/pdf/qualitative-research-in-information-systems-1sezxwy02d.pdf

Qualitative Research in Information Systems

From the Publisher: \nThe telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technologyhow we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner. Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life. Deftly written and meticulously researched, America Calling adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life. \nAuthor Biography: Claude S. Fischer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of To Dwell among Fris: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982) and The Urban Experience (1984).

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940

Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems

Finally-a thorough pedagogical survey of the multidisciplinary science of HCI.

Human-Computer Interaction spans many disciplines, from the social and behavioral sciences to information and computer technology. But of all the textbooks on HCI technology and applications, none has adequately addressed HCI's multidisciplinary foundations-until now. 

HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks fills a huge void in the education and training of advanced HCI students. Its authors comprise a veritable house of diamonds-internationally known HCI researchers, every one of whom has successfully applied a unique scientific method to solve practical problems.

Each chapter focuses on a different scientific analysis or approach, but all in an identical format, especially designed to facilitate comparison of the various models.

HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks answers the question raised by the other HCI textbooks: 
How can HCI theory can support practice in HCI?
* Traces HCI research from its origins
* Surveys 14 different successful research approaches in HCI
* Presents each approach in a common format to facilitate comparisons
* Web-enhanced with teaching tools at http://www.HCImodels.com

*Contributors are leading researchers in the field of Human-Comptuter Interaction 

*Fills a major gap in current literature about the rich scientific foundations of HCI 

*Provides a thorough pedogological survey of the science of HCI

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science of Human-Computer Interaction
by John M. Carroll, Virginia Tech 

2. Design as Applied Perception
by Colin Ware, University of New Hampshire

3. Motor Behavior Models for Human-Computer Interaction
by I. Scott MacKenzie, York University, Toronto, Canada

4. Information Processing and Skilled Behavior
by Bonnie E. John, Carnegie Mellon University

5. Notational Systems--The Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Framework by Alan Blackwell and Thomas Green, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England

6. Users' Mental Models: The Very Ideas
by Stephen J. Payne, Cardiff University, Wales

7. Exploring and Finding Information
by Peter Pirolli, Palo Alto Research Center

8. Distributed Cognition
by Mark Perry, Brunel University, London, England

9. Cognitive Work Analysis
by Penelope M. Sanderson, University of Queensland, Australia

10. Common Ground in Electronically Mediated Communication: Clark's Theory of Language Use
by Andrew Monk, University of York, England

11. Activity Theory
by Olav W. Bertelsen and Susanne Bodker, University of Aarhus, Denmark

12. Applying Social Psychological Theory to the Problems of Group Work
by Robert E. Kraut, Carnegie Mellon University

13. Studies of Work in Human-Computer Interaction
by Graham Button, Xerox Research Centre Europe, Grenoble, France

14. Upside-Down Vs and Algorithms-Computational Formalisms and Theory
by Alan Dix, Lancaster University, England

15. Design Rationale as Theory
by John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson, Virginia Tech

HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science

An international standard has now been established for evaluating the quality of software products. However there is no equivalent standard for evaluating the quality of conceptual models. While a range of quality frameworks have been proposed in the literature, none of these have been widely accepted in practice and none has emerged as a potential standard. As a result, conceptual models continue to be evaluated in practice in an ad hoc way, based on common sense, subjective opinions and experience. For conceptual modelling to progress from an "art" to an engineering discipline, quality standards need to be defined, agreed and applied in practice. This paper conducts a review of research in conceptual model quality and identifies the major theoretical and practical issues which need to be addressed. We consider how conceptual model quality frameworks can be structured, how they can be developed, how they can be empirically validated and how to achieve acceptance in practice. We argue that the current proliferation of quality frameworks is counterproductive to the progress of the field, and that researchers and practitioners should work together to establish a common standard (or standards) for conceptual model quality. Finally, we describe some initial efforts towards developing a common standard for data model quality, which may provide a model for future standardisation efforts.

Theoretical and practical issues in evaluating the quality of conceptual models: current state and future directions

For many years, research results in requirements engineering (RE) have been developed without much interaction with, or impact on, industrial practice. Why is it so difficult to introduce RE research results into mainstream RE practice? This paper attempts to provide answers to this question by describing obstacles that researchers and practitioners have encountered when they attempted technology transfer. In addition, major incentives for using RE methods are discussed, along with ideas for improving current RE practice. The paper summarises, clarifies and extends the results of two panel discussions, one at the Twelfth Conference on Advanced information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'00) and the other at the Fourth IEEE Conference on Requirements Engineering (ICRE'00).

http://www-di.inf.puc-rio.br/~julio/Slct-pub/re-transf.pdf

Requirements Engineering and Technology Transfer: Obstacles, Incentives and Improvement Agenda

The last decade has witnessed a modest but sustained increase in researching and applying formal methods. A number of well cited success stories are now available and provide strong evidence that formal methods can be effective and deployed in industrial-scale applications. Through fundamental contributions from leading researchers, this book provides further evidence of the use of formal methods in the areas of requirements, design, modelling and implementation, verification and validation. The self-contained chapters are views from experts in these areas, providing readers with rich background information and a diverse breadth of specialist material. This authoritative collection of views provides a snapshot of the field and will be of considerable interest to researchers and professionals seeking a perspective on fundamental underpinnings of formal methods and current hot topics in the field. The following website www.fmsand.info is associated with the book.

Formal Methods: State of the Art and New Directions

Preliminary findings are presented of a research study into general problem decomposition strategies used in program design The initial phase of the investigation involved three separate experiments in which groups of subjects familiar with the principles of structured programming were asked to undertake certain tasks associated with a particular programming problem, solutions to which can be mapped onto one of two “process decomposition paradigms” Problem-solving strategies are advanced that account for the two types of solution and are consistent with the experimental results obtained The latter revealed that solutions are strongly biased in favour of one of these paradigms, and that this bias can be explained in terms of “perception difficulty” allied to inadequacies in abstraction skills attributable to inappropriate previous training The possible effects caused by problem specification characteristics are also discussed briefly

An empirical investigation into problem decomposition strategies used in program design

A classification of requirements engineering methods based on the social assumptions made about organizations is presented. The scheme, based on a taxonomy of social theories after J. Lyotard (1984), provides a set of categories corresponding to metanarratives used within requirements engineering. A short description of each metanarrative is provided in terms of the assumptions made about the nature of society and the expected role of the requirements engineer. A decision aid for practitioners is included in the form of a table that classifies a representative sample of requirements engineering methods. >

The classification of requirements engineering methods

Requirements engineering is likely to be a major issue in this decade. The author examines two widely held beliefs: requirements describe a system's "what", not its "how". Requirements must be represented as abstractions. >

Jawed I. A. Siddiqi

Papers

Requirements Engineering and Technology Transfer: Obstacles, Incentives and Improvement Agenda

Formal Methods: State of the Art and New Directions

An empirical investigation into problem decomposition strategies used in program design

The classification of requirements engineering methods

Challenging universal truths of requirements engineering