Software development as mediated activity: applying three analytical frameworks for studying compound mediation

Field research in software documentation has a tradition of investigating how artifacts (from documentation to online help to interfaces to mundane equipment such as Post-It? notes) mediate or enable workers to perform complex tasks (see for instance [29]). Understanding artifacts and mediation can be key to understanding how well documentation supports work, and consequently, how we might design information to fit work patterns. Yet the field of technical communication has developed or adapted relatively few analytical frameworks for examining compound mediation, the ways that sets of artifacts work together to help workers get their jobs done. Such frameworks are important to understand because they provide us with guidance for investigating the mediatory relationships among artifacts - guidance which has important ramifications for intelligently designing information systems and inserting designed artifacts (such as documentation) into existing systems.In this paper, I use three analytical frameworks - contextual design's work models [4, 5, 23], distributed cognition's functional systems [1, 2, 13, 24], and genre ecologies [25, 26, 27, 28, 30] - to examine observational and interview data from a 1997 study of software developers. The observational study is a 10-week investigation of 22 software developers at work, focusing on how artifacts (such as manuals, code comments, and the code itself) collectively mediated the developers? production and comprehension of code at three units of the same global corporation. The study provides a good case for basing a comparison of the three frameworks because it (a) involves comparing multiple artifacts and complex use of artifacts across the different sites, and (b) uses ethnographic methods similar to those often used by proponents of the three frameworks.By applying the three frameworks to the same study, I illustrate which aspects of compound mediation are illuminated and unexplored by each analytical framework. Based on the comparison, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each framework for exploring compound mediation, and I suggest ways in which the frameworks might be coordinated to produce different pictures of work.

[1]  Christopher Rao,et al.  Introduction to participatory design , 1996 .

[2]  Mark Zachry.  Constructing usable documentation: a study of communicative practices and the early uses of mainframe computing in industry , 1999, SIGDOC '99.

[3]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Reexamining organizational memory , 2000, Commun. ACM.

[4]  Yrjö Engeström,et al.  Mundane tool or object of affection?: the rise and fall of the Postal Buddy , 1995 .

[5]  Christine Halverson,et al.  Considering an organization's memory , 1998, CSCW '98.

[6]  Christina Haas,et al.  Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy , 1995 .

[7]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[8]  Jack Selzer,et al.  Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from Research , 1990 .

[9]  Stanley R. Page.  User-centered design in a commercial software company , 1996 .

[10]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart , 1999 .

[11]  Clay Spinuzzi,et al.  Toward Integrating Our Research Scope , 2002 .

[12]  Karen Holtzblatt,et al.  Contextual design: principles and practice , 1996 .

[13]  Françoise Decortis,et al.  Activity theory, cognitive ergonomics and distributed cognition: three views of a transport company , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[14]  Clay Spinuzzi,et al.  Light green doesnt mean hydrology!: toward a visualrhetorical framework for interface design , 2001 .

[15]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Distributed cognition: an alternative framework for analysing and explaining collaborative working , 1994, J. Inf. Technol..

[16]  Barbara Mirel.  Designing Manuals for Active Learning Styles. , 1991 .

[17]  Edwin Hutchins,et al.  How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds , 1995, Cogn. Sci..

[18]  Karen Holtzblatt,et al.  Contextual design , 1997, INTR.

[19]  Mark Zachry,et al.  Genre ecologies: an open-system approach to understanding and constructing documentation , 2000, AJCD.

[20]  R. Miettinen,et al.  The riddle of things: Activity theory and actor‐network theory as approaches to studying innovations , 1999 .

[21]  Clay Spinuzzi,et al.  Building More Usable APIs , 1998, IEEE Softw..

[22]  Stephen A. Bernhardt.  Electronic literacies in the workplace: Technologies of writing , 1997 .

[23]  Clay Spinuzzi,et al.  Grappling with Distributed Usability: A Cultural-Historical Examination of Documentation Genres over Four Decades , 1999, SIGDOC '99.

[24]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  Genre Repertoire: The Structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations , 1994 .

[25]  Aviva Freedman,et al.  Navigating the Current of Economic Policy: Written Genres and the Distribution of Cognitive Work at a Financial Institution , 1997 .

[26]  C. Bazerman,et al.  Textual dynamics of the professions : historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities , 1991 .

[27]  Zongming Fei,et al.  Experience Using Web-Based Shotgun Measures for Large-System Characterization and Improvement , 1998, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[28]  Michael G. Kahn,et al.  Using contextual inquiry to discover physicians' true needs , 1996 .

[29]  Dennis Wixon,et al.  Field methods casebook for software design , 1996 .