Time, Narratives and Participation Frameworks in
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1. 3 1 The relevance of the users in the diagnosis phase 1 3 1 1 Making a provisional diagnosis The process started with Carlo a producer who went to Paolo head of the engineers saying Help Paolo the site s down If there are serious problems regarding users viewing the site the phrase the site s down said aloud in the open area of the office immediately calls attention to the problem and gives it top priority A group of about seven people are gathered around Paolo s computer and desk see Fig 2 The producers Gianna Carlo and Lisa report what they were doing just before the problem appeared They do not report any errors nor did they notice anything unusual The collective diagnostic process proceeds through direct action on the site Various options are sequentially evaluated one at a time Lipshitz et al 2001 linking actions if I access without Tiger see extract 3 and their visible products on the screen the page isn t broken see extract 4 The first provisional outcome of the joint diagnosis is that the Tiger program which allows the producers to publish contents on the website seems to be involved in the problem Extract 3 1 Paolo perch guarda se io accedo a un link senza Tigre because look if I access a link without Tiger 2 Carlo ssh sentiamo ssh let s hear 3 Paolo se io accedo senza Tigre la pagina non rotta if I access without Tiger the page isn t broken2. Having performed this preliminary diagnosis although what exactly has happened is not yet clear the designers decide to try repairing the Tiger program To do so rapidly there are various explicit urgings on this we are losing time the designers decide to give priority to solving the public symptoms of the problem rather than to analyzing and understanding what exactly happened see extract 4 Extract 4 1 Paolo poi dopo possiamo capire che cosa andava storto ma adesso afterwards we can understand what went wrong but now Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 135 2 Luca adesso now 3 Paolo mettiamolo a posto let s fix it 4 Luca so d accordo I agree The designers make changes to the Tiger program s code to see what will happen in the website These attempts at repair support the diagnostic work and they seem gradually to approach the solution This strategy of repair jointly with the diagnosis is characterized by a sort of navigation by sight whereby the designers do not know where they are going until after they have seen the results of the intervention and by a triangular relation between the designers and the website with its many applications Orr 1996 Suchman 2002 This iterative interaction yields the diagnostic understandings which provide the basis for the subsequent interventions 3 1 2 The outcome an apparent solution Although the repair diagnostic strategy has produced s
3. 4 Bruno anche le eccezioni vai a beccarti sono mega e mega di log you ll find even the exceptions there are millions and millions of logs 5 Paolo ah ntc ah ntc 6 Bruno vatti a beccare l errore 1 0 ma in quel momento non c era nessuno che faceva push qualcuno proprio su un canale uno slot try to find the error 1 0 but at that moment was someone doing a push someone on a channel a slot Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 139 It emerges from Bruno s words that a thorough analysis of Tiger s behavior would take a great deal of their time there are millions and millions of logs The diagnosis would instead be simpler and more rapid if the problem were at least partly due to the interaction of the designer with the program a hypothesis however that is apparently not confirmed 3 2 2 The outcome leaving the problem unsolved The group devotes a certain amount of time to this type of investigation but when it becomes clear that the result is not immediately obtainable the participants pass to other activities following a tacit rule of priorities The reason why the Tiger program has unexpectedly crashed remains unknown The attention to the topic gradually decreases as does the composition of the group and at a certain point the problem seems to dissolve rather than being solved The second phase of the diagnostic process is more analytical and detailed than the previo
4. by the web designers in such activities 5 Conclusions The analysis of the troubleshooting episode has confirmed that it is necessary to go beyond the technical dimension of diagnostic work to encompass social and organizational aspects as well As shown by other cases see par 1 the solutions proposed and implemented are not always those that are technically best in abstract but rather those which are more consistent with other organizational practices and objectives Initially in fact at Energy the superficial diagnosis and the fake solution made it possible to find an organizationally effective solution to the priority problem of immediately showing a presentable site to the users Also in the second phase of the diagnosis the technical problem was not solved and the diagnosis was not completed Between the two possible causes Tiger or the designer the group chose to explore the one that cost them less time and energy so that they could devote themselves to other activities Hence within the framework of Energy s organizational priorities this solution was satisfactory because it took account of the various organizational exigencies Consequently we have seen designers using knowledge that involves a lot more than strictly programming see also Sharrock and Button 1997 Mackenzie and Monk 2004 Among these competences for example were optimizing the workload knowing how to estimate and save time distributing energies and re
