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Problem:
Designing Computational Support
[ Introduction | Setting | Problem | Theory | Approach | Case Study | Discussion | Conclusion ]
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This chapter describes the computational support necessary to support new practices in knowledge-intensive domains, and why is it difficult to design this computational support. The chapter argues that the primary challenges to system development are to collect and synthesize knowledge from many different sources, and to build shared visions of new work practices. These challenges are difficult because they involve stakeholders from diverse backgrounds. Each stakeholder has a portion of the knowledge required to develop a new system, and a unique perspective of what the new system should be. The chapter closes by arguing that redesigning work practice through new computational tools requires a participatory and evolutionary approach.A foundational theory of cooperative problem solving systems is presented, and based on that theory, computational techniques are proposed for workers in knowledge-intensive domains. These computational techniques are illustrated using an existing research prototype. The challenges for designing similar computational support for knowledge-intensive domains, such as service provisioning, are then described. These challenges are the central problems to be addressed in this thesis. A framework of existing and emerging software development approaches is presented to situate the remainder of this thesis.
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