Usability Specialists as Boundary Spanners – An Appraisal of Usability Specialists’ Work in Multiparty Distributed Open Source Software Development Effort

Abstract

Abstract. This study examines the work of usability specialists in a multiparty research project producing an open source learning application for children, with children. Children as a user group has been acknowledged decades ago and methods for involving them have been devised, but there is a lack of research examining what happens to children's input in practice, when integrated with actual development. The paper contrasts the empirical findings with the existing research on the usability specialists' roles and with the knowledge management literature on boundary spanning, which argues that for successful knowledge sharing and arriving at shared understandings there needs to emerge boundary spanners and boundary objects and a new joint field of practice within which the experts involved can collaborate. This paper argues for the boundary spanner position to be acquired by usability specialists. Instances of successful boundary spanning are described and conditions for successful boundary spanning are discussed.

‘It Has to Be Useful for the Pupils, of Course’ – Teachers as Intermediaries in Design with Children

“…In the existing IS and HCI research, intermediaries have been called for to cater for users' needs and to facilitate user participation in the design process [13] [14] [30] [31]: e.g. in the HCI literature HCI professionals have been positioned as needed advocates of users, who are to 'represent the user' both in presentational and political senses, i.e.…”

“…in the HCI literature HCI professionals have been positioned as needed advocates of users, who are to 'represent the user' both in presentational and political senses, i.e. to know the users and deliver this knowledge to design and to speak if not fight for the user in the design process, as well as to facilitate collaboration among users and designers [1][2][10] [11][12] [13]. In the Computer Supported Cooperative Design (CSCW) literature, ethnographers have been seen as essential for systems design: they are to acquire thorough understanding of users' work practices through their ethnographic fieldwork and to communicate this understanding to the design [15].…”