5. 065703 Alby F and C Zucchermaglio 2007 Embodiment at the Interface Materialization Practices in Web Design Research on Language and Social Interaction vol 40 2 3 pp 255 277 Alby F and C Zucchermaglio 2008 Collaboration in web design Sharing knowledge pursuing usability Journal of Pragmatics vol 40 3 pp 494 506 doi 10 1016 j pragma 2007 10 008 Benjamins R and W Jansweijer 1994 Toward a competence theory of diagnosis Expert IEEE vol 9 5 pp 43 52see also IEEE Intelligent Systems and Their Applications doi 10 1109 64 33 1489 Boden D 1994 The Business of Talk Organizations in Action Polity B dker S and E Christiansen 1997 Scenarios as Springboards in CSCW Design In G Bowker S L Star W Turner and L Gasser eds Social Science Technical Systems and Cooperative Work Mahwah NJ Erlbaum pp 214 234 Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 145 Brown B 2006 The next line Understanding programmers work TeamEthno online 2 25 33 Bucciarelli L L 1994 Designing Engineers Cambridge MA MIT Buscher M 2007 Interaction in motion Embodied conduct in emergency teamwork In Mondada L Online Multimedia Proceedings of the 2nd International Society for Gesture Studies Conference Interacting Bodies 15 18 June 2005 Lyon France http gesture lyon2005 ens Ish fr article php3 id_article 259 Button G and W Sharrock 1994 Occasioned practises in
6. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2009 18 129 146 Springer 2009 DOI 10 1007 s10606 008 9090 7 Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks in Software Troubleshooting Francesca Alby amp Cristina Zucchermaglio Department of Social and Developmental Psychology Sapienza University of Rome via dei Marsi 78 00185 Rome Italy E mail francesca alby uniroma1 it Abstract The paper problematizes diagnostic work as a solely technical and rational activity by presenting an analysis focused on the social and organizational practices in which diagnosis is embedded The analysis of a troubleshooting episode in an Italian internet company shows how diagnostic work is realized 1 through collaboration sustained by specific knowledge distribution among designers different but overlapping competences 2 intersubjectively and discursively as an activity characterized by specific and diverse forms of participation and interwined with material intervention in the system 3 following a situated rationality which proceeds by gradual approximations to achieve partial or provisional solutions while also taking account of organizational goals and needs In particular the paper discusses how diagnosis is shaped by time pressure flexible roles and distributed responsibilities absent participants narratives as specialized discourses Key words collaboration diagnostic work participation framework situated rationality narratives at work decision maki
7. articipants themselves to regulate their participation and non participation in collective activities Heath et al 2002 In this case too the designers use this embodied participation framework to join and leave the group working on the diagnosis as we see when Luca announces his exit by moving his body away from the computer see extract 8 Extract 8 4 owe FULLY Bei Paolo or maybe we can first see Embodied skills allow designers to organize their bodies in concert with each other in a way that shows their cooperative orientation and that allows a rapid 142 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio joint performance see Martinet al 2007 for other examples of cooperative postures among programmers d Absent participants In the case of a mediated activity like the one analysed here also backstage participants the users and the Tiger program contribute to shaping the diagnostic activities In the second part of the episode the Tiger program changes from being transparent tool constantly used by all the designers to place content on the site into an actant Lee and Brown 1994 not so much because of its autonomy of action but because it interrupts the work routine of the designers The agency of the program resides not so much in its mixing of the site s contents as in the effects that it produces on the diagnosis activities of the designers In the first part of the episode the pace of
