This book presents selected papers by members of the Special Interest Group for Groupware of the Information Processing Society of Japan, which captures the state of the art of CSCW and groupware research in Japan.

The national information infrastructure (NII) holds the promise of connecting people of all ages and descriptionsâ€"bringing them opportunities to interact with businesses, government agencies, entertainment sources, and social networks. Whether the NII fulfills this promise for everyone depends largely on interfacesâ€"technologies by which people communicate with the computing systems of the NII. More Than Screen Deep addresses how to ensure NII access for every citizen, regardless of age, physical ability, race/ethnicity, education, ability, cognitive style, or economic level. This thoughtful document explores current issues and prioritizes research directions in creating interface technologies that accommodate every citizen's needs. The committee provides an overview of NII users, tasks, and environments and identifies the desired characteristics in every-citizen interfaces, from power and efficiency to an element of fun. The book explores: Technological advances that allow a person to communicate with a computer system. Methods for designing, evaluating, and improving interfaces to increase their ultimate utility to all people. Theories of communication and collaboration as they affect person-computer interactions and person-person interactions through the NII. Development of agents: intelligent computer systems that "understand" the user's needs and find the solutions. Offering data, examples, and expert commentary, More Than Screen Deep charts a path toward enabling the broadest-possible spectrum of citizens to interact easily and effectively with the NII. This volume will be important to policymakers, information system designers and engineers, human factors professionals, and advocates for special populations.

This is a book about how management and control decisions are made by persons who collaborate and possibly use the support of an information system. The decision is the result of human conscious activities aiming at choosing a course of action for attaining a certain objective (or a set of objectives). The act of collaboration implies that several entities who work together and share responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate a program of activities to achieve the common goals. The book is intended to present a balanced view of the domain to include both well-established concepts and a selection of new results in the domains of methods and key technologies. It is meant to answer several questions, such as: a) “How are evolving the business models towards the ever more collaborative schemes?”; b) “What is the role of the decision-maker in the new context?” c) “What are the basic attributes and trends in the domain of decision-supporting information systems?”; d) “Which are the basic methods to aggregate the individual preferences?” e)“What is the impact of modern information and communication technologies on the design and usage of decision support systems for groups of people?”.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Collaboration in highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems is and must be revolutionized by engineering augmentation. The aim is to augment humans’ abilities at work and, through this augmentation, improve organizations’ abilities to accomplish their missions. This book establishes the theoretical foundations and design principles of collaborative e-Work, e-Business and e-Service, their models and applications, design and implementation techniques. The fundamental premise is that without effective e-Work and e-Services, the potential of emerging activities, such as e-Commerce, virtual manufacturing, tele-robotic medicine, automated construction, smart energy grid, cyber-supported agriculture, and intelligent transportation cannot be fully materialized. Typically, workers and managers of such value networks are frustrated with complex information systems, originally designed and built to simplify and improve performance. Even if the human-computer interface for such systems is well designed, the information and task overloads can be overwhelming. Effective delivery of expected outcomes may not occur. Challenges and emerging solutions in the context of the recently developed CCT, Collaborative Control Theory, are described, with emphasis on issues of computer-supported and communication-enabled integration, coordination and augmented collaboration. Research results and analyses of engineering design methods and complex systems management techniques are explained and illustrated.

This book examines the nature of service design and service thinking in healthcare and hospital management. By adopting both a service-based provider perspective and a consumer-oriented perspective, the book highlights various healthcare services, methods and tools that are desirable for customers and effective for healthcare providers. In addition, readers will learn about new research directions, as well as strategies and innovations to develop service solutions that are affordable, sustainable, and consumer-oriented. Lastly, the book discusses policy options to improve the service delivery process and customer satisfaction in the healthcare and hospital sector. The contributors cover various aspects and fields of application of service design and service thinking, including service design processes, tools and methods; service blueprints and service delivery; creation and implementation of services; interaction design and user experience; design of service touchpoints and service interfaces; service excellence and service innovation. The book will appeal to all scholars and practitioners in the hospital and healthcare sector who are interested in organizational development, service business model innovation, customer involvement and perceptions, and service experience.

Cultural factors, in both the narrow sense of different national, racial, and ethnic groups, and in the broader sense of different groups of any type, play major roles in individual and group decisions. Written by an international, interdisciplinary group of experts, Cultural Factors in Systems Design: Decision Making and Action explores innovations in the understanding of how cultural differences influence decision making and action. Reflecting the diverse interests and viewpoints that characterize the current state of decision making and cultural research, the chapter authors represent a variety of disciplines and specialize in areas ranging from basic decision processes of individuals, to decisions made in teams and large organizations, to cultural influences on behavior. Balancing theoretical and practical perspectives, the book explores why the best laid plans go awry, examining conditions that can yield unanticipated behaviors from complex, adaptive sociotechnical systems. It highlights the different ways in which East Asians and Westerners make decisions and explores how to model and investigate cultural influences in interpersonal interactions, social judgment, and decision making. The book also reviews decision field theory and examines its implications for cross cultural decision making. With increasing globalization of organizations and interactions among people from various cultures, a better understanding of how cultural factors influence decision making and action is a necessity. Much is known about decision processes, culture and cognition, design of products and interfaces for human interaction with machines and organizational processes, however this knowledge is dispersed across several disciplines and research areas. Presenting a range of current research and new ideas, this volume brings together previously scattered research and explores how to apply it when designing systems that will be used by individuals of varied backgrounds.