Konstantin Balashov

For further perspectives on the Task-Artifact cycle, I would mention Kim Vicentes(1999) rather interesting criticism of basing designs solely on current practice. He makes the, in my opinion, valid point that basing new designs on current practices and current artifacts risks reifying the current problems in the workproces. For example: If worker A confers with worker B in order to do a certain task and uses a post-it note for this conference, it might seem that constructing support for a smarter way of conferring would be a good idea. However, claims Vicente, the need to conference at all might just be a "workaround activity" that does not contribute to the work in any other way, than working around a constraint in the current practice. Perhaps the need to confer stems from Worker A's inability to access information that Worker B has access to, and not a need to discuss the matter at hand as such. Could we eliminate this constraint in our system design, we would be able to make work more effective and better - but if we just built in support for the conferring, we would just reify a current problem - in this case the lack of information access. For a suggestion of managing these problems, I suggest Bdker and Iversen(2002), who suggests the conscious work with new perspectives and a professional PD practice, as the means of managing the inherent problems in the Task-Artifact cycle. References:Vicente, K.J. 1999. Cognitive work analysis. Towards safe, productive and healthy computer-based work Bdker, Susanne og Iversen, Ole, 2002. Staging a Professional Participatory Design Practice - Moving PD beyond the Initial Fascination of User Involvement. NordiCHI 2002

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