8. asoning About Code in a Large Code Base TeamEthno online vol 2 pp 3 12 Martin D J Rooksby and M Rouncefield 2007 Users as contextual features of software product development and testing Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Conference on supporting group work 301 310 Murphy K M 2004 Imagination as Joint Activity The Case of Architectural Interaction Mind Culture and Activity vol 11 4 pp 267 278 doi 10 1207 s15327884mcal104_3 Ochs E P Gonzales and S Jacoby 1996 When I come down I m in the domain state Grammar and graphic representation in the interpretive activity of physicists Interaction and grammar 328 369 Orr J E 1996 Talking about Machines An Ethnography of a Modern Job Cornell University Press Resnick L B 1987 Learning in School and out Educational Researcher vol 16 9 pp 13 54 Sattar A and R Goebel 1990 On the efficiency of logic based diagnosis Proceedings of the third international conference on Industrial and engineering applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems vol 1 pp 23 31 Scribner S 1986 Thinking in action Some characteristics of practical thought In R J Stemberg and W Wagner eds Practical intelligence Nature and origins of competence in the everyday world New York Cambridge University Press pp 13 30 Sharp H and H Robinson 2004 An Ethnographic Study of XP Practice Empirical Software Eng
9. ck and Button 1997 so that they can plan their current and future collective activity see on this point Alby and Zucchermaglio 2007 2008 e Narratives as specialized discourses for diagnosing Collaboration supports the narrative and interpretative process necessary to make sense of the problem Orr 1996 Talk in interaction is both the main way in which diagnosis gets done and also the way in which diagnostic experience is incorporating into the community expertise Diagnosis took place in particular through a trialogues Suchman 2002 triangular interactions which involve the technological interfaces in which web Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 143 designers give voice to their interpretations of how the technology was functioning see for example extract 3 if I access without Tiger the page isn t broken b rewindings Fasulo and Zucchermaglio 2008 collective and detailed reconstructions of the previous phases of the diagnostic process see for example the joint account by Bruno and Paolo in extract 7 Considering diagnostic activities for instance the analysis of symptoms the formulation and testing of hypotheses on the causes of the problem as narrative activities allows one to take account of the distribution of such activities in the social and material environment of the situatedness of the sequence of the diagnostic tasks and the solutions found and of the specific forms of participation
10. e implications of recent research into producer consumer relationships in IT development In M Jirotka and J Goguen eds Requirements Engineering Social and Technical Issues London Academic pp 201 216
11. hat does not resolve the technical problem but only the problem of visibility to the end users 3 2 The program as actant phase 2 3 2 1 Understanding what happened Now that the emergency concerning the visibility to consumers of the damaged site has subsided the designers continue the diagnosis by exploring the site and clicking on the various links to gain better understanding of the problem This second phase is the one that more closely resembles what is traditionally meant by diagnosis a careful exploration of the symptoms of the problem followed by examination of possible solutions While clicking on my energy a link present on the site designers discover that this link connects to contents different from those that the producers put on it This discovery takes them an important step forward in the diagnosis see extract 6 Extract 6 1 Luca lo sai cosa Paolo vedi qua il mio Energy contiene invece cose 0 5 cio proprio sbagliato il codice degli slot you know what Paolo look here my Energy contains instead things 0 5 that is the slot code is wrong 2 Paolo quindi dici che forse c stato un errore di Tigre che ha mis chiato so you re saying that maybe there was a Tiger error that mi xed 3 Luca ha mis chiato i contenuti mix ed the contents 4 Carlo ha mischiato tutto quanto it mixed everything up 5 Luca guarda dove finito questo qua ha scambiato ha scambiato
12. hich also include the technology itself that technicians construct a repertoire of distributed knowledge and pragmatic understanding which is one of the most valuable and enduring outcomes of their collaboration Other ethnographic studies have shown that as in many cases of engineering work diagnostic activity is not separated from and does not necessarily follow the design of technical products Suchman 1997 Studies on engineering design practices describe in fact not the monolithic and sequential work process usually presented in the methods proposed for developing technological products but a varied and situated activity Button and Sharrock 1995 B dker and Christiansen 1997 Suchman 2000 Mackenzie and Monk 2004 Among the different work practices described we find besides formal planning defined as professional design what has been called design in use that is an activity of maintenance troubleshooting and debugging of what has already been constructed Suchman and 1997 Suchman et al 1999 Alby and Zucchermaglio 2006 Both of these interdependent work processes are necessary for developing effective technological products Other ethnographies Woolgar 1994 Sharrock and Button 1997 Sharrock and Anderson 1994 Martin et al 2007 pointed out the relevance of the users to programming showing how developers try to figure out what their users require and then design their system to fit that and how the sense of every tech
