sector in the Russian North, we define and document a phenomenon of "proximal design" in three different modes: the proximal complementation of "distant design" machines (trucks and military equipment) to ascertain their reliability; the emergence of a new type of homemade all-terrain vehicle called a "karakat," made from salvaged parts to specialize in times and locations where other vehicles turn unreliable; and the traditional craft of sledge-making by nomadic reindeer herders of the Yamal area, where even materials are proximally collected and shaped. Our main argument is that continuous tuning, modification, and redesign of technology carried out by immediate users in situ make it possible for humans and machines to function in extreme settings and that this can lead also to emergence of enduring design principles. We outline key characteristics of proximal design such as constraining environment, inventiveness by necessity, flexible construction, personalization and symbolic meaning, and social embeddedness of making/maintaining practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a rapid and practical method to assess social dimensions of performance in small-scale and industrial fisheries globally (SocialWellbeing in Fisheries Tool (SWIFT)). SWIFT incorporates aspects of security (fairness and stability of earnings, benefits of employment to local fishing communities, worker protection, and personal safety and health in communities associated with fisheries); flexibility (including opportunity for economic advancement); and the fishery's social viability (including whether the fishery is recruiting new harvesters and diverse age classes of workers, whether women's participation and leadership in global production networks are on an upward trajectory.). We build on resilience research by conceptualizing wellbeing in terms of security, flexibility, and viability, and assessing wellbeing at individual, community, and system levels. SWIFT makes social performance measures more broadly accessible to global production networks, incorporates an everyday understanding of wellbeing for people involved in the seafood industry, and helps put social sustainability into measurable terms that are relevant for businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On January 25, 1988, Dan Rather interviewed then U.S. vice-president and presidential candidate, George Bush on the CBS evening news. That nine minute encounter stimulated a profound reaction for political insiders, informed commentators, and the viewing public in general. To many who were watching, Bush appeared surprisingly forceful and aggressive, and was widely felt to have dispelled his "wimp" image. In this article, authors attempt to understand the basis for these reactions. The intent of such an analysis is to determine how the participants shaped the encounter from within. Whatever prior agendas or predispositions there may have been, the actual course of the encounter must be treated as an emergent and fundamentally interactional achievement. Accordingly, if the encounter's trajectory differed from most ordinary news interviews, we want to arrive at a technical understanding of what those differences consisted of, and how they were methodically produced. In pursuit of this aim, authors are drawing on the methods, concepts, and findings of conversation analysis.