ASIST2006: Being User-Oriented Being User-Oriented: Convergences, Divergences & Potentials for Systematic Dialog Between Disciplines Researchers, Designers and Providers
Tuesday, 10:30am

{Digitally recorded}

3-field dialog project
IMLS & School of Communication, Ohio State

“tidy but naive idea” – interview experts in LIS, HCI/IT, COMM on how they see each other and users, 12 interviews… 12 interviews yielded chaotic mess.

Dialog exploded
- search for data recursively
- current literature review on collapsing user categories by any other name, audiences, patients, viewers, patrons
- secondary literature review on the “systematic attacks on the social sciences” by politicians and scientists see Information Research (online journal)

Round 1-
83 telephone interviews, 45min each, experts in 3 fields
Supplemented by interviews with academic and public librarians.

Round 2-
Impressionistic essays, 48 recruited by the panel members here today.

Round 3-
Comprehensive thematic analysis and a philosophic essay on the problematics of dialog

Round 4-
Symposia and workshops
Today and then at the International Communication Association
ASIST 2007 full day workshop
CHI panel

http://imlsosuoclcproject.jcomm.ohio-state.edu/ (I think)

Today – fill out boxes on the back of the handout as a focus group. Later - apply to see data and promise to write an essay.

Most want syntheses but can’t understand them when they’re written in alien tongue
Want a new theory – but oh, no! Not another theory!
Case – assigned reading of transcripts and thematic analysis to masters and PhD students and came back with 6 general themes
Dillon - What do you get when you cross a mafiaoso with a semiotician? Someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand
Tension between disciplines. Thought from all, we did it first, we do it better, etc.
Cognitive architecture of users doesn’t change, really, as the technology does.
We don’t do big enough studies (need n=1000 or 10,000 or 100,000)
We need to watch people over time (instead of 5 minutes, 5 years)
Research must bear on real design (What does this change? What does this improve?) Improve fault line between research and practice.
Big questions need big answers, no one discipline can do this.
Why should the physical space of brick and mortar buildings restrict the intellectual space between the disciplines?
Karen Fisher – Raising a Little Hell – Ponderings from the UW iSchoolers.
Communication life cycle isn’t
Looking for understanding vs. explanation, research objects don’t sit still (like herding cats)
Concern about research methods – inappropriate to the problem
No follow through of the answers
Can’t keep up with the literature in all of the different fields, evaluating research from different paradigms, competing for money
Normore- IT/HCI practitioner perspective
Tenopir- essay team of master’s team from LIS perspective. Distance class over the summer. Necessary to sense-make about sense-making. Diverse group of students.
Convergences – personalization, longitudinal, generational, socioeconomic, context important, info overload (but different solutions)

asist2006

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