13. hoice to work for results visible in the short period Moreover the small size of the firm recently reduced even further facilitated a loosely structured way of working which would be difficult to manage in a larger firm All the web designers are working in a large shared room this kind of spatial arrangement facilitates collaboration and communication among them 3 Studying unfolding diagnostic practices We will now examine collaborative diagnostic work done by the web designers during a troubleshooting episode in which strange contents different from those originally inserted were found on the website We choose this episode because it provides a good example of how diagnosis is not done privately in the programmer s head but is instead the complex collaborative achievement of a team In the data collected this particular episode seemed to be particularly useful for studying the coordination s mechanisms a it involved in fact many designers who leaded the work in different moments b it was considered a situation of emergency evaluated nine by the designers on a scale from one to 10 which therefore required a rapid collaboration Buscher 2007 c it was a compact multi voiced and public interaction a diagnosis with a start and an end which occupied the scene for about 20 min and was realized through an accessible team discussion and not for instance distributed in emails or instant messenger The teamwor
14. ineering vol 9 4 pp 353 375 doi 10 1023 B EMSE 0000039884 79385 54 Sharrock W and B Anderson 1994 The User as a Scenic Feature of Design Space Design Studies vol 15 1 pp 5 18 doi 10 1016 0142 694X 94 90036 1 Sharrock W and G Button 1997 Engineering Investigations Practical Sociological Reasoning in the Work of Engineers In G Bowker S L Star W Turner and L Gasser eds Social Science Technical Systems and Cooperative Work Beyond the Great Divide Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum pp 79 104 Suchman L A 1987 Plans and Situated Actions The Problem of Human Machine Communi cation Cambridge University Press Suchman L 1997 Centers of Coordination A Case and Some Themes In L B Resnick R Saljo C Pontecorvo and B Burge eds Discourse Tools and Reasoning Essays on Situated CognitionBerlin Springer Verlag pp 41 62 Suchman L 2000 Embodied practices of engineering work Mind Culture and Activity vol 7 1 amp 2 pp 4 18 doi 10 1207 S15327884MCA0701 amp 2_02 Suchman L 2002 Replicants and Irreductions Affective encounters at the interface Paper presented at the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology EASST Suchman L J Blomberg J E Orr and R Trigg 1999 Reconstructing Technologies as Social Practice The American Behavioral Scientist vol 43 3 p 392 doi 10 1177 0002764992 1955335 Woolgar S 1994 Rethinking requirements analysis som
15. k diagnosis can be divided as we will see into two parts initially the designers conducted a superficial diagnosis aimed at rapidly finding a technical solution so that a presentable site could be shown to users they then sought to deepen the diagnosis understand the causes of the problem and appraise whether a more enduring technical solution one that prevented the problem from arising again could be found see also Fig 1 We now describe the two phases focusing in particular on the diagnostic practices used and on their outcome We subsequently analyse certain features that sustained this collaborative diagnostic work Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 133 Analysis Intervention Making a provisional Leader Paolo diagnosis Group large 5 7 Solving first then Phase 1 7 minutes 121 conversational turns Leader Paolo understanding Group large 5 7 few attempts Leader Luca Paolo Group small 2 3 Hiding the problem from the users TIME Understanding what Leader Luca about 20 happened Group small minutes 1 2 211 turns Understanding the Leader Bruno cause Group small 3 2 Phase 2 13 minutes 90 conversational turns The problem Leader Bruno dissolves Group small 2 1 decreases until dissolves Figure 1 The local development of the diagnostic process Figure 2 Web designers start the diagnosis 134 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio
16. l Among these web designers troubleshooting is a frequent diagnostic routine performed through rapid coordinated action How is such coordination achieved What are the features of such joint diagnostic activity What shapes the outcome of the diagnosis What knowledge is required by designers in order to face the problem Before illustrating the answers received by these questions in our research setting we will briefly describe the organization and the methods used for data collection and analysis 2 Entering a web design company The company henceforth Energy is based in Italy and manages a portal that provides services to a mass audience personalized homepages news e mail SMS thematic channels e commerce etc It employs around 40 web designers the producers manage the editorial content and the engineers the portal applications A 3 month ethnography enabled us to describe the organizational features of the firm which form the framework in which the analysis of diagnostic practices assumes meaning and salience In the first month we conducted a background ethnography in order to describe the everyday organization of work practices and we carried out some interviews with key informants In the following months we made video recordings of around 10 h of interactions which were then transcribed making reference to the Jefferson notation Jefferson 1989 and to Goodwin s 2000 visual analysis Energy has an organizatio
