Richard Hull

1
Who designs all this stuff?The expert labour
behind the virtual

• Richard Hull
• Sociology
• Department of Human Sciences,
• Brunel University

2
Introduction

• The social sciences and computing, since earliest
  days
• The variety of ICTs
• In combination - a familiar problematic
• One response - the conduct of expert labour
• The conduct of computing - frameworks of
  computing
• Technical, Partnership and Benevolent frameworks
• Medical Informatics, Web Design and Knowledge
  Management

3
The social sciences and computing

• Social sciences - economics, sociology,
  ergonomics, anthropology, social psychology -
  have been an integral part of the design of
  computing devices from the very outset
• But these involvements have been varied, not
  uniform. They do not represent one single
  ideology, or anything like that, and instead have
  come in a great variety of methodological,
  philosophical and political styles.
• So, before adding to that plethora of social
  science comments and analyses, perhaps we need to
  better understand those who have been here
  before.

4
The limited variety of ICTs

• There is an increasing variety of ICTs, both
  hardware and software, from digital watches to
  washing machine controllers, from mobile phones
  to weather prediction, from missile guidance to
  Hactivism
• However, one of the consequences of the prior
  social science involvement in the design of ICTs
  is that we have to abandon some of the favourite
  concepts for understanding them, like
  information and interaction
• If, on the other hand, we accept that the variety
  is limited, and that the possible uses and
  readings are limited - how can we understand
  those limits?

5
In combination ...

• We now have a familiar problematic - changing
  historical patterns of social science involvement
  in a set of phenomena which manifest themselves
  in a limited variety of ways. We see this
  problematic in, e.g. social work, education,
  management and all its sub-functions like
  accounting and HRM.
• The most useful perspectives - those which do not
  take these phenomena at face value - are those
  which focus on the disciplinary changes in
  expertise as new problematisations emerge, and on
  the everyday activities and practices of those
  experts.

6
The conduct of expert labour

• Redefine Conduct (Hull, 1999)
• to lead others - the discipline of expert
  labour
• a way of behaving - the practices of expert
  labour
• Discipline - the formal and informal social,
  institutional, intellectual and artefactual
  arrangements for maintaining and developing that
  form of expert labour
• Practices - variety of ways in which labour is
  regularised and routinised, whether formally
  (tasks, etc) or informally (getting by,
  getting the work done)

7
Frameworks of computing

• Ways of understanding, working with and
  developing software, artefacts and systems (Hull,
  1997)
• Different understandings of the real and
  desirable relations between people and computers
• A descriptive device, rather than conscious
  decisions made by practitioners
• Frameworks can co-exist within a discipline (e.g.
  HCI) or a location (e.g. a research lab), or
  within an artifact (e.g. the personal computer)

8
The technical framework

• Computers are logical machines programming
  provides input to them, based on logical and
  rational objectives, requirements, analysis and
  design. These are based on the assumption of
  rational human behaviour, both for individuals
  and organisations
• Programs provide an accurate and unique
  representation, that is immediately apparent to
  the rational user
• Information is totally definable as structured
  data knowledge is totally definable as
  information plus rules communication is merely
  the linear transfer of information or knowledge

9
The partnership framework

• The computer is a useful partner, rather than a
  dominating or dominated machine
• Humans derive information from each other in
  various different ways, through interaction, and
  so they will derive information from computers in
  various different ways, again through interaction
• Thus one must study the characteristics of the
  individual user and the interface with the
  computer, so that the techniques and artefacts of
  computing (development methods, VDUs, software,
  etc) can be designed to suit these different but
  equal ways that humans use computers

10
The benevolent framework

• Communication is a social affair, and social
  change will come from changing the control over
  the means of communication
• Communication should be studied with a systemic
  rather than linear approach - the focus on
  networks - and one should focus on the uses of
  information and knowledge, rather than their
  precise nature
• Knowledge is becoming a key resource
• Computer systems and networks are thus central to
  improving communication and decision-making
  within organisations and society