17. le cose Tigre look where did this end up Tiger mixed mixed things up 138 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio The designers understand what has happened i e the Tiger program has started mixing the contents by itself The program s agency gradually emerges until Luca s statement Tiger mixed things up turn 5 Following this discovery Bruno another engineer who knows how to repair the program joins the group Luca and Paolo start a detailed account of the diagnostic process Bruno seems to be the main audience for the story However he has been present during large part of the process and therefore has no special need of this information Instead the collective account seems to have the specific function of permitting a shared reconstruction of the events which is known to be crucial in diagnostic activity Orr 1996 This joint narrative permits the participants to question each other so as to reach reciprocal understanding and provide resources for interpreting the cause of the problem see extract 7 Extract 7 1 Paolo non non chiaro quello che successo ci sono dei dei log di Tigre che h possono aiutarci it s not it s not clear what happened are there Tiger logs that h can help us 2 Bruno si pero cio si pu vedere che ha fatto il push pero yes but that is however we can see what made the push 3 Paolo non non abbiamo modo di haven t haven t we any way of
18. m solving results in a different rhythm of work which takes in consideration the users the available resources as well as any consequences In the first phase the repair diagnostic process even if effective is halted because it seems to require too much time and it is replaced by a more rapid alternative solution The designers evidently consider the time spent since the beginning of the emergency around 6 min as excessive They know in fact that the time passing is 140 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio heavy time during which a non functioning site is visible to all users It is the impact on the end users and the consequences for the website in terms of traffic that make this situation an emergency and this part of the diagnosis very rapid Time continues to be an important element in the second part of the process as well The pace of this part of the diagnosis is slower because of a different sense of what time is passing In the emergency phase the time required for the diagnosis was implicitly the time that passed with the damaged site visible to the users afterwards the time of the diagnosis is the engineers work time taken from other design activities Although the pressure is not that of the emergency the designers decide anyway not to solve the problem on the basis of what they think is an appropriate and efficient management of their working time These sorts of mundane design decisions are made routinely not
19. nal culture typical of many Internet companies in which speed is more important than perfection as an engineer said during an interview see extract 1 Extract 1 1 Paolo la velocit la cosa pi importante non la perfezione vero che i problemi non scompaiono ma ragionandoci troppo perdiamo altre opportunita speed is the most important thing not perfection it s true that problems don t just disappear but if we spend too much time discussing them we miss other opportunities This priority is also related to the type of market in which Internet companies operate see extract 2 Extract 2 1 Paolo forse sbaglio ma l ambiente mi ha formato cos E un mercato sempre incerto non si sa mai qual il futuro i progetti cambiano sempre che me 132 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio ne importa di lavorare tanto su una cosa che forse si chiude Noi stessi fra un anno potremmo essere chiusi maybe I m wrong but the environment has made me that way The market is always uncertain you never know what the future will be plans change continuously what do I care about working a lot on something that may close We could even be closed in a year The firm is one of the few in the sector to have survived the dot com crash even if the American parent company went bankrupt and all its other foreign branches were closed Also this sensation of a precarious future influenced the c
20. ng 1 Diagnosis as situated practice Engineering diagnosis is traditionally considered to be solely an individual cognitive activity that can be improved through problem solving methods or the study of hypothetical reasoning see for example Benjamins and Jansweijer 1994 Das 2003 Sattar and Goebel 1990 Many studies conceive diagnosis as a strictly sequential and rational work process which includes cognitive tasks such as symptoms detection hypothesis generation and discrimination strategies generation and implementation see Benjamins and Jansweijer 1994 and independent from the specifics of the organizational context and from non technical engineers practices This framework is used to inform software systems that should assist with the diagnosis task or to suggest logic based behaviours that can support diagnostic work Observation based studies of everyday technical work by contrast have found diagnostic work to be a much less standardized individualistic and rational 130 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio activity Emblematic is Orr s 1996 study which showed how the diagnostic process for copiers was essentially narrative and cooperative Orr showed that the interpretation of technology mediated events is an inevitably problematic and discursive activity and that it constitutes a crucial component of professional competence It is in fact through joint accounts and interpretations within triangular relations w
21. nical decision was made through an organizational frame Button and Sharrock 1994 1995 1998 Grint and Woolgar 1997 Martin and Rooksby 2006 Martin et al 2007 They also have shown that there is a difference between the project on paper and the project in practice Bucciarelli 1994 Button and Sharrock 1996 and that designers always have to face a series of contingencies and develop adaptive responses Sharrock and Button 1997 The emerging of new user centred collaborative software design approach such as Agile or Extreme Programming and the studies of such methods in practice Mackenzie and Monk 2004 Sharp and Robinson 2004 Martin et al 2007 contributed to change the idea of programming as an individual and mental activity by showing how cooperation results in better design and better code Even if it is argued that there is still little understanding of why these methods are successful or popular agile methods may be the answer but we are still unclear about what the question is Brown 2006 25 We believe that the increase of ethnomethodologi cally informed studies of programmers practices can help to ground these new methods epistemologically by showing how engineers reason and organize their activity in their everyday work We would like to contribute to this enterprise through the analysis of an episode of troubleshooting in a small Italian company which Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 131 manages a porta
22. odwin C 1997 The blackness of black Color categories as situated practice In L B Resnick R S lj C Pontecorvo and B Burge eds Discourse tools and reasoning Essays on situated cognition Berlin Heidelberg New York Springer pp 111 140 Goodwin C 2000 Practices of Seeing Visual Analysis An Ethnomethodological Approach In T van Leeuwen and C Jewitt eds Handbook of Visual Analysis London Sage pp 157 182 Goodwin C 2007 Participation stance and affect in the organization of activities Discourse amp Society vol 18 1 p 53 doi 10 1177 0957926507069457 Goodwin C and M H Goodwin 2003 Participation In A Duranti ed A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology Oxford Basil Blackwell pp 222 244 Grint K and S Woolgar 1997 The Machine at Work Technology Work and Organization Cambridge Polity Heath C M S Svensson J Hindmarsh P Luff and D vom Lehn 2002 Configuring Awareness Computer Supported Cooperative Work vol 11 3 pp 317 347CSCW do1i 10 1023 A 1021247413718 Hutchins E 1993 Learning to navigate In S Chaiklin and J Lave eds Understanding Practice Perspectives on Activity and Context Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 35 63 Jefferson G 1989 Preliminary notes on a possible metric which provides for a standard maximum silence of approximately one second in conversation In D Roger and P Bull eds Conversation An interdisciplinary pe
23. ome results time pressure induces the producer Luca to suggest a more rapid solution This consists of removing all the parts containing the errors managed by the Tiger program so as to obtain an extremely basic but at least coherent and clean site see extract 5 The problem is not solved therefore but at least it is concealed from the users Extract 5 1 Luca fa na cosa do something 2 Paolo hm hm 3 Luca in dcg togli tutta la parte fissa Tigre 2 0 lasciamo soltanto la parte personalizzata 136 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio in dcg take out all the fixed Tiger part 2 0 let s leave only the personalized part 4 Paolo okay quindi forse salto tutta therefore maybe PII cut all 5 Luca eh 6 Paolo questa sezione this section 7 Luca si yes 8 Paolo okay okay 9 Luca al volo quick 10 Paolo okay okay 11 Luca tanto perch qui la cosa lunga because this is a long story 12 Paolo va bene okay Finding this apparent solution which deals with the problem as far as the users are concerned allows the group to start a phase of different and deeper diagnosis of the technical malfunction This first phase of the diagnostic process is therefore approximate and rapid the repair actions are intertwined with the diagnosis and they finally produce a Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 137 solution apparent in the sense that is a solution t