11
Medical Informatics

• Still far more dominated by the technical
  framework than other forms of Information Systems
  Development
• That domination is slowly spawning resistance
• New models of Requirements Analysis, and
  iterative development
• Sub-disciplines, such as Healthcare Computing,
  developed by GPs
• But the dominant technical model still reflected
  at senior decision making levels, for instance in
  the NHS and within most Medical Informatics
  software companies
• In practice, designers engage in complex
  socio-technical activities (Kaplan), but partly
  constrained by the disciplinary and institutional
  limits of Medical Informatics, medicine and
  healthcare (Berg)

12
Web Design

• Hypertext a key feature of the benevolent
  framework, although some early prescriptions for
  methods of hypertext design based in partnership
  (Trigg) and technical frameworks (Thimbleby)
• Discussions of recent prescriptive methodologies
  for hypermedia and web-page design reveal a
  rhetoric of moving from a craft to an engineered,
  efficient process (Whitley). This, of course, is
  exactly the rhetoric employed in the early years
  of Systems Development methodologies.
• Again, in practice, web designers rarely stick
  rigidly if at all to such methodologies, and in
  addition to active resistance in the form of
  asserting their creativity (Whitley), they
  deploy various notions of audience and
  performance (Hine)

13
Knowledge Management

• A more complex genealogy for the emergence of
  this discipline - concepts of knowledge as a
  unit of analysis emerged in 1960s and formed one
  aspect of benevolent framework Information
  Management emerged in early 1980s in opposition
  to traditional forms of IT management, but was
  superceded by Business Process Re-engineering
  the problematisations of BPR failures led to
  focus on knowledge assets.
• In practice, designers and others engaged in KM
  express awareness of slippery, multi-faceted
  characteristics of KM relations between
  knowledge and power, especially for career
  development and in many senses are engaged in
  practical sociology of knowledge (Coombs
  Hull, 1998 Hull, 1999)

14
Conclusion

• In all three cases, as with the other disciplines
  and activities I have studied (HCI, CSCW, BPR,
  Information Management), some features of the
  discipline provide a focus for either conformity,
  critique or active resistance.
• Whilst studies of the everyday practices, and the
  effects of those practices, are clearly
  important, they need to be placed in the context
  of the specific features of the discipline or
  disciplines.
• Such a perspective is even more important if we
  are ever to be able to discriminate between
  different ICTs, and different ways of designing
  and implementing them - choosing which specific
  ICTs and forms of design implementation are
  preferable.

15
References

• Berg, Marc (1997) Rationalizing Medical Work
  Decision-Support Techniques and Medical Practice,
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press.
• Coombs, R. Hull, R. (1995) BPR as IT-enabled
  organisational change An assessment, New
  Technology, Work and Employment, Vol 10 (2), pp
  121-131.
• Coombs, Rod Hull, Richard (1998). Knowledge
  Management Practices and Path Dependency in
  Innovation, Research Policy 27(3) 239-255.
• Coulouris, G. and Thimbleby, H. (1993)
  HyperProgramming Building Interactive Programs
  with HyperCard, Wokingham Addison-Wesley.
• Hine, Christine (2000) Ideas of Audience in web
  page design, presentation to the Virtual
  Society? Get Real! conference, May 2000.
• Hull, R. (1997), Governing the Conduct of
  Computing Computer Science, the Social Sciences,
  and Frameworks of Computing, Accounting,
  Management and Information Technologies, Vol. 7
  (4), pp 213-240.

16
References (2)

• Hull, R. (1999), Actor Network and Conduct The
  Discipline and Practices of Knowledge
  Management, Organization, Vol. 6(3) pp 405-428
• Kaplan, Bonnie (1997), Addressing organizational
  issues in the evaluation of medical systems,
  Journal of the American Medical Informatics
  Association, Vol. 4, April-March, pp 94-101.
• Thimbleby, Harold (1990) User Interface Design,
  Wokingham Addison-Wesley/ACM Press.
• Trigg, R. H., Irish, P. M. (1987). Hypertext
  Habitats Experiences of Writers in NoteCards. In
  ACM Hypertext'87 Proceedings. New York ACM
  Press, 89-108.
• Whitley, Edgar A. (2000) Method-ism in practice
  Investigating the relationship between method and
  understanding in web page design, Mimeo, London
  School of Economics, Information Systems
  Department.

17

• Berg, Marc (1997) Rationalizing Medical Work
  Decision-Support Techniques and Medical Practice,
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press.