24. only during emergencies but also during more formal development see in particular Martin et al 2007 second example for a similar case of discovered and unsolved problem showing how design should be considered as a praxiological and satisficing concern Martin et al 2007 308 in which at stake is not so much the diagnosis of a problem but the organizational relevancy of solving it b Flexible roles and distributed responsibility Participation more active by some more peripheral by others is regulated by a tacitly shared awareness of the roles and responsibilities of each actor at that specific work moment Hutchins 1993 The roles however are then renegotiated in order to deal with the emergency more effectively The initial phase of the diagnosis is led by Paolo head of the engineers who has the task of dealing with emergencies to protect the continuity of the other engineers design activities When however it is evident that Paolo is taking too much time Luca head of the producers intervenes with another solution and takes charge of the process whilst Paolo implements the solution found by Luca he continues with the diagnosis Around Paolo and Luca there is a mixed group of producer and engineers around 5 7 people who comment and make suggestions for the diagnosis Once the apparent solution has been selected the group gradually decreases signalling that the emergency has ended and they can return to their wo
25. rk From here on leadership of the process tacitly passes to Bruno who has the skills necessary for technical analysis of the Tiger program s functioning In this second phase Bruno Luca and Paolo discuss matters for around 10 min until the group breaks up and the diagnosis finishes Team diagnosis enables the pooling of the different professional skills and competences of each participant yielding better performance and at the same time increasing the repertoire of common knowledge which will also facilitate future diagnostic interventions More generally we can observe how teams or other organizational structures are resources deployed by social actors Latour 2005 and how there Time Narratives and Participation Frameworks 141 is a reflexive relationship between participation frameworks and the ongoing diagnostic practices Goodwin and Goodwin 2003 c Embodied participation Being in an open space gives easy access to the activities of colleagues In this case everyone can hear Carlo s announcement the site is down and see the group of colleagues that hastens to help with the diagnosis Other than on talk motion and opportunistic use of infrastructure coordination is also based on body signals and cooperative postures Goodwin 2007 Within the open space office a leaning bodily posture towards a computer is indicative of full involvement in the ongoing activity It is a publicly visible clue used by the p
26. rspective Clevedon Multilingual Matters pp 166 196 Latour B 2005 Reassembling the Social An Introduction to Actor Network Theory New York Oxford University Press Lave J 1988 Cognition in practice New York Cambridge University Press Lee N and S Brown 1994 Otherness and the Actor Network The Undiscovered Continent The American Behavioral Scientist vol 37 6 p 772 doi 10 1177 0002764294037006005 Lipshitz R G Klein J Orasanu and E Salas 2001 Focus article Taking stock of naturalistic decision making Journal of Behavioral Decision Making vol 14 5 pp 331 352 doi 10 1002 bdm 381 146 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio Lipshitz R G Klein and J S Carroll 2006 ntroduction to the Special Issue Naturalistic Decision Making and Organizational Decision Making Exploring the Intersections Organization Studies vol 27 7 p 917 doi 10 1177 0170840606065711 Lynch M 1985 Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory London Paul Mackenzie A and S Monk 2004 From Cards to Code How Extreme Programming Re Embodies Programming as a Collective Practice Computer Supported Cooperative Work vol 13 1 pp 91 117CSCW doi 10 1023 B COSU 0000014873 27735 10 March J G 1991 Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning Organization Science vol 2 1 pp 71 87 Martin D and J Rooksby 2006 Knowledge and Re
27. sponsibilities gauging the impact of the problem on the users knowing the roles competences and responsibilities pertaining to oneself and to others in the solution of the problem These competences obviously together with the technical ones are also distributed among designers This is one of the reasons why diagnosis is not an individual undertaking but is realized through forms of collaboration The group of designers at Energy for instance had different but overlapping competences and bodies of knowledge which enabled them to understand coordinate and organize their participation in the diagnosis deploying the competences best suited to the problem at hand Dunbar 1995 Collaboration was therefore 144 Francesca Alby and Cristina Zucchermaglio sustained by a particular distribution of competences Hutchins 1993 and it was performed efficiently precisely because the designers could count on a shared repertoire but also on diversified areas of specialization Collaboration enabled the designers to perform the diagnostic activities intersubjectively and discursively comparing interpretations of the symptoms discussing different solution strategies distributing the diagnostic tasks and using provisional diagnostic results for joint and further exploration of the problem and for future orienting interventions and so on Another difference with respect to traditional models is that diagnostic activities follow a situated rather than abs
28. the work and the definition of the situation as an emergency depend on a multiplicity of actors physically absent the users but nevertheless able to mobilize the immediate and rapid reaction of the designers This result underlines how the users are constantly a contextual feature in designers work they are relevant to the understanding of the situation and to any technical decision also when they do not explicitly emerge in the discussion Martin et al 2007 The designers in fact tacitly share as part of their expertise the awareness that a certain number of users around 10 000 are visiting the site during the accident and it is therefore their accessibility to the site and the visibility to them of the problem that worries the designers The first phase of the diagnosis is in fact organized to answer these questions How can we hide the problem from the users What can we do so that that they won t notice the accident The limited access that designers have to those who we can consider somehow participants in the diagnostic activity the users and the program makes their practices similar to other work activities whose objects are not visible as in the case of physicists neuroscientists archaeologists chemists architects etc see Ochs et al 1996 Lynch 1985 Goodwin 1994 1997 Murphy 2004 It is through collaboration in the diagnostic process that designers try to outthink the user and the program Sharro
29. the work of implementing development methodologies In M Jirotka and J Goguen eds Requirements Engineering Social and Technical Issues London Academic pp 217 240 Button G and W W Sharrock 1995 The Mundane Work of Writing and Reading Computer Programs In G Psathas and P ten Have eds Situated Order Studies in the Social Organization of Talk and Embodied Activities Washington D C University Press of America pp 231 258 Button G and W Sharrock 1996 Project work The organization of collaborative design and development in software engineering Computer Supported Cooperative Work The Journal of Collaborative Computing vol 5 4 pp 369 386 doi 10 1007 BF00136711 Button G and W Sharrock 1998 The Organizational Accountability of Technological Work Social Studies of Science vol 28 1 p 73 doi 10 1177 03063 1298028001003 Das A 2003 Knowledge and Productivity in Technical Support WorkManagement Science vol 49 4 pp 416 431 doi 10 1287 mnsc 49 4 416 14419 Dunbar K 1995 How scientists really reason Scientific reasoning in real world laboratories In R J Sternberg and J Davidson eds Mechanisms of insight Cambridge MA MIT pp 365 395 Fasulo A and C Zucchermaglio 2008 Narratives in the workplace Facts fiction and canonicity Text and Talk vol 28 3 Goodwin C 1994 Professional Vision American Anthropologist vol 96 3 pp 606 633 doi 10 1525 aa 1994 96 3 02a00100 Go
30. tract rationality Scribner 1986 Resnick 1987 Lave 1988 Suchman 1987 the process does not consist in a linear and organized pathway from the problem to one right solution rather it is a process interwined with material interventions in the system and which proceed by gradual flexible and at times recursive approximations And it does not always give rise to a definitive or rigorous solution as also in Martin et al 2007 Martin and Rooksby 2006 More in general these findings on the situated rationality of diagnostic practices are consistent with results on how people take decisions in organizational ill defined settings Lipshitz et al 2006 findings which are observable only if we study diagnosis as a collaborative activity embedded in local work practices rather than an abstract topic of cognitive investigation Note 1 The participants and the company s names have been changed although they agreed to the use of research data for any scientific purpose 2 The use of the term broken as the Italian rotta for a page indicates that designers are constantly aware of the programs that are behind the website s pages and make them active and functioning References Alby F and C Zucchermaglio 2006 Afterwards we can understand what went wrong but now let s fix it How Situated Work Practices Shape Group Decision Making Organization Studies vol 27 7 pp 943 966 doi 10 1177 0170840606
31. us one Exploration of the site and certain applications particularly the Tiger program is followed by a joint account of the event which analyses the causes of the problem This part of the diagnosis also yields results from a technical point of view the designers understand the nature of the problem better the Tiger program has mixed the contents and they conduct analysis of the causes dwelling first on the behaviour of Tiger and then on the interaction between the program and the designers However they decide not to continue with the diagnosis and the subsequent repair considering that the problem may not happen again and that the time devoted to this activity would be excessive 4 What shapes the diagnostic activity a Time pressure what kind of time is it The entire diagnostic process is organized on the basis of a tacit estimate of the appropriate amount of time to be used in every phase which the designers share as part of their shared professional expertise As shown also in other studies engineers always interrelate their actions within an organizational context and thus organize the coordination of their technological work Button and Sharrock 1998 Any technical problem solving is an organizational business Boden 1994 March 1991 which therefore invoke horizons of tractability containing candidate answers seen before and solutions used before and seen to work Martin et al 2007 306 Such situated